Sometimes I just have to shake my head and ask myself the age old question....
Just how many more World War 2 games could possibly be made? Since I first played the classic Castle Wolfenstein on my C64 more than twenty years ago I realized that there are few things in life as much fun as shooting Nazis. I don't know what it is, perhaps just that World War 2 is such a great setting for movies and video games. Good vs. evil. Human struggle on an epic scale. Heros and villains. Victory and defeat. We've been playing games based on the war far longer than the actual conflict has lasted. Many of the World War 2 games that come out are complete crap, but a number of them just do it right. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a good example.... Well, it was more of an alternative reality sort of WW2 game, but it was good. Medal of Honor and the first Call of Duty are better samples of a realistic WW2 shooter done right. Both immersed you in the greatest battle that mankind has ever known and did a fine job of it. Call of Duty 2 follows right in the footsteps of the original game in trying to give the player a gritty, somewhat true to life experience of the war. (while keeping it fun of course) The Call of Duty series does things a little differently in that the player plays as a soldier from three different allied military forces (American, British and Russian) during the course of the battle, rather than always being an american as is the case in most of these games. It's a refreshing change. Kingpin described the Call of Duty games as basically taking the coolest scenes from every WW2 movie you've ever seen and putting them all together in a game. And that's essentially what COD2 does as well. And that's a very good thing. In a very nice touch, there are photos and sometimes video briefings with World War 2 footage during the missions that really help to immerse you into the game. Being in love with DVDs and totally hating multiple cd installs, we purchased the collectors edition of the game, which also gave us a second DVD with a "making of" documentary, a documentary and retelling of the storming of Du Hoc, a few mission walkthroughs and some concept artwork. After watching the Len Lomell (the veteran they interviewed) retell the story of the assault on Pointe Du Hoc, it was really interesting to then play the mission.

Premise

Uh. Unless you've never been to school you've got a pretty good idea of what World War 2 was about. In the late 1930s the Germans decided to bring the wonder of tight leather pants and Oktoberfest to the rest of the world, whether they wanted to participate or not. The rest of the world declined and after many years of war and millions killed managed to defeat the Nazis and in the bargain save the world. Call of Duty 2 puts you right smack dab in the middle of some of the toughest battles the world has ever seen in first person. Kill nazis and break their stuff. :)

Gameplay

The basic gameplay for Call of Duty 2 will be familiar to anyone who's played a shooter. The controls are a little more complicated than in many such games, and are more akin to the Rainbow 6 series of games in that you can stand, crouch, lie down and lean out around obstacles. As you work through the game you'll receive objectives. Missions have a wide range of objectives will such as destroying a tank, or an anti-air emplacement, retrieve documents, or simply kill all the enemies in the area. Your current objective is marked on your minimap so it's generally just a matter of fighting your way to the way point to win. You'll sometimes have multiple objectives (ex. destroy five bunkers) and in these missions you can pick and choose what order to complete your goals in. Quite often you'll be finding yourself defending an objective with your squadmates while wave after wave of enemy infantry and vehicles assault. It's amazing how frantic and realistic some of these fights can get, and you get quite emotionally involved and worked up. I knew the dev team did their work right when I found myself screaming "DIE YOU JERRY SON OF A BITCH!!!" while running at a line of enemy infantry guns blazing. On many of the maps there's back streets and paths that you can take to get a better angle on the fight or to get in behind the enemy and take them from behind. Even on the low difficulty settings you feel like you've really accomplished something by the end of the level.

Rather than being a lone gunman you'll be working with a squad of AI teammates that actually show some intelligence and work well together, talking amongst themselves, calling out targets and taking cover where they can. It's important to watch your teammates as they'll often shoot at enemies you can't see yet or at least die in a manner which tells you where the enemies are. It's also important to be careful with the friendly fire, as a kill on one of your teamies will result in you failing the mission and getting put back to your last auto-save point. Luckily your teammates are marked on your minimap, and if you have your cross hair over one and try to fire it often won't.

Something else that's going to help you stay alive is the grenade indicator. When this is showing one, or God forbid more, grenades it's time to get behind something solid or prepare to die.

You're going to notice on screenshots that there's no health indicator on the Heads Up Display. That's right, no health indicator anywhere. For COD2 Infinity Ward did something different. As you get injured you'll start to hear your breathing get heavier and your screen will start to red out. Get hit a time or two more when this happens and you're going to be pushing up daisies. Get yourself to cover for a few seconds and you'll recover fully. When I first heard about this, I wasn't sure how well it was going to work out, but it's actually very good. It's nice to not have to worry about constantly picking up health and armor or trying to find a medic to heal you. It certainly doesn't make you invulnerable however, as once you start flashing red you'd better be able to get to cover quickly and stay safe until your screen returns to normal. It works well in multiplayer as well, which was another concern I had. Just keep on people and they die. They get away and a few seconds later they're a full healed threat again. Land a few good solid hits on someone, or a headshot and they're always dead. Disturbingly you'll sometimes just wound an enemy and he'll be crawling away slowly, or laying there shooting at you with a pistol.

AI

One of my big complaints about shooter has always been the Artificial Intelligence. Or, more realistically, the artificial stupidity. As mentioned above the AI characters in COD2 are actually pretty good. They'll move with you and each other, cover your advances and even talk it up amongst themselves using their names, which is a great touch and adds to the realism. It's almost a little too realistic when you're hiding behind a box while an MG42 nest sprays fire at your squad while your teammates are screaming for someone to take out the machine gunner, as well as saying things like "MacGregor! Cover me while I load!". The enemy AI is well done too, taking cover where they can, leaning out to shoot and most annoyingly throwing grenades at you and making your pretty 'nade indicator flash. They'll move and flank as well sometimes. The germans also yell back and forth, adding to the atmosphere. Interestingly, I was up on a roof top picking off some of the bastards while my squad was down below firefighting with them and one of the germans yelled out there was a sniper and I came under fire almost immediately. Interesting. It's nice to fight something other than mindless "run at the enemy" AIs. I'm always amused when I take the enemy under fire and they're hiding behind a dead cow. One thing I did notice a little odd is that enemies will occasionally leave their heads exposed while hiding behind something. It's rather entertaining to see a German infantryman leading around a box, then going back behind it... er... but he's standing up.... *pop* Darwin was right! If there's a machine gun nest anywhere near the enemies you're engaging keep an eye on it. If there's ten enemies and they're still alive, they'll generally appear one after another on the MG and you can pick them off. Sometimes you can sneak around behind them and use their machine guns on them, which is always good for a laugh.

Graphics/Environments

El Alamein, Stalingrad, Africa and the cliffs of Du Hoc, you'll be visiting them all. The majority of the maps you'll be fighting through are cities and villages, but there's also vineyards, open fields, trenches and desert areas. The environments are quite realistic and contain an amazing amount of detail. Smoke billows into the air from fires, enemy and friendlies appear out of the smoke generated by smoke grenades, snow drifts gently across the battlefields in Stalingrad. I was standing in a destroyed building shooting out a hole blown in the wall and I noticed the detail on the bricks surrounding the hole. I then looked around the room and realized I was in what was left of a child's bedroom. There was even a little abandoned teddy bear on the floor. You really get a feeling that you're moving through what's left of other people's lives as you advance through the game. I'm not sure how much time it took to lay the maps out but it must have been quite a while considering the level of detail and care that's evidenced in each one. Basically the game is just plain gorgeous. When you're standing close to a character you can see the pores in their faces. The character models aren't quite as detailed as those in Half Life 2, but I'd say they're damned close. And the environments are as good looking or better than any I've ever seen before.


Sound and Music

The sounds effects in this game are just awesome. Explosions, weapons fire, grenades going off, allies and enemies shouting and talking back and forth, there's even Nazi propaganda being broadcast in the Stalingrad missions. The music is good, and generally starts up when something interesting is about to happen or you're just watching the end of a mission. One of the coolest use of music is in the Stalingrad missions when the Germans and Russians are charging at each other and you've got the strident battle music going on. Just sends a chill down your spine.

Now THAT's what I call a gun

I love realistic weapons and I've got to say that you can't get much more realistic than the Call of Duty 2 guns. The models, audio and animations for the weapons are done to perfection. As you move through the game you'll be using gear from both the faction you're playing at the moment and you can loot enemy weapons as you take the bastards out. I've always liked in the COD games that you can carry two guns of any sort. Pistol, rifle. Pistol, submachine gun. And my favorite combination, submachine gun, rifle. There's nothing like having a rifle for long range work and whipping out the subgun for close up action. There's dozens of different weapons in the game, from bolt action Lee Enfield to Panzershrek rockets and 1911 pistols. They're all lots of fun to use, but I've got to admit that the German SG44 assault rifle just kicks so much ass it's my weapon of choice in both single and multiplayer.


Vehicles

You'll often find yourself riding in the back of a vehicle flying across the countryside, sometimes as a passenger, sometimes as a gunner. In a few of the african campaigns you'll be commanding a British Crusader tank in a battle with enemy armor. The vehicles aren't as good as those in say Battlefield, but they're still fun. I was rather put out that you only get tanks in two short missions and that they don't they appear in the multiplayer. Perhaps we'll see a mod for to allow it.


Multiplayer

The multiplayer is lots of fun, with a super easy to use server browser. Most of the maps are medium sized and in cities or towns. A few of them are in trenches and bush row fields so there's some nice variety. I found the city maps to be the most exciting, with possible ambush points and hidey holes everywhere.

There's a few of your standard gaming modes, deathmatch, team deathmatch, ctf and two that are a little more interesting (and the only ones I bother playing). In Headquarters mode you have to take your team's radio to a point marked on the map and on your HUD and set up a headquarters, which takes a few seconds without any enemy players around. As long as your HQ is up your team will gain points. The enemy team then tries to kill anyone around your radio and hold it for a few seconds to destroy the headquarters and you stop gaining points. When I first heard about this game mode it didn't sound like a big deal, just a lot of base camping, but interestingly, when your team's headquarters is set up, your team doesn't get any reinforcements. The attacking team does. Eventually you're going to loose the HQ as your team gets whittled down. It makes for some frantic fun battles when you see that "Loosing Headquarters" timers and you're the final defender. It's quite addictive and really gets the adrenaline moving. In Search and Destroy you must get to your oponents marked targets and plant a bomb, then hold the enemy off untill the bomb detonates to win. For the enemy to win they have to disarm your bomb, or kill everyone on your team.

Just like the single player your radar map has all of your teammates marked on it, which I love. Friendlies also have a team marker over their heads so it's easy to tell who you're shooting at and friendly fire is hopefully kept at a minimum.


Bugs/Bad Stuff

Occasionally I'd get myself way ahead of my AI teammates and would find myself unable to open a door or find the item I needed to complete the level. When I stuck with them I didn't have this problem. Keep an eye on your teammates, they're handy sometimes.

Conclusion

Infinity Ward has again made a very, very good World War 2 game that's a ton of fun to play. If you want something deep and story based though you're out of luck and better pick up a copy of Half Life 2 or Undying. I'm hoping for COD3 (and chances are pretty good we'll be seeing one in a few years) they'll make use of more scripted sequences and add more new content and ideas to the game. I'm also hoping I'll be able to use tanks in the single player one of these days, and some anti-cheat software will be introduced. Except for a few small things this game would have gotten a 10 out of 10.

As a side note, I really liked that in the credits the developers dedicate the game to those who fought in World War 2.