Call of Duty 2
Posted December 5, 2005
Okay, I know it's a 
well-worn cliché to start off a review of a game like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or Brothers in Arms by griping about the oversaturation of WWII-themed shooters. While it's true that there's no shortage of these sorts of games floating around, I really don't care how many times something's been done before. Quality trumps originality every time, and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2 isn't just some of the best that the first-person shooter genre has to offer; it may even be the best of the Xbox 360's launch titles.
Gameplay:
Like the original Call of Duty, the sequel takes place from the perspectives of three different soldiers: one Russian, one Brit, and one Yank. Each of them fight alongside their countrymen in several different fronts -- the outgunned and undermanned Russians defend Stalingrad, the British battle Erwin Rommel's tanks in North Africa, and the American campaign begins with a harrowing reproduction of the Allied assault on Normandy and continues as the surrounding areas are secured.
Regardless of what mode is selected, Call of Duty 2 doesn't feel like a single player game. The characters you play are backed up by a slew of fellow soldiers, and these aren't the mindless cannon fodder prevalent in other first person shooters. The Allies' AI is remarkable, almost seeming as if there are a couple dozen people with wireless controllers hiding behind my couch. It's a very cooperative effort, not the "one man against the world" schtick of most shooters; the other infantrymen frequently saved my neck and provided invaluable help in completing missions, and their assistance is automatic and seamless, not prompted by a series of submenus and button presses.
By the same token, the enemy AI is brutal, unrelenting, and adaptive, especially on the higher difficulty settings. Most shooters place the
bad guys squarely in front of the path you're supposed to take, but the Germans in Call of Duty 2 have a tendency to swarm from all directions. You can't just focus on the soldiers in front of you because one's certain to come up from the rear and smash in your skull with the butt of a rifle, or a group may choose to flank you from the left. Patience and teamwork are required to get through the game; you might be able to get away with it in the lower difficulty levels thanks to the revised health system I'll touch on in a moment, but if you mindlessly run-and-gun on Hardened or Veteran mode, you'll be mowed down in a matter of seconds.
The control scheme is typical for a first person shooter, and any gamer who's played an FPS from Halo on should be able to pick up a controller and instantly feel right at home. The notable differences are using the shoulder buttons to toss grenades -- the right one lobs the standard frag grenade, and the left throws a smoke grenade to provide cover when swarming the enemy. As before, the left trigger lets players peer through their weapon's sight for increased accuracy. There's no leaning against walls, but soldiers can crouch and crawl to keep out of harm's way or to find a more effective shooting position.
Missions unfold in a fairly linear fashion, and in the city-based levels, there's typically only one path to take to proceed to the next goal. However, I didn't feel as if I was being pushed along in a particular direction, and the numerous turns the battles take, the devious enemy AI, and the many different approaches to combat keep things from ever getting dull. There are
plenty of ways to take out the German forces -- run in guns blazing, move up to a higher position and snipe, toss a smoke grenade for cover and flank them, duck behind a shattered wall and poke your head out just long enough to get in a shot... Although much of the game has players sweeping through city streets and clearing out the enemy, there is some welcome variation in gameplay. In Africa, for instance, you man a tank and tear through the desert, demolishing Rommel's forces along the way. Other goals involve using heavy artillery to blast planes out of the sky and crawling up a silo to snipe mortar crews.
The health system has been drastically overhauled for Call of Duty 2. Instead of having an on-screen indicator and picking up canteens or med packs to replenish health, the game uses visual cues. When a player is near-death, the edges of the screen take on a red tint and his breathing gets increasingly labored. If the soldier ducks out of the way and has a chance to recover, he arises as good as new. If he continues to take damage, the intensity of the red screen increases and the soldier eventually succumbs. Call of Duty 2 is extremely generous with checkpoints, though, so dying isn't the sort of hassle it is with a game like Perfect Dark Zero; when you die, you almost always start back exactly where you left off.
Call of Duty 2 offers a variety of multiplayer options: play split-screen with several of your friends, network together a few consoles locally, or, of course, play over Xbox Live. There are a variety of different game types, but so much of the appeal of Call of Duty 2 is held in the scale of the conflict -- a small team of soldiers facing overwhelming odds --
and playing online with eight people and no bots really doesn't capture that. A typical Deathmatch seems to involves darting around an enormous city full of rubble, waiting endlessly to see a red dot appear on my HUD (which itself seems to be hit-or-miss), and then...pip-pip-dead after one shot. Lather, rinse, repeat. I admittedly didn't spend much time online, but I didn't find what little I played interesting enough to stick with it. Even with a limited number of players, lag is still an issue, and one person with a high ping can ruin the game for everyone. The Live interface is also on the anemic side, prohibiting private games with friends and making rematches a hassle. I really would've liked to have been able to play through the game's single-player campaign online cooperatively, but unfortunately, that's not an option.
Call of Duty 2 is an intense, thrilling game. I know it sounds like Internet-reviewer-hyperbole to say that I couldn't put my controller down, but it sincerely was an effort to stop playing. I didn't want to eat, sleep, watch TV, answer the phone...if it didn't involve traipsing around other continents and mowing down the German war machine, I wasn't interested. The downside is that I played through the entire game in two sittings over a day and a half, and gamers who aren't interested in playing online and don't typically replay games they've beaten might want to opt for a rental instead. I found the gameplay addictive enough that I'm sure I'll be playing through the single player campaigns again on a higher difficulty level, which is required for anyone determined to unlock all of the achievements (and Call of Duty 2's achievements really are deserving of the word). Gamers who like to do their first-person shooting online will probably be better served by Perfect Dark Zero, but Call of Duty 2 offers one of the most compelling single player experiences of any FPS I've played.
Graphics:
Call of Duty 2 has frequently been heralded as one of the most visually impressive games available at launch for the Xbox 360, pointed to as proof positive that the next-generation of gaming has arrived. I personally wouldn't go that far -- even playing in high-definition, it didn't have that instant "wow!" impact that Kameo: Elements of Power did -- but it's a great looking game by any standard.
The fact that there's so much happening at once shows off the power under the 360's hood: the stages are large and richly detailed, there are scores of soldiers fighting for their lives on-screen at any given time, the game is littered with environmental effects like rain and snow, and the way infantrymen fall when shot is eerily realistic. The advanced particle effects also deserve special note, from the way dust is kicked up during battle to the covering fog that billows from smoke grenades.
There are some minor concerns: a number of textures don't hold up to close scrutiny, and there are some hiccups with clipping, but neither of those have any impact on the gameplay. It's a welcome change to see load times kept to a bare minimum; Call of Duty 2 progresses from stage to stage considerably more quickly than the other 360 titles I've played, and there don't appear to have been any compromises at all in migrating the game from the PC to the 360.
Audio:
The game sounds even
better than it looks, making full use of a surround sound setup and immersing the player in the chaotic roar of battle. Gunshots, explosions, and ricocheting bullets can be heard in every direction, and gamers with a 5.1 rig may even have an advantage over players with plain-jane stereo since they can use audio cues to more accurately discern the location of their enemies. Call of Duty 2 features quite a bit of dialogue during the heat of battle, and it's often a great help as your brothers in arms shout out the locations of German soldiers or let you know that a grenade's been tossed your way. In keeping with Infinity Ward's mandate for realism, the weaponry sound effects have been recreated exceptionally well. The score by award-winning composer Graeme Revell is used sparingly but effectively; this sort of music has a more substantial impact when it's used to punctuate key moments than if the strings had been soaring for every moment of the game.
The gameplay is strong enough to stand on its own, but the immersive audio greatly complements it with its strong sense of atmosphere, and the greatest compliment I can think to pay Call of Duty 2's audio is that it doesn't sound like a video game. Close your eyes, and any part of it could pass for a Hollywood blockbuster.
Conclusion:
Call of Duty 2 is the most infectious video game I've played in the past couple of years, first-person shooter or otherwise. Although the single player campaign can easily be hammered out with a weekend rental, leaving more casual gamers better off hitting the video store instead of forking over sixty bucks, Call of Duty 2 is a heavily polished, painstakingly accurate WWII shooter and my pick for the best of the Xbox 360's launch titles. Very, very highly recommended.
However, I feel obligated to point out that there's a widely reported problem with saved games being lost or incorrectly overwritten, apparently resulting from switching profiles. Hopefully a patch is forthcoming. Also, the screenshots scattered around this review are just random pictures from the official Call of Duty site -- don't take them as anything more than window dressing.
Other WWII shooters reviewed at Video Game Talk include Call of Duty: Finest Hour and Medal of Honor: Frontline.
well-worn cliché to start off a review of a game like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, or Brothers in Arms by griping about the oversaturation of WWII-themed shooters. While it's true that there's no shortage of these sorts of games floating around, I really don't care how many times something's been done before. Quality trumps originality every time, and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2 isn't just some of the best that the first-person shooter genre has to offer; it may even be the best of the Xbox 360's launch titles.Gameplay:
Like the original Call of Duty, the sequel takes place from the perspectives of three different soldiers: one Russian, one Brit, and one Yank. Each of them fight alongside their countrymen in several different fronts -- the outgunned and undermanned Russians defend Stalingrad, the British battle Erwin Rommel's tanks in North Africa, and the American campaign begins with a harrowing reproduction of the Allied assault on Normandy and continues as the surrounding areas are secured.
Regardless of what mode is selected, Call of Duty 2 doesn't feel like a single player game. The characters you play are backed up by a slew of fellow soldiers, and these aren't the mindless cannon fodder prevalent in other first person shooters. The Allies' AI is remarkable, almost seeming as if there are a couple dozen people with wireless controllers hiding behind my couch. It's a very cooperative effort, not the "one man against the world" schtick of most shooters; the other infantrymen frequently saved my neck and provided invaluable help in completing missions, and their assistance is automatic and seamless, not prompted by a series of submenus and button presses.
By the same token, the enemy AI is brutal, unrelenting, and adaptive, especially on the higher difficulty settings. Most shooters place the
bad guys squarely in front of the path you're supposed to take, but the Germans in Call of Duty 2 have a tendency to swarm from all directions. You can't just focus on the soldiers in front of you because one's certain to come up from the rear and smash in your skull with the butt of a rifle, or a group may choose to flank you from the left. Patience and teamwork are required to get through the game; you might be able to get away with it in the lower difficulty levels thanks to the revised health system I'll touch on in a moment, but if you mindlessly run-and-gun on Hardened or Veteran mode, you'll be mowed down in a matter of seconds.The control scheme is typical for a first person shooter, and any gamer who's played an FPS from Halo on should be able to pick up a controller and instantly feel right at home. The notable differences are using the shoulder buttons to toss grenades -- the right one lobs the standard frag grenade, and the left throws a smoke grenade to provide cover when swarming the enemy. As before, the left trigger lets players peer through their weapon's sight for increased accuracy. There's no leaning against walls, but soldiers can crouch and crawl to keep out of harm's way or to find a more effective shooting position.
Missions unfold in a fairly linear fashion, and in the city-based levels, there's typically only one path to take to proceed to the next goal. However, I didn't feel as if I was being pushed along in a particular direction, and the numerous turns the battles take, the devious enemy AI, and the many different approaches to combat keep things from ever getting dull. There are
plenty of ways to take out the German forces -- run in guns blazing, move up to a higher position and snipe, toss a smoke grenade for cover and flank them, duck behind a shattered wall and poke your head out just long enough to get in a shot... Although much of the game has players sweeping through city streets and clearing out the enemy, there is some welcome variation in gameplay. In Africa, for instance, you man a tank and tear through the desert, demolishing Rommel's forces along the way. Other goals involve using heavy artillery to blast planes out of the sky and crawling up a silo to snipe mortar crews. The health system has been drastically overhauled for Call of Duty 2. Instead of having an on-screen indicator and picking up canteens or med packs to replenish health, the game uses visual cues. When a player is near-death, the edges of the screen take on a red tint and his breathing gets increasingly labored. If the soldier ducks out of the way and has a chance to recover, he arises as good as new. If he continues to take damage, the intensity of the red screen increases and the soldier eventually succumbs. Call of Duty 2 is extremely generous with checkpoints, though, so dying isn't the sort of hassle it is with a game like Perfect Dark Zero; when you die, you almost always start back exactly where you left off.
Call of Duty 2 offers a variety of multiplayer options: play split-screen with several of your friends, network together a few consoles locally, or, of course, play over Xbox Live. There are a variety of different game types, but so much of the appeal of Call of Duty 2 is held in the scale of the conflict -- a small team of soldiers facing overwhelming odds --
and playing online with eight people and no bots really doesn't capture that. A typical Deathmatch seems to involves darting around an enormous city full of rubble, waiting endlessly to see a red dot appear on my HUD (which itself seems to be hit-or-miss), and then...pip-pip-dead after one shot. Lather, rinse, repeat. I admittedly didn't spend much time online, but I didn't find what little I played interesting enough to stick with it. Even with a limited number of players, lag is still an issue, and one person with a high ping can ruin the game for everyone. The Live interface is also on the anemic side, prohibiting private games with friends and making rematches a hassle. I really would've liked to have been able to play through the game's single-player campaign online cooperatively, but unfortunately, that's not an option.Call of Duty 2 is an intense, thrilling game. I know it sounds like Internet-reviewer-hyperbole to say that I couldn't put my controller down, but it sincerely was an effort to stop playing. I didn't want to eat, sleep, watch TV, answer the phone...if it didn't involve traipsing around other continents and mowing down the German war machine, I wasn't interested. The downside is that I played through the entire game in two sittings over a day and a half, and gamers who aren't interested in playing online and don't typically replay games they've beaten might want to opt for a rental instead. I found the gameplay addictive enough that I'm sure I'll be playing through the single player campaigns again on a higher difficulty level, which is required for anyone determined to unlock all of the achievements (and Call of Duty 2's achievements really are deserving of the word). Gamers who like to do their first-person shooting online will probably be better served by Perfect Dark Zero, but Call of Duty 2 offers one of the most compelling single player experiences of any FPS I've played.
Graphics:
Call of Duty 2 has frequently been heralded as one of the most visually impressive games available at launch for the Xbox 360, pointed to as proof positive that the next-generation of gaming has arrived. I personally wouldn't go that far -- even playing in high-definition, it didn't have that instant "wow!" impact that Kameo: Elements of Power did -- but it's a great looking game by any standard.
The fact that there's so much happening at once shows off the power under the 360's hood: the stages are large and richly detailed, there are scores of soldiers fighting for their lives on-screen at any given time, the game is littered with environmental effects like rain and snow, and the way infantrymen fall when shot is eerily realistic. The advanced particle effects also deserve special note, from the way dust is kicked up during battle to the covering fog that billows from smoke grenades.
There are some minor concerns: a number of textures don't hold up to close scrutiny, and there are some hiccups with clipping, but neither of those have any impact on the gameplay. It's a welcome change to see load times kept to a bare minimum; Call of Duty 2 progresses from stage to stage considerably more quickly than the other 360 titles I've played, and there don't appear to have been any compromises at all in migrating the game from the PC to the 360.
Audio:
The game sounds even
better than it looks, making full use of a surround sound setup and immersing the player in the chaotic roar of battle. Gunshots, explosions, and ricocheting bullets can be heard in every direction, and gamers with a 5.1 rig may even have an advantage over players with plain-jane stereo since they can use audio cues to more accurately discern the location of their enemies. Call of Duty 2 features quite a bit of dialogue during the heat of battle, and it's often a great help as your brothers in arms shout out the locations of German soldiers or let you know that a grenade's been tossed your way. In keeping with Infinity Ward's mandate for realism, the weaponry sound effects have been recreated exceptionally well. The score by award-winning composer Graeme Revell is used sparingly but effectively; this sort of music has a more substantial impact when it's used to punctuate key moments than if the strings had been soaring for every moment of the game.The gameplay is strong enough to stand on its own, but the immersive audio greatly complements it with its strong sense of atmosphere, and the greatest compliment I can think to pay Call of Duty 2's audio is that it doesn't sound like a video game. Close your eyes, and any part of it could pass for a Hollywood blockbuster.
Conclusion:
Call of Duty 2 is the most infectious video game I've played in the past couple of years, first-person shooter or otherwise. Although the single player campaign can easily be hammered out with a weekend rental, leaving more casual gamers better off hitting the video store instead of forking over sixty bucks, Call of Duty 2 is a heavily polished, painstakingly accurate WWII shooter and my pick for the best of the Xbox 360's launch titles. Very, very highly recommended.
However, I feel obligated to point out that there's a widely reported problem with saved games being lost or incorrectly overwritten, apparently resulting from switching profiles. Hopefully a patch is forthcoming. Also, the screenshots scattered around this review are just random pictures from the official Call of Duty site -- don't take them as anything more than window dressing.
Other WWII shooters reviewed at Video Game Talk include Call of Duty: Finest Hour and Medal of Honor: Frontline.