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				Graphics: 9.0 Gameplay: 9.0 Sound: 9.5 Control: 8.5 Replay Value: 9.0 Live play: 1.0 Rating: 9.0 Publisher:  Activision Developer:  Infinity Ward Number Of Players:  1-8 Cheats Screenshots
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  There are few owners and wannabe owners of the Xbox 360 who haven’t at least gotten a small taste of Call of Duty 2, the WWII shooter that was among the 360’s small collection of launch titles, on an in-store kiosk. That sample barely scratches the surface of this sophisticated, realistic and well-crafted game.

  Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360 (there is also a PC version) continues Infinity Ward’s CoD series, which started in 2004 with Call of Duty: Finest Hour, a game that received lukewarm reviews when it was released on the Xbox. The series truly has come a long way.

  Call of Duty 2 strives for realism. The opening titles feature somber music and art, bringing to mind an old war movie. Each mission loads with a splash screen that features your character’s diary, giving you some insight into the task ahead. Newsreel footage adds to the effect and provides a quick history lesson. The orchestral score that plays behind missions adds to the game’s depth.

  The game doesn’t glorify war; rather, it aims to provide a glimpse of its horrors. Quotes from historical figures appear after the player dies and before the game reloads, and they are an evenhanded collection of ruminations on the nature of war.

  The Single-player campaign

  Unlike most campaign-based military shooters, call of Duty 2 gives the player an opportunity to play not only as a U.S. soldier but as a soldier in the armies of WWII allies Russia and England. That means the player can experience a variety of vintage weapons, uniforms and weather conditions, keeping the game fresh. Completing Russian missions unlocks British ones, and completing British missions unlocks American ones.

  The player in campaign mode starts as a Russian soldier fighting the Nazis through 1941-1943. Each mission has a number of objectives marked by a gold star on the player’s compass. The game is fairly linear but allows for some deviation. For example, a player tasked with helping his fellow soldiers take a train depot can approach the depot from any number of angles, some more dangerous than others.

  An early Russian mission, and one of the most harrowing, has you crawling through a rusty oil pipeline mounted high above the ground. There are large holes in the pipe that give you a view of – and a shot at – the German soldiers below. The problem for you is that not only can they shoot you through the large rusted-out holes, they can also shoot you through the pipe itself. On the Veteran (“You will not survive”) setting, my AI colleagues were almost immediately killed just a few yards ahead of me by Nazi rifle fire that penetrated the pipe and left nifty shafts of sunlight coming through the bulletholes. The gunfire through the pipes is a hazard that’s difficult to anticipate; you don’t know where it’s coming from or when it will hit.

  Through each battle, your AI comrades shout encouragement (“Kill the fascists!”) and orders and will guide you through each mission. The AI players move forward when the enemy soldiers have been pushed back and take cover when they’re pinned down. The human player ignores the AI soldiers and what they’re doing at his or her own peril.

  Your AI opponents are also very canny and appear able to correct their aim. A tip: if a bullet hits right in front of you (the snow or earth will fly up realistically), take cover, because your nemesis will not miss a second time. If you are lucky enough to kill an enemy soldier who is manning an emplaced machine gun, another soldier will quickly take his place, but enemy soldiers don’t appear to spawn indiscriminately. There is a finite and reasonable number of enemy soldiers to deal with in each objective.

  If you are hit, your vision will blur and turn red, and a red arrow will tell you the general direction from which the bullet came, helping you to avoid getting hit again. You can recover from your wounds by taking cover and avoiding more hits. If you take too much damage in a short time, you will die, but the game reloads quickly from your last checkpoint. Checkpoints are reasonably frequent, keeping frustration to a minimum.

  Players move realistically. There’s no insane jumping like in Halo 2, but neither are you hamstrung by minor obstacles as in the Ghost Recon games. Weapons also are realistic and difficult to use from a distance. There’s no whiz-bang gadgetry, like high-tech scopes, to get you through a mission. Mostly you cope with old-fashioned iron sights and do the best you can until you can get close enough so that precise aim is less of an issue.

  The single-player campaign is rich in scripted events that are not traditional cutscenes. In fact, there are no cutscenes in which you are simply an observer; even while your fellow British soldiers are following a script that has them attempting to blow open a bunker, you are free to move around elsewhere. If you do, though, you’ll miss a bit of grumbling from a Scottish private about stopping for some “bloody maps.” In fact, the voice acting throughout the game is excellent and adds to the almost cinematic quality of the game.

  Multiplayer

  Theoretically, multiplayer in Call of Duty 2 offers a wealth of game types and both ranked and unranked games. Players can choose Deathmatch (kill everyone), Team Deathmatch (kill everyone on the other team), Capture the Flag, Headquarters (set up and defend a radio base) and Search and Destroy (destroy Axis objectives with explosives).

  Unfortunately, I can’t describe any of these game types in detail, because multiplayer in Call of Duty 2 apparently was nothing more than an afterthought. Few serious Xbox Live players will tolerate a game that lacks a lobby system, and Call of Duty 2’s neglect in this area has created a lot of grumbling. It’s not that you can’t play with your friends; rather, it’s that getting into a room with them requires the same amount of luck and skill as finishing the single-player game on the Veteran setting. One evening I tried joining one of my clanmates in a game by joining him in voice chat until he gave me the word that he was in a server. If I didn’t join him quickly enough, though, the room would fill up quickly with strangers, leaving me in the cold.

  In fact, the Live component of COD2 is so iffy that you’re lucky even to get into a random game. I tried recently to play online using both the “quick match” and “custom match” options and got the dreaded “Unable to join game session” message repeatedly until I simply gave up. The one online game I did get into was so laggy it was unplayable. Apparently the game is designed so that the first player in a room becomes the host, and if he or she lacks the upload bandwidth to support the game, everyone lags. A true lobby system would allow someone with sufficient bandwidth to start a room and create a smooth gaming experience for everyone. Unfortunately, that is not to be in Call of Duty 2; Activision completely dropped the ball on the multiplayer experience. (Activision recently released a patch that fans hoped would address the Live problems, but it only fixed a single-player game-save glitch.)

  Controls

  Controls are fairly straightforward but may take some getting used to for those accustomed to other military shooters. The right trigger, of course, fires the primary weapon. However, where many shooters would employ the left trigger for a secondary weapon such as a grenade, here the left trigger provides zoom (such as it is, with the iron sights that don’t offer much in the way of accuracy). The right shoulder button tosses frag grenades, and the left one tosses smoke grenades. (My experience with smoke grenades is that they caused me more trouble than they caused the enemy, but the smoke effect in the game is amazingly realistic.)

  The left thumbstick moves your character, and the right thumbstick moves the camera. Clicking on the left thumbstick brings up binoculars, not that you ever have much time to use them.

  Graphics

  For this review, the game was played on a 30” Sony widescreen HDTV. The graphics are crisp and really pop out in a way we didn’t see on classic Xbox. In addition to the smoke effects, flames licking the fuel barrels you’ve just destroyed look absolutely real. You don’t have much time to enjoy the scenery, but textures are reasonably realistic, even if some props and characters look a little cartoony. The framerate of the game never stumbles.

  Sound

  My Xbox 360 is connected to a Yamaha 5.1 surround system. Surround is implemented well in this game, providing an immersive battlefield experience. As in any good shooter that supports surround sound, audio cues can save your life, letting you know that perhaps you didn’t clear that trench as well as you thought you did or that the enemy managed to flank you. Hearing your fellow soldiers scream from all directions certainly gives one a sense of the chaos of war, or at least the chaos of a good war simulation.

  Nitpicks

  Aside from the train wreck that is Call of Duty 2’s Live implementation, there is little about which to complain. The game would be even more realistic if your character could not heal after being shot. On the other hand, the game is otherwise so challenging that taking away that ability could make the game too frustrating.

  The grenade warning indicator that flashes on the screen likewise hurts the realism of the game somewhat.

  Often, in the heat of battle, it is difficult to tell your fellow soldiers from the enemy AI. But hey, they probably had that problem in WWII as well. Pausing for a split second before pumping lead into a hard-to-see soldier allows time for the soldier’s name and job to flash onto the screen if he’s on your side. No name means blast away.

  Bottom Line

  Call of Duty 2 is a game you can respect even if the gametype and genre are not your cup of tea. The artistry that went into creating the game is obvious and gives other “next-gen” games something to shoot for.

2/20/2006  Tracey 'Jerri Blank' McCartney