The only thing keeping this game from a high 9 is its lackluster and buggy multiplayer with Xbox Live.
My first time through I put the difficulty on Hardened. I find that games are getting too easy and I wanted a challenge. I was blown away by the graphics. The first few levels of the Russian campaign really showed off the power of the xbox360. The textures of the bombed out buildings looked amazingly real. The snow falling from the sky sent a chill down my spine, and the character models looks pretty life like (your able to see the 5 o’clock shadow on some soldiers). And the smoke grenades! Let me just say wow! This game truly immersed me into the battlefield.
I beat the Hardened single player game and decided to unlock all of the achievements. This is when I really started to appreciate Microsoft’s inclusion of gamerscores and unlockable achievements, because I probably wouldn’t have gone through the game again. The A.I is amazing, and it should be since one core of the Xbox360’s power PC processor is dedicated to AI in Call of Duty 2. Enemies run for cover, throw your grenades back at you, charge at you, hide behind corners and wait for you to run in and much more. I must admit the AI made it difficult to beat the game on veteran, and it took me 4 days to do so (I requested time off from work, so when I say days, I mean all day for 4 days).
After beating the game, it was time to test my skills online. I am pretty decent in Call of duty for the PC, and not too bad at halo 2, so I figured I could give some people a challenge. Unfortunately it took me 4 boots before I got to join a game. When I did, I realized that you are only allowed to play with 8 people, and some of the games were so laggy that most of the people left mid-game. Now I am a big fan of Xbox Live, and I must say that there was nothing “next generation” about Call of Duty’s online multiplayer. 1 out of 4 games were too laggy to play and sometimes I’d get booted from the game lobby. From what I got to play, the game was fun online. A better game lobby, more gamers per match (16-32) would have been perfect. Although you had game types like deathmatch, team deathmatch, headquarters, search & destroy, and capture the flag, I was really hoping for some snipers only and rifles only matches (I love playing rifles only on COD1 for the PC).
When it comes down to it, this game is a great showcase of what the console can accomplish graphics wise. The single player campaign is amazing (and can be hard). I just wished that Infinity Ward and Activision gave us a reason to want to pay $10 more for the same game with a crapier multiplayer experience. They could have spent a little more time tweaking their net code and getting the bugs and game lobby working well. I am hoping for a patch to be released, but I doubt it will. This game is on the top of many people’s list when they pick up their new system, so Activision and Infinity Ward will get their money whether they fix these problems or not. I still believe the multiplayer is more fun then PD0 though, and it’s my best rated launch game for the Xbox360