Intense, immense and immersive, Call Of Duty 2 has lost none of its appeal nearly four years since release.
The campaign is one of the largest in a WWII game: you play a Russian campaign, a British campaign and an American campaign over vast levels of extreme battlefields. Skip the easier settings and go straight to Hardened (you'll be coming back for Veteran as much out of compulsion as you want to unlock those 360 achievements). The missions are vast: large areas where you'll be wanting to duck for cover at every opportunity, where every bullet that flies past is a threat and cover is constantly changing in terms of safety, with grenades seemingly bouncing in at you from all directions. You get a nice feeling for squad-based warfare in these missions, and start to feel protective of your comrades, though some sections might have you cursing their ineptitude because you feel as though you have to do all the work. Thankfully, these sections are few and far between: for the most part the squad mechanic works fluidly, and enemies will be disposed of without you being aware. Still, the only way to advance through most sections is to advance literally: move up on enemy positions in one nerve-wracking sprint to cover or stay pinned down and risk being taken out by bullets and grenades. The smoke grenade is a nice addition to your arsenal: pinned down by an MG, you fling a smoke grenade (frag grenades are sometimes too inaccurate to reach an MG nest and you can only carry four at a time), and dart through the smoke, strafing anything that moves in the fog with a burst of Thompson fire.
The firepower is not that impressive: mostly you'll be wanting to hang onto a rifle (usually a Garand or a Gewehr - sniper rifles are somewhat rare) and a machine gun, this being either a Thompson (great stopping power) or a German MP40 (holds ten more rounds in the clip), ammo for which is in endless supply. Having said that, there is a very weighty feel to the weapons and they are greatly satisfying to unload on the enemy. You get a real sense of power and accuracy with these weapons.
Overall, CoD2 is a great game, an instant classic, and one not for the faint of heart.