Call Of Duty 2 Game Review

Join the community - in the OCAU Forums! Date  10th November 2005 Author  Oli Editor  James "Agg" Rolfe Manufacturer  Activision / Infinity Ward Intro, Gameplay and Story Note: the images in this review have been left large (1280x1024, ~250KB) in order to highlight the graphic detail, which would be lost by resizing and compressing. Call of Duty 2 was released in October this year and follows on from the highly awarded FPS from 2003, Call of Duty. This review contains some spoilers and focuses primarily on the fantastic single player campaigns this game offers. This game is built on the same engine as Call of Duty but has had some noticeable tweaks to improve graphics, while retaining the great game play and storyline that made Call of Duty such a success. While much in this game has been done before (in terms of WW2 scenarios), there is also some entertaining new campaigns which make this game differ from the never-ending line of WW2 first person shooters. Story and Game play The game begins with a comparatively short "training" session at a frontline base which is interrupted by a German attack. This means all the new recruits are distracted from throwing potatoes (apparently there weren’t enough grenades) and forced into the line of fire for some real live training, which the Russian commanders seem to think works best. The Russian campaign is made up of scenarios set in the cold Russian winter, pushing the German invaders out of Russian cities in street battles and by infiltrating the German lines through pipelines above the city. During the Russian campaign in particular, the player hears near constant loudspeaker talk coming from the German propaganda machine. If you understand German, you’ll probably also get a laugh out of the silly insults and jokes the German soldiers make about communism and your Russian comrades. Like the first Call of Duty game, COD2 also uses a lot of ideas from popular movies and mini-series. The movie ‘Enemy at the Gates’ came to mind during one of the sniper missions, where tricky tactics are used to locate enemy snipers. Overall the Russian campaign is short. It is packed full of action and enjoyable even though most of the scenarios have been seen before in other WW2 shooters. The game continues with a British campaign, based in North Africa. Contrasting the winter which faced the Russians, the British campaign is in the dusty desert and includes tank battles. They are a welcome addition to the game, even if the engine isn’t really suited to driving tanks around (it feels like you’re driving a dodgem car). While clearing bunkers and trenches the player will come across petrol tanks. A few bullets will cause them to catch fire, but any more and it’ll blow up immediately. Best to stay out of the way when they explode. Like in the Russian campaign, listening to funny remarks about the "Jerries" coming from shorts and shirt wearing British troops is very enjoyable. The player battles it out on open desert and in Tunisian towns. Heavily scripted scenes including escape attempts in stolen German vehicles make the British campaign the most interesting of the game. It is the British campaign which seemingly puts the player’s hardware to the test, with huge battles in open areas with tanks, artillery, mounted machine gun, and lots of smoke and dust. Next Page: >> Select Page Page 1 - Page 2 -

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