Call of Duty 2 - Still Holds Up After 10 Years.

By Sam Coles:

When you hear the title Call of Duty these days you'll get a sigh of fatigue from gamers or people saying that it is crap when it's not when they're functional games, but what do I know. Back in 2005 Infinity Ward released a fantastic launch title for the Xbox 360 simply named Call of Duty 2 and it wasn't modern or futuristic, but it retold a grounded biography of the missions that actually happened during World War II. It was a tense campaign which didn't resort to theatrics to keep the players attention, but instead put you into tense and dangerous situations that the soldiers of the time would have experienced.

So how the campaign is set is that you step into the shoes of soldiers from 3 different countries and different frontlines such as the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion of Stalingrad, the British during the campaign of North Africa and finally the Americans in France Normandy. Each campaign is well paced with really tense moments such as the American campaign when you’re scaling the wall in Normandy as you have Germans trying to gun you down from the top of the cliff.

So if you’ve played any of the Call of Duty games you’ll be very familiar with the controls in this game although you can’t sprint in this game, but you don’t really need it in this game as your character has a decent pace. You can aim down sights which will help shoot precisely with a variety of interesting weapons of the period. Such as the M1 Garand for the Americans, the Lee Enfield for the Brits and the Papa Sha for the Soviets which was nicked named the burp gun because of its lead output.

Visually the game still holds up with its different locales, which keeps the game fresh, it also helps that it has multi-layered objectives so you’ll get several objectives such as destroy mortar crew A, B and C instead of doing objective after objective. You’ll fighting your way through the snowy tundra streets of a ruined Stalingrad, to the burning sands of North Africa and the rural country side of France. The detail in each area looks great for game that came out 10 years ago and it still holds for what it was trying to do back then.

The negatives that really have with this game is that it resorts to the old fashion way of progression by endlessly respawning enemies until you’ve hit the checkpoint, this really stands out as a flaw when you play this game on higher difficulties especially veteran. The other is that the A.I programming of other enemy soldiers has a habit of spamming grenades all the time and it makes you run around the battlefield like an idiot and it’s worse on veteran as you have 10 grenade markers on the screen.   

Call of Duty 2 is a game that doesn’t resort to theatrics to hold your attention like it does now, but instead gives interesting and tense situations to fight through with a lengthy campaign that is challenging and intresting. This game is a blast and still holds up today and is super cheap these days and easy to find so pick it up if you a spare few quid in your pocket.