Call of Duty 2

Score 9.2/10

Call of duty 2 is the first call of duty for the Xbox360 developed by Infinity Ward and produced by Activision.

Difficulty: about normal but veteran increases difficulty. (Obviously)
Time spent: 50-85 hours
The bottom line: a great game but with a few bugs
Platform: Xbox360

Call of duty 2 allows you to play as Russian, American and British soldiers with three different campaigns but all with the same objective; to push the German forces back into the fatherland.

Firstly I will talk about the Russian campaign as this is where you start the campaign against the fascists in the Russian winter. The first mission is called “Red Army Training” and this is where you get to know the basic controls of the game like ADS (Aiming down the sight) and how to change your weapon and melee. You also get to learn how to throw a grenade except you don’t use a grenade in the training so instead you get potatoes and one of your comrades asks the commissar “why are we using potatoes?” and the commissar owns him by saying that grenades worth more than him. Oh and I would advise you to do what the commissar tells you to do or he kicks your ass and shoots you as a coward, traitor, etc. You don’t just do training in this mission because you get drawn into combat as soon as you finish the training and you get to use grenades instead of a potato but I wanted to throw potatoes off Germans but unfortunately you can’t.

Now the British campaign is in two continents, Africa and Europe, and the environment and weather are totally different to the Russian environment and weather, for example; there is a lot of sand in North Africa and a lot of greenery and destroyed villages in France instead of snow, snow and snow. This is a great change of scenery as you would get bored of the same scenery if it was used over and over again. I do like the fact that the British campaign is in two different types of locations i.e. a destroyed village in France or in the middle of the Libyan Desert pushing the Afrika Corp out of North Africa. The British campaign is also the only campaign where you can drive a tank in the game which is quite enjoyable but the tank missions do seem a bit brief as I finished the first tank mission (there is two of them) within 5 minutes, give or take a few minutes but aside from that it still a good couple of missions.

And last but not least, the American campaign. The American campaign starts in the European front and is set in the beaches of the D-day landings to the Crossing of the Rhine. In my opinion all of the missions are good and I have been repeatedly been playing the D-Day mission as it is a excellent mission but when I tried to play on Veteran I keep getting killed by grenades, an anti air gun, MG42’s and basically just about everything the German army has on them. Also in the campaign you get to storm up a heavily defended hill 400 and breach a few German bunkers while getting shot at by Germans who are quite miffed at the fact you’re trying to take their hill.

Moving away from the campaign I will get onto the gameplay and graphics. There are a few bugs in the game like when the enemy will think about beating the crap out of you when you’re a few inches away or when the enemy doesn’t realise that you’re right behind them literally touching them. There is also the woodenness of some of the CPU’s when they get shot, or get blown up or even move and the fact that you cannot throw any grenades back to their senders can get a bit annoying. The graphics are pretty good for the time this game was released and the details in the vehicles and weapons are quite nice and the gunfire is good as well as you can actually see the bullet coming out of your gun and the CPU’s guns as well. This means you can see the bullets zooming right past your head as a MG is making you stay the hell down and stay behind cover as you destroy tanks with explosives and Panzerschrecks while that tank is shooting at you.

To sum up, Call of Duty 2 is a great game to play with its 3 fronts in different locations, its immense D-Day mission and decent graphics, I would recommended you to get this game as it is a impressive game.

Good:
• Good graphics for time
• Great campaigns
• Nice guns
• Great range of scenery
• Superb gameplay
• Driving tanks is fun
• Destroying tanks is fun

Bad:
• A few bugs
• Annoying grenades that you can’t throw back
• Some of the missions are very short

Very good review - concise. I'm posting mine below.

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Score: 8/10

It almost feels like a remake of the first game, yet in truth, it's still an impressive sequel with plenty to offer!

Difficulty: Easy
Time Spent: 10 to 20 Hours
The Bottom Line: "Almost, but not quite"
Platform: PC

The long-running, FPS series called "Medal of Honor" used to be the king of the WWII shooter genre… but that was until the very first "Call of Duty" was released for the PC, in 2003. That game took MoH's place as colossus of all World War-themed action games, with nice graphics, an exciting singleplayer campaign that allowed you to play as different soldiers from the Allied forces and fight the Wehrmacht alongside your brothers-in-arms, as well as an addictive multiplayer mode and the 2004 "United Offensive" expansion to boot. In 2005, Call of Duty's sequel was released for the first time and still remains remembered as a great shooter in the hearts of many FPS fans. But did Call of Duty 2 really manage to surpass its fantastic predecessor quality? And if yes, how did the developers manage to achieve this difficult objective and what did they do in order to keep the experience feeling fresh and not recycled?

Well, not much at all, to be honest. But perhaps that's one of CoD2's many pros - it's the same, old CoD that many people at the time loved. Unsurprisingly, the singleplayer campaign is very similar to the one we've played in the first game. In the sequel, we still take on the roles of Soviet, British and American soldiers. This time, however, we defend Moscow, fight in Stalingrad, the African deserts, during D-Day, the taking of Hill 400 and in some other important battles. Unfortunately, unlike in Call of Duty, the Soviet missions are the shortest but still remain more atmospheric & believable, at times even overall better, than the others. The British missions actually put you in the shoes of two different soldiers, an infantryman and the member of a tank crew - both fight the Germans in Africa. Although the American missions are overall shorter than the British ones, but longer than the Soviet missions, they end with a grand finale.

However, let's take a step back and talk about the very first & most noticeable thing about Call of Duty 2. Something that has certainly changed quite a bit from the first game are the graphics. Weapon models look even better and more authentic than before. The game now supports better lightning, and its effects are also visible on the firearms and the environment. Character animations have been improved and more animations in general have been added. The texture work also deserves merit, but in some places you can still see very low-res textures. Overall, the graphics are great for a 2005 game and although the first CoD was good-looking for its time, this is an improvement anyway. However this makes me wonder, why didn't Infinity Ward leave the best for the end, because the Soviet missions are by far the most visually advanced and feature some awesome weather effects that are meant to resemble the harsh, Russian winters.

In the end, the graphics certainly don't disappoint and if it wasn't for some clipping issues, occasionally weird visual effects and sometimes some serious frame rate drops… they could even be considered great today and not just in 2005. Speaking of bugs and other problems; there really isn't a lot of technical errors in Call of Duty 2, apart from rifles clipping through walls (thankfully less common than in the first CoD) and some surprisingly large frame rate drops (even on good computers), there isn't much to whine about. Some installation problems can occur on newer PCs, which can be easily solved with a little research and a reasonable amount of brain power, but that's about it when it comes to technological inefficiency with this game.

The gameplay remains pretty much identical to Call of Duty, which is one of Call of Duty 2's both biggest problems and good points. Not much has changed. The music is still great (an epic soundtrack makes the battles feel epic), the gunplay is solid and the multiplayer still doesn't require much thought or skill, yet it's still some mindless shooting fun for action junkies, and most players who try it for that matter. What's worrying is that multiplayer is actually a step back from Call of Duty: ranks are gone, no vehicles can be controlled, the maps are less diverse and the sprint button introduced in United Offensive is gone… why?! This makes the whole multiplayer section of the game a whole lot worse than that of its predecessor. Of course, it's still fun, but not as fun as it was before and could've been here.

So it is much easier to list all the things that Call of Duty's sequel does like Call of Duty did, but when listing the differences, only one major and most important thing comes to mind: the disappearance of the health bar and the introduction of the regenerative health. Yes, that's right. No more health bar. Now you have to take cover to regenerate health during battles. Is this a welcome change? No. Some may like it, but I think it took away most of the challenge that CoD used to provide. It also started that stupid trend of "if I make a game about Wolverine shooting guns, I'll get rich!" trend among game developers. Sure, Infinity Ward didn't invent this system (even some games in 1992 used it), but they made it more popular and since Call of Duty 2, every CoD game has it.

Now that you've read about the game in general, let's cover the most prominent & important of its pros & cons.

The Good:
+ It's the same good, old Call of Duty experience with some tweaks
+ Get to play as different soldiers, from different armies on different fronts
+ Improved graphics, animations, textures, weather effects and weapon models
+ Soundtrack is still full of epic music that suits large-scale battles
+ Some gamers may like the introduction of regenerative health
+ Addictive & entertaining multiplayer modes with good shooting action
+ You still have a team of soldiers to back you up with good AI

The Bad:
- It's the same old Call of Duty experience… that not all may enjoy
- Singleplayer is very short, but with less "WOW!" moments than in CoD
- Clipping issues, possible installation problems and the occasional bug
- Serious frame rate drops are evidence of a flawed optimization
- No ranks, no vehicles in multiplayer; no sprint in multi and singleplayer
- Regenerative health system can make things too easy, at times
- Much like in the first game, the whole experience is still very linear

To sum up this whole game, and if you should play it or not, in short; I say this: Call of Duty 2 is an impressive shooter with exciting SP and fun MP. But it's not quite the sequel that many people hoped would surpass the first Call of Duty, and that's understandable. However, the absence of many features introduced in the expansion of the first game, is not. If you loved the first CoD then you will, without a doubt, enjoy its sequel. Yet if you didn't enjoy the first game, are looking for something a little different this time or just wanted a sequel that introduces a lot of new features… then you may be disappointed. You may even end up thinking that it is a slightly worse copy of CoD, wrapped in shiny new graphics - which it is not; it's a completely new game that's worthy of your money and a free weekend's time.

do you know when i said i was going to send a halo wars and cod2 reviews at the same time? well my sister thought it would be funny to delete my halo wars review so im going to have to do it again and kill my stupid little sister

SPARTAN301 wrote:do you know when i said i was going to send a halo wars and cod2 reviews at the same time? well my sister thought it would be funny to delete my halo wars review so im going to have to do it again and kill my stupid little sister

Oh man, that sucks. Well, we can wait - take your time with it to make it even better than it was before.