Call of Duty 2 brings yet another amazing WWII experience. However, it's not all that different from its predecessor.
While the most famous battles of WWII were covered beautifully in Call of Duty, its sequel can definitely hold its own with many more unforgettable battles. Once again, you get to step into the shoes of American, British, and Russian soldiers as you follow their stories through the war. There are a total of 10 missions with a few sub-missions for each totaling a good 10 hours of Nazi-loving on the standard difficulty. The American missions are, as one might expect, the main event of the game and features yet another German machinegun-spraying-beach (or for you history buffs, Pointe du Hoc) on D-Day as well as the bloody Bunker Hill battle. The British battles take place in North Africa with the Desert Rats and offer the sand engulfing levels that make up for blandness with short lasting tank driving along the sandy dunes. Finally, the snowy streets of Russia show the darkest of the WWII atmospheres as you play as the Russians trying to protect the motherland. Each battlefront has a very unique strategy and atmosphere that helps add quite a bit of diversity, but can also make a player wish he/she were playing more on the front that taps into their inner war hero most. The British and Russian campaigns can be played simultaneously (while the American is saved for last) as the war progresses and the Nazis start to worry about their precious lives.
Each nation’s infantry has a solid variety of rifles and machineguns to choose from, each with their own obvious advantages (rifles for ranged shooting, machineguns for kamikaze). However, there are only a couple of new additions to the cast of weapons since Call of Duty, and for some reason, pistols have practically been eliminated from the game (I thought everyone loved a Luger!). The sniper rifles have been greatly improved by including a feature that allows you to hold your breath to steady your aim for a few seconds. While the game does very well with its historical accuracy on the detail of the guns and comfortable control of each weapon, there’s nothing noticeably new in Call of Duty 2 that any first-person shooter fan won’t already recognize.
On the other hand, Call of Duty 2 does try to once again implement the most popular and impressive elements of first-person shooter games, the key to its predecessor’s success. Infinity Ward noticed the lack of health bars in more recent cinematic first-person shooters and decided to give it a try. Removing hundreds of health packs from each level and relying on massive ambushes or piercing grenades to kill a player proved to be a far more efficient method in portraying the cinematic WWII experience. There’s nothing more annoying than multiple grenades randomly appearing and causing your inevitable fate. Thankfully, Call of Duty 2 does well to help fix this aspect of past first-person shooter woes with a Jedi power that allows you to sense grenades before they tear you apart through a small “grenade indicator.” Finally, to keep you pleased at all times, it usually only takes one dead Nazi to refill your grenade and ammo stock. Call of Duty 2 will keep you unrealistically satisfied with its rather giving system that allows bullet wounds to not hurt after running away and makes sure that ammo is always plentiful in case of emergiences. Though this may be a trend in a few first-person shooter games, Call of Duty 2 may have taken the trend a little too far. It may have lost a bit of its believability, but the experience delivered will not be easily forgotten.
The cinematic intensity presented in Call of Duty 2 reflects not only the beauty of its predecessor, but the finest that you can find in the war genre. The combination of a stellar orchestrated soundtrack by Sin City composer Graeme Revell, loads of highly believable and accurate voice acting, sound effects that are painfully intense and realistic, beautiful visuals and scripted environments that keep you on your toes at all times come together to form the current ultimate WWII experience (even while still devoid of dogfights and naval battles). When the game throws you into German territory, you know you are in German territory by the distinct German voices screaming orders and the well-designed maps that breathe the time period. Visually, Call of Duty 2 is a hardware pusher that looks and feels like WWII unlike any other game on both consoles and PC (yes, it is time to buy a new video card). Smoke grenades, vivid explosions and overhead dogfights all lend to the game’s cinematic beauty. Although the animations may not be quite realistic, the environments that surround the dozens of soldiers on the screen can at times be quite breathtaking.
While some may complain of its scripted style, Call of Duty 2 tries to steer away from that reputation by offering an average of 3 different routes to take during certain situations. The balance is an improvement, but it’s still always quite obvious that the gameplay is scripted. This is, however, not a quality that should always be frowned upon considering that scripted gameplay can still be quite captivating and entertaining. Just imagine yourself on Bunker Hill as a German artillery barrage comes down, shaking the earth and filling your surroundings in smoke as a hundred Germans come charging at you from all sides. Enthralling? Most definitely.
To enhance this fast-paced and explosive gameplay, Call of Duty 2 needed a believable AI that made each Nazi look, feel, and act like someone you would want to kill. To an extent, Call of Duty 2 does this nicely; every miniscule tactic implemented by the enemy AI, such as wounded enemies crawling for guns and enemies’ impressive use of finding and using cover, is enjoyable to behold and interact with. However, there are other aspects that stick out quite blatantly sometimes and can become an annoyance that is both unrealistic and disappointing. For example, you may be hiding in a building hundreds of yards away, only to have a tank target you instead of your teammates who are standing right in front of it. It is when the action slows down that Call of Duty 2 reveals its flaws and takes away from its overall potential.
Call of Duty had a more notable squad AI that was, while mainly scripted, far more exciting to be thrown into. Its sequel, however, is sometimes clearly scripted and makes you feel as though you are playing the “Rambo” hero rather than the “John Doe” and his small team of misfits in a big bad war. Enemy squads tend to stay where they have been spawned and wait for you to come to them. The AI feels as though its foundation is thousands of switches awaiting your loving touch to help lead the game. It may make you wonder, “Am I playing the game or helping it finish?” Nevertheless, the AI gets the job done in scaring the hell out of you as 50 Germans appear out of nowhere, each with a fiery passion to see you dead. That’s really the main focus of the game and the fast-paced action usually tends to hide these AI weaknesses.
The multiplayer component of Call of Duty proved to be a rewarding experience that many first-person shooter fans became hooked on. All of the original modes are still included (capture-the-flag, team deathmatch, deathmatch, and the Counterstrike-like search-and-destroy) along with a new mode named “headquarters” which reflects the overall theme of Call of Duty 2. In the new mode, two teams must try and capture a headquarters and then immediately defend it against the opposing team, the catch being that the defenders can no longer respawn. This represents Call of Duty 2’s main gameplay in that you are constantly conquering and then defending waves of German ambushes. Although fans may have expected more from the multiplayer component this time around, there’s no denying that it’s still an excellent package altogether.
While the game lacks any real story or characters to enjoy, it knows how to create a first-person shooter experience that makes you sweat, enraged, and highly satisfied all at the same time. While it may not bring anything new to the table in the first-person shooter genre, it knows how to fine tune each of the genre’s best elements with stylish cinematics. While fans of the original Call of Duty will forever be amazed by its somewhat revolutionary change to the WWII genre, its sequel offers yet another series of experiences that any fan of the genre (or anyone who has a passionate hatred towards Nazis) should enlist in immediately.