Call of Duty 2

I've been meaning to write a review of Call of Duty 2 ever since finishing it on Regular a few weeks ago, so here goes:

If you're not up on the Call of Duty franchise, it's basically just another one of these lines of WWII simulation first-person shooters, so there's nothing particularly new about the concept. As I've mentioned before, the reason I was attracted to this game was that I got to play a free demo version of it that I downloaded from Xbox Live, and my initial impressions were so strong that I went out and bought the game the next day. Now, although the Call of Duty line has three games available for the Xbox (2, 3, and 4: Modern Warfare) with a fourth game coming out soon, I decided to buy the oldest one of the group for three reasons: it was the one I demo'ed, it was the best-received WWII simulation of the lot, and it was only $20.

It didn't take me long to beat the game on Regular, but I imagine the other two harder difficulty levels will take much longer, as you can't really get hit without dying on the hardest level. Overall, the game is kinda both really good and really unremarkable. The biggest pro to the game - that it's pretty realistic - is also its biggest con in that it's real-life and therefore not spectacular, which is kind of what video games (and literature/movies/theatre) are for, right? You know, taking you out of the real world? Sure, I've never fought in the military, but the game doesn't add much to help you get involved with it: there's very little story, the three campaigns involve totally different people (first Russians, then the British, then Americans), and all of the battles kinda feel the same (just like real warfare).

I know this sounds like I'm knocking this game and didn't like it very much, but it really is a great experience when you manage to get caught up in it (brief as it might be). The visuals are great (for the time at least: it was an Xbox 360 launch title back in 2005), gameplay is intuitive, enemy AI is well-done, and the locales feel right.

This said, I would certainly play another Call of Duty game, although I don't think any of them are too high on the priority list. The only possible exception to this might be Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is a much more recent game (and therefore probably has more going on) but supposedly is more about online multiplayer, which I'm not really into, so who knows?