This game breaks all the fundamentals of a Call of Duty game, but it's a decent game regardless.
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is Treyarch's first Call of Duty game (but not their last, they'd be tapped to do Call of Duty 3 the following year), and it's a mixed bag. Treyarch tends to be either hit (the Spider-Man games) or miss (Minority Report: Everybody Runs) in terms of their games. And Big Red One is a miss.
For those who have never played a Call of Duty game, it's a World War II first-person shooter. The series has always had three fundamentals: Epic battles of War, multiple perspectives of the war, and never being alone, unlike some games like Medal of Honor. Call of Duty always had you play as American soldiers, the British and Russia during the Soviet regime. Big Red One throws that out the window: You only play as the United States 1st Infantry Division, or the "Big Red One", signified by their patch. Well, two out of three ain't bad.
Treyarch also decided to try to make you get to know the soldiers you meet, Band of Brothers style. Problem is that these characters are nothing but a large amount of stereotypes: You got a guy from New York who's called "Brooklyn" for no reason whatsoever, you have a guy with an abrasive attitude, your slight chubby soldier with little field experience… you get the idea. One forum post I read accidentally called this game "Brothers in Arms: Big Red One", and this is what I thought initially: to rip off/pay homage to Gearbox Software's RTS/FPS hybrid Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 (and it's follow-up Earned in Blood) which came out the same year. Both games have the same group of people and wish for you to "get to know them" and "feel like a family". Well, that doesn't quite work here. Especially with the location and situation. If you're expecting to make friends while bullets are whizzing by your head, you have another thing coming.
But let's get past that and cover the game aspects. This game is an amalgamation of the first game, United Offensive (the expansion pack) and the game's true sequel on PC and Xbox 360. For one, you can only hold two weapons (like in Call of Duty 2), but you have a health bar system (like in Call of Duty) in lieu of the recharging health system used in the sequel. There are levels where you ride in tanks like in both games, and there's even a level where you're on a fighter plane like in Call of Duty: United Offensive. So basically it's a hodgepodge of those game elements.
However, that isn't necessarily good when you have A.I. that sucks. Literally teammates (and enemies!) shoot through walls. I wish I was kidding, but I've seen it happen several times. Also, the teammate A.I. goes on a strict path and doesn't learn to shoot and run at the same time, so there's times where teammates will run past Germans nonchalantly, or be propped in front of a wall, doing nothing, not even shooting. And since the enemy A.I. is slightly cheap, there are times where literally your buddies will be propped up in front of walls while an enemy above is taking potshots at you.
Worst, since they go on predetermined paths, they don't have alternate routes or situations if something's blocking the way. For instance, I got stuck on one of the tank missions where Army soldiers run nearby my tank. Smart A.I. would either stop in place or turn in another direction. Big Red One's A.I. buddies were literally running into the tank, basically going kamikaze on themselves. And I wasn't even moving, so they were just running into the tank and dying. That's not smart A.I.
For once, you actually fight somebody besides the Germans during the Nazi regime in this game: there are levels where you get the French and Italian armies weapons as well, which brings a nice, interesting arsenal, as it's kinda boring using Thompsons and Kar98Ks all the time.
Graphically this game looks average. In contrast with the PC/Xbox 360 Call of Duty 2, Big Red One seems like a game released when the first game came out in 2003. There is not much detail on the models, the maps or other items… it just looks average. Animation problems also plague the game. Weapons will either awkwardly disappear when holstered, or jump abruptly from reload sequence to iron sights; even one weapon's reload animation never completely finishes (although they're weapons you'll only see in multiplayer, so that's not major). Another main problem is occasional slow-down that shouldn't be there. Although I got to commend Treyarch: They got ragdoll physics in the game, something that the PC Call of Duty 2 (for some inexplicable reason) doesn't have.
For some reason sound is mixed very poorly. Sounds tend to be quieter/louder than they're supposed to, or sometimes they even duplicate upon themselves. Gunfire sounds are very weak or mixed; they lack the power that they do in the other games. However, the voice acting for the soldiers is very top-notch, which goes up to par with the other games. The game features a score by film composer Graeme Revell, who also scored the PC Call of Duty 2, and like that game, it has a riveting score with a handful of memorable tunes.
The way the game controls is decent; however it will take a while to get used to a control stick scheme on a FPS (unless you're used to that, unlike me, a PC gamer). All the buttons tend to register well, and it has all the standard mainstays of having separate buttons to prime grenades, lean, melee attack, and the "aim down the sight" feature that's become one of Call of Duty's trademarks. While it's generally smooth on the shooting side, once you get into a tank or anti-aircraft gun, the default sensitivity is a bit too tight, making it hard to move, and making one mission hard to complete. I compare this to a similar problem I had with Call of Duty: In one of the missions, I had to destroy Stuka airplanes with a Flak 88 gun. Problem was my health was low and I was playing on the Normal difficulty. I had to adjust to a lower difficulty to beat said level. I had a similar problem with Big Red One, in which my vehicles moved too slowly to destroy airplanes to prevent them destroying our vehicles and destroying our anti-aircraft. I had to crank the sensitivity to maximum to complete the level. I shouldn't have to do something like that.
Unlike other Call of Duty games, where they end in usually a high, heartwarming moment, with loads of relief, Big Red One ends with a bang and a whimper. The ending doesn't even seem like the ending to the game, it's as if Treyarch had 2-3 more levels, but were scrapped for time purposes. It's a disappointing ending.
There are bonus goodies, which you get upon completing levels, like concept art, weapon and vehicle info (which only helps if you're into that sort of thing), and profiles for each soldier you work with (which is redundant as they're all in the game's manual). You can also watch some videos of World War II footage courtesy of The Military Channel (which also appears in Call of Duty 2). That footage appears during interstitials of the levels, and while they're interesting, they're not really effective, and it would've been nice to keep the slideshow sequences that were in Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2.
The singleplayer campaign takes about a few hours, and once you complete them, it's time to go to multiplayer. Although I have to mention this: There is no offline split-screen multiplayer; it is online only. So unless you have that slim PS2 model or a PS2 Network adaptor attached to your old, bigger PS2, you're screwed. You gotta feel sorry for Gamecube owners: Multiplayer's completely exempt in their version.
Multiplayer on Big Red One is similar to United Offensive's multiplayer, which is not surprising, since Grey Matter worked on this game's multiplayer and United Offensive. There are four game modes, your standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes, plus Domination, where you hold control points to score, much like Unreal Tournament's mode of the same name. Like United Offensive, you can drive a tank and even obtain ranks in Multiplayer, but there's only one tank in each level, and three ranks in the game. The ranks basically give you additional ammo and grenades, and other weapons like calling in airstrikes or giving you a satchel charge (which works like a more deadly frag grenade with a longer fuse), even akimbo pistols. It's funny killing somebody with dual Walther P-38s. You rise up ranks upon getting a certain number of points, and it resets upon a map change. Ranks are nice and all, but it leads that problem where you have stronger players going against people with only two M1 Garand clips and one grenade. Also, no matter which mode you're playing, you're restricted to whatever weapon would be on "your side", the Axis or Allies. So you can't use a Thompson in one session and then use an MP40 in another. Thank goodness that the Italian/French weapons transfer over to the multiplayer as some levels let you play as somebody besides Germans vs. Americans.
Oh yeah, there's only voice communication online. No text chat, and if you don't have a headset, you're just gonna hear nothing but explosions and weapons fire while you work with mute teammates. It's… quite silly, to be honest.
All in all, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One should be more appropriately called "Big Red Herring", as it breaks all the fundamentals that made a Call of Duty game great. Even if you took off the Call of Duty branding, it would just be another generic World War II first-person shooter. If you want a good Call of Duty experience, get Call of Duty 2. Not this one, that other Call of Duty 2, on PC and Xbox 360. Big Red One is fun at times, but it isn't as spectacular as the other titles in the series.
Pros: Nice variety of weapons, ragdoll physics, good voice acting and music, good multiplayer
Cons: Cheating A.I., poor graphics, badly mixed sound, no offline multiplayer.