Worthwhile Reviews: Call of Duty 2 | X360 | ~$13.33 | Used

Everybody is sick of World War II FPS's! Except me, that is, because this is the first one I've played. I just never got around to trying all the others that everybody else got sick of. I'm not a WWII buff or anything, but obviously it was a world-changing time, and has much to think about.

That's actually what I think is the greatest strength of the game--immersing the player in a situation we were all too young to have experienced, but that was a central part of life for an entire generation. Confusion, danger, and chaos crash down on you like tidal waves at times, making the experience pretty involving. Imagine how bad it was in the real situation, where getting shot five or six times was more likely to make you a statistic than to just get your attention. Of course playing realistically would suck, since at any time you might get sniped or ambushed, or a lucky shot could find you and the game would be over.

The single-player campaign of COD2 (I didn't test multiplayer since I'm very late to the title) puts you in the boots of soldiers on various fronts. You'll fight block-by-block through the sniper-riddled streets of Stalingrad, push Rommel's forces back in North Africa, and storm German fortifications in France. This hopping around gives a sense of how wide the conflict spread in WWII, but also keeps you from ever feeling entirely comfortable in your character. Half the time my superiors were shouting orders at me by name I wasn't paying attention because I thought they were talking to someone else.

Even when I was paying attention, though, I have to admit to some confusion regarding what exactly I was supposed to be doing. That may due to the humidity in my area soaring recently and my house's lack of central air conditioning, though, which has led to some trouble... whatsit... concentrating. Regardless, I felt unclear sometimes. Most of the time, I could resolve that by just heading towards the biggest group of allies on the radar, but sometimes I found myself repeatedly failing a mission while I ran around blindly and wondering what I was supposed to do.

The weapons are all era-appropriate, which for me meant not much fun. The limited ammo capacity and accuracy were factors that the soldiers had to deal with back then, and they're recreated here. Few weapons have any form of scope, just iron sights that you can look down and try to line up. Coming directly from Perfect Dark Zero where many weapons have a scope function made for a tough transition to COD2. The most interesting addition to your arsenal is the smoke grenade, which does no damage but obscures the sights of snipers, machine-gun nests and other hazards--and your own sights, if you're not careful.

The sense of chaos is very well-done in COD2, whether its crouching in a trench, trying to take out the Gerries still holed up in it while shells hit the ground nearby or running through the smoke towards a machine-gun nest, danger and confusion are all around you. Speaking of crouching, you'll do a lot of that--one of the main mechanics of the game is your stance. You move fastest standing, but you won't move very far if you let yourself get shot, so you'll often find yourself crouching behind low walls or lying prone and belly-crawling to the top of a rise. There's always more German troops in each wave or emplacement than you thought there could be, but never quite too many, keeping tension just under the breaking point.

Was it worth it? Yes, although for me only barely. The game is obviously well-designed and polished, but it's not really my thing. I got $14 of enjoyment out of it, but it was more the wide-eyed, "holy crap!" enjoyment of trying to survive than what I'd call fun. I very much doubt that I'll ever play it again now that I've finished it, but I'm glad I played it once. I could have gotten just as much out of it with a rental, but its cheap enough that I paid less than $1/hour of entertainment, which seems like a decent deal to me.