This game has its pros and cons. All around, it's decent.
You start off the game by taking the roll of a rookie soldier in the Russian Red Army. The action is fairly intense, with no boring "nothing" sequences.
The gameplay-
Like I said, the action is pretty continual. The Germans have extended animation sequences, to it is sometimes hard to tell whether the enemy is only injured, or actually dead. The animations, though sometimes annoying, are extremely realistic. All NPC reloading sequences are almost identical to your own.
A cool thing that I like is that when you shoot an enemy, your reticule flashes red. This doesn't mean a kill, but is helpful in low-light conditions. The lighting. In half the levels, it sucks. I had to purchase a used TV just to play the darker levels because my TV was darker for some reason. If your only TV has the same problem, you shouldn't even try to play this. Normally dim areas are now pitch, can't see my hand in front of my face BLACK. The variety of weapons, though smaller in comparison to the newer CoD games, is pretty decent.
The weapons themselves are pretty realistic, e.g., the SMG's are bad for distance shooting and the rifles are less effective at close range (I use them anyway, since I'm a history buff and a gun freak).
The sounds are less than impressive, as there are only about 4 different weapon sounds and explosions are more just plain annoying rather than dangerous or even scary. The voice acting is well done and fairly convincing.
The graphics are very surprising for an older game, though textures leave something to be desired. Figures have quite a few dimensions and weapons that you hold are very well done.
The online mode never lags. You can play with up to 16 people in one server. Lately, the number of players online has diminished, so by now you can still have a fun game, but the selection of different servers is usually limited.