Gamer Savings Time: Call of Duty 2 Review

For my second Gamer Savings Time Review I am diving into the current console generation with a doosy of a game.  Call of Duty 2, arguably the best Xbox 360 launch title, can be picked up used for about a Hamilton and is well worth the money.  However, if you are looking to boost your Gamerscore, be ready for a headache.  The same things that make COD2 a great game are the same things that make its higher difficulty settings nearly impossible. 

I have literally never played a WWII game. I know it’s a gaming staple and the genre has been milked to death with Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Brother in Arms and Battlefield flooding the market, but I thought I would dive right into, what many people consider, the best of these franchises, Call of Duty. The success of COD4: Modern Warfare caught my attention and as a Hardcore Gamer (I’m not sure if you’re allowed to give yourself that title…oh well) I kinda felt like I was shortchanging myself.  Besides, it was a little embarrassing that of all people, my dad told me it was cool.

Since I don’t do many PC games and I didn’t want to start with a spin off (Finest Hour), the first one I could try was Call of Duty 2.  I checked the achievements before playing and realized that most of them were for completing chapters on the Veteran setting (Veteran setting being the hardest setting possible), and after a bit of online coaxing I convinced myself to try it on Veteran. I finished about 2/3 of the game before finally bumping the difficulty down to Hardened. This doesn’t make the game bad, or good, it simply shows me how good or bad I am at shooters. (apparently not very).

What it DOES tell me, is that the tiny details Infinity Ward built into the AI will make or break your ability to finish the game. No matter how many times I had to replay parts of the campaign, things NEVER happened the same way twice. My human interaction defined exactly what the enemy would do, every time. In my opinion, the insanely robust AI was the most impressive aspect of the game.

Unlike most other games that have scripted spawn and kill points Call of Duty 2 does a fantastic job keeping the player unaware of what is going to happen next, even if this exact area just brutally mauled them 5 times in a row.  If you decide to move left during one attempt and then right on the next, expect your enemy to compensate and find the best way to take you out.  This makes playing the campaign on Veteran frustratingly hard.  I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be, but I couldn’t help but feel like a failure for not completing the entire Veteran campaign.

Obviously the game is great from gameplay to graphics (the graphics have aged pretty well if you keep the game’s release date in mind), but gameplay and graphics have been proven by other games. What Call of Duty 2 brings to the table is unparalleled intensity. I found myself physically ducking several times when being bombarded. Its immersive and engaging, and makes you really want our troops to come home. There isn’t a feeling anywhere else in gaming like the one you get sneaking up on a Tank to place explosives. During certain sequences expect your hair to stand up on the back of your neck (if you have any).

I didn’t play any of the multiplayer, simply because I didn’t see the point (3 years after launch, the online competition is probably unbearable). I was unsure of how my experience would go with COD2, but boy I was pleasantly surprised. If you don’t like shooters, or if you have no interest in WWII, then I would stay away from COD2, but at this point I am probably preaching to the choir when I say “BUY THIS GAME NOW!”

4.5/5 Stars