Good Single Player, but letdown on Multiplayer
Gameplay (Single player)
The single player campaign is one of the best I've seen in FPS games today, second only to that of Halo and Half Life in my opinion. You play as the Americans, Russians, and the British, each with there own unique set of weapons, except of course the Thompson which is shared by both the Americans and the British. You are taken through some of the major points in history, where you yourself take up a rifle agains the germans to show them who is boss. As the Russian you try and take the city of Stalingrad back, and then hold it against the Germans. This is true for many of the campaign missions, you take a point on the map, and then you defend agains the German counterattack. As the Americans you start at D-Day and begin your push towards Berlin. Only this time your not storming the beaches of Normandy, instead your scaling the cliffs of a much smaller beach called Omaha. And as the British you try and take back strategic points in Africa, and foil Rammels plans to take and control africa. Each set of missions seems very realistic, and you feel as if you are takeing part in the historical events that played out durring World War 2.
(Multyplayer)
The guns didn't seem to act all that differently, the only diffrence seemed to be that it was either a rifle, assualt rifle, or a machine gun. That holds true for all the allies that you play as, and this takes away from the originality of each weapon. For instance the German MP 44 fires exactly the same way as the Browning Assault Rifle or the BAR. These guns should be completely different, but there exactly the same except for looks of course. The main weapon of choice from everybody that I played against was the Sniper Rifle, and it absolutely made the game no fun to enjoy. It takes the strategy out of the game, and the maps are way to small to be going 4 on 4 using just sniper rifles, and it makes for a very boreing game.
Graphics
The graphics could have definitely been improved on in this game. I have seen much better come out of the XBOX-360 and this game should be no exception. The faces on characters look all to familiar, and seem unchanging. Another costume or two for the German soldiers would have been nice to see, instead of just the usual white outfits and the black outfits. Somehow I can't believe they wore winter wear in Africa. The explosions from tanks and grenades could have been much improved on. They look really choppy compared to some that I have seen on other games.
Sound
The only reason that I give the sound a low score is because it just appears that the makers became lazy. They used some of the same sounds for some of the guns. For instance the MP 44 sounds exactly like the BAR, and the German mounted machine gun sounds just like the Americans. All these are very different guns that sound very different. The soldiers also did not have very differents sets of speach. Instead you hear the same phrases repeated over and over.
End Note
I had high expectations for this game, as my friend is usually a really reliable source for such games. Its not a bad game, it just dosn't match up to my high standards for an fps. This game as some serious potential within it to be one of the great fps's of the day, but instead it falls way short. I was really hopeing that this game would be better that what I found it to be. Sadly what could of been great, isn't. The developers probably made great improvements on number 3, which I have yet to play, but when I do, I hope it has a more realistic feel to it, as Call of Duty 2 is a little arcadey for my taste, and is more of a cheap rip off of Counter-Strike when it comes to online play.