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Click Here For More Game ReviewsWhile there has been absolutely no shortage of quality World War II shooters on the PC in recent years, few can claim the success Call of Duty can. For its time, it was about as sound an FPS as you could ask for, but with changing times comes changing expectations, specifically, increasing expectations. Can Call of Duty 2 offer a worthy sequel to what many regarded as PC Game of the Year 2003? While the extremely healthy 2005 FPS genre may prevent as much GOTY worthy accolades for COD2, it is every bit as worthy as its original.
COD2 puts the gamer in the shoes of a solider from the Russian, British and US armies. All three of the storylines offer unique gameplay to some extent - for instance, the Russian campaign is played out in cold, snow ridden environments, dominated by close quarter combat. The British campaign mostly plays out in the wide open North African desert and introduces vehicle (i.e. Tank) control to the single player experience for the first time. The US campaign is played out in the D-Day era of World War II, combining open spaces and door to door fighting, including a beach landing. Added together, these three campaigns produce loads and loads of gameplay that varies nicely throughout the entire experience. While the fundamental aim remains - eliminate the Nazi forces - the changing environments do wonders for the game's play-ability.
Like its original, COD2 is structured in a way that every so often you will experience a "large scale battle", however these don't seem to be as central to the gameplay as they were to the original - in a sense, COD2 has a lot of action spread out over the entire game, and not as many sections with significantly more action. There will be times where larger than usual battles commence, which by the way are stunning to say the least, but with so much action on offer here at almost every second of the game bar the loading screens, sometimes you don't realise how big the battle you just fought was until it's over, as you scour the battlefield for ammo or new weapons, taking in the smoldering, battle hardened land your fallen enemies lay face down in.
The weaponry system in COD2 allows you to carry two weapons at any one time. This can be two rifles or machine guns, not necessarily one smaller and one larger weapon. The selection on hand is as you'd expect from the era, so there's nothing really new here. Aside from guns, you can also attack using grenades and various gun stands installed throughout the levels, or if you've run out of ammo and you can sneak up to a baddy quick enough, you can smack the base of your gun in his face. One other means of attack is the smoke grenade - which works very well in COD2. It isn't a weapon it itself, but once deployed, the smoke grenade lets you move about without threat, making for some life saving situations where you are heavily out gunned. One thing to note however is the game seems to "auto generate" your grenade and smoke grenade supply. As you approach a new section of enemies you are usually granted four grenades automatically which is a somewhat odd feature but, nonetheless, it sure allows the game to show of its explosion effects as you fire off your semi-unlimited supply of grenades every which way.
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