Call of Duty 2 is pure fun, and can be played by anyone looking for a straightforward and fast-paced shooter.
Like its predecessor, Call of Duty 2 is a military shooter that takes place in World War 2. The single player mode embodies 3 separate campaigns. In the first and shortest campaign, you fight as a Russian soldier in Stalingrad, trying to protect 'the motherland' from the invading nazis. After completing this campaign, you suddenly find yourself in North Africa, where you have to take on the Afrika Korps as a soldier of the British army. The single player mode then moves on to the inevitable D-Day sequence, after which you have to fight your way through occupied France as an American. The game then has you switch back and forth between the British and American campaigns, liberating villages and towns as you keep getting closer to Nazi-Germany itself.
While the vast change of scenery that occurs a few times during the game keeps things relatively fresh, the core gameplay remains largely unchanged. Each campaign has a few peculiarities, but for the most time it will be just you and your teammates pumping bullet after bullet into a seemingly endless supply of German troops. Seeing as the intensity of these shootouts apparently got the main focus, do not expect a lot of excitement in terms of clever AI maneuvers and multiple ways to finish a level. The bombastic presentation of Call of Duty 2 was truly impressive for its time: endless hordes of screaming German troops clash with your own forces in a vast variety of settings while fighter planes, bombers, and tanks regularly enter the battlefield with a bang or two. Scripted sequences and events ensure that there's never a moment to sit down and rest for the soldiers you play as.
This spectacular, cinematic presentation comes at a price, though. The linearity of this game as compared to contemporary WW2 shooters is astonishing. Each and every level follows a set path, and I've found it near impossible to even set one foot outside of this path at any time during the game. Seeing as you will fight alongside your teammates during the entire game, you're going to need their support if you want to have any chance of overtaking the numerous German forces. It is thus fairly impossible to enter building B first if all of your mates are heading towards building A, seeing as taking on so many enemies when you're on your own often equals suicide. It's also fairly hard to try out different maneuvers and tactics on your enemies, seeing as nearly every possible alternative path is 'conveniently' blocked by barbed wire or a door that doesn't open until one of the AI players kicks it open. Even invisible walls quite literally block your creativity at times. The inability to fool around with your enemies a bit is probably there to prevent the player from exposing the extremely scripted nature of the game. Nearly every event is set to happen at a certain time, and cleverly maneuvering your way through the level in an alternative way might undermine this concept. This extreme linearity often causes the game to feel like an on-rail shooter, and it's a bit ironic that the actual on-rail shooting sequences that appear in this game (such as manning the machine gun turret of an armoured vehicle) barely feel different from the normal gameplay. Call of Duty 2 also takes you by the hand too much: you even see instructions for very basic movements ("press F to man machine gun") in the last mission of the game.
That doesn't mean the game isn't fun, though. Although you needn't expect remarkable AI, shooting hordes and hordes of nazis rarely gets old. On par with this arcade shooting concept, the gunplay of Call of Duty 2 is mostly satisfactory, yet awfully simple at times. Even though a fairly wide array of WW2 weapons is available to the player, only differences between the different weapon types (machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, etc.) are noticeable. Switching between an MP40 and a Thompson machine gun, however, will barely make a difference, except in terms of magazine size. It is clear that CoD2 never intended for too much realism, seeing as the accuracy of these old guns is astonishing, and you will have no trouble hitting enemies from great distances as long as you use your iron sight. To make things complete, the mounted machine guns you get to control in some levels will not overheat, they do not have to be reloaded, and their immense force has no effects on the accuracy. This allows you to hold down the mouse button until there are no more Germans left, no matter how long it takes.
It's even more hard to be immersed by the otherwise convincing world of Call of Duty 2 when you consider the regenerating health. Inbetween your mostly fragile teammates, who will bite the dust after taking just a few hits, you will often feel as a demigod, being able to take a lot of hits before you find shelter and your health regenerates in a matter of seconds. It's quite hard to actually feel like you're there on the battlefield when the constant threat of dying is nowhere near as present in this game as it would be in reality. It might seem like nitpicking, but one can wonder if WW2 was the ideal backdrop for this game given how the developers obviously intended for a not too hard fast-paced, zany arcade shooter. It doesn't actually make Call of Duty 2 any less enjoyable, but being immersed by its representation of WW2 does feel a lot harder when taking details like this into account.
Fortunately, the sound effects and voice acting are mostly great. Both fighting parties taunt eachother back and forth, and react to in-game events such as nearby grenades, approaching enemy vehicles, or the presence of anti-tank units. The voice acting itself is every bit as solid, although having the Russians speak English is a bit questionable, seeing as all other parties communicate in their respective native languages (British English, American English, and German). The constant sound of bombs striking, planes flying over, and grenades exploding makes the entire ordeal very convincing. Music only seems to be played during menus and at the end of missions. This is unfortunate, seeing as some epic music now and then could have further elevated the feeling of glory that breathes through the entire game. The visuals were great for their time, although it's difficult to go back and judge it now. Obviously they look quite dated by now, but when comparing them to contemporary efforts, developer Infinity Ward did a solid job in the graphics department, especially given the large amounts of detail on the various uniforms and weapon models of enemies and allies alike.
In conclusion, Call of Duty 2 is a very solid arcade shooter, but it's exactly that concept that seems to clash with the realistic WW2 setting at times. The amount of linearity can also be annoying at times, seeing as the player is so incapable of altering the gameplay that things are bound to get boring near the end. What this game lacks in terms of truly deep gameplay, it makes up for in its bombastic presentation, polish and technical qualities. Other than that, Call of Duty 2 is pure fun, and can be played by anyone looking for a straightforward and fast-paced game. In the end, though, this game feels a little too much like a 'snack' that can be eaten to bridge the gap between 2 'meals' (i.e. games with more depth), so you'll have to think twice before spending more than 10 dollar/euros on it.