Call of Duty 2

Towards the end of Call of Duty 2 you find yourself assaulting heavily entrenched German defenses to take Hill 400. It's a fitting analogy for the mountain of malaise gamers have built-up towards WWII era shooters facing the game. Ironically, it's a situation not dissimilar to what faced the original when it arrived too. Only this time, it's Call of Duty itself that sits at the peak waiting to be toppled. So back to the European theater of WWII we go.

Infinity Ward has chosen to follow the same formula for the game as before, and focus on doing what it does best, but better. In other words, expect to find a whole lot of Nazis down the sights of your rifle to catch your bullets. And they'll be waiting there on the front lines in three vignettes, one playing as a soldier in the army of each of the allies: Russian, British and American. You're less the Unknown Soldier than the first game, but this is still most assuredly an experience driven game, not narrative.

For all the noise games make about being "cinematic" none gets it as well as this. There is a catch (isn't there always?). To really get the full effect you need one helluva beefy system. But if you have that, the payoff is a sensory experience bordering on overload, and it begins with what hits your ears. The excellent sound design brings together the deafening explosions, rapport of gunfire, ricochet echoes as bullets whiz by, and shouts of both your fellow soldiers and the enemy into a magnum opus. It really merits 5.1 surround to do it justice, but then if you've got the horsepower to run it, you likely have the speakers already as well.

And speaking of horsepower, you'll need it on the video side as well. With the latest and greatest hardware, Call of Duty 2 will don the crown as the best looking game on the shelf (for now). The trick isn't in the textures or model quality -- all of which is up to snuff, but done equally well in other games. It's in the touches of detail: the restrained but perfected use of particle effects that blow snow or clods of dirt from an artillery round's impact flying in your face, and the distorted vision that overcomes you when one of those goes off too close to your position in the billowy clouds of smoke.

Besides putting on a pretty display, that smoke also brings a tactical element into the combat. In the up-close small arms fighting of WWII cover was crucial to survival, and when you didn't have it, obscuring the enemy's view with smoke was the next best thing. Throughout the game your squad's success will depend on your laying out smoke to help cover your advance.

It's one more device that helps draw you into the combat, amplifying the sense of being in the midst of a storm. And that's when Call of Duty 2 is at its best. When the bullets are flying, soldiers shouting out and everything in general is so chaotic that you simply don't have time for your brain to register that it's all a carefully orchestrated, scripted experience. For if you stop and over-think it, that shatters the illusion of you holding the trigger and hoping the guys in the grey overcoats stop pouring out of the doors soon.

That's exactly what happens not long into your stint as a Brit traipsing across North Africa. For these few missions it falters, culminating in a lackluster turn at the controls of a tank that lacks any sense of really being in a 20-ton mechanized killing machine. But before you can lose hope you're back in Europe and all is restored. Whether it's the ambiance of the French countryside alone or something more remains unknown, but the run from there to the end carries that same magic that kept you glued to the screen through Saving Private Ryan.

Multiplayer does its part to make up for any misgivings brought about by the single-player's few missteps. With support for up to 32 players, nine new maps (including four remade from the original) and the excellent HQ mode, Call of Duty 2 should be on your playlist for a good while to come. But what won't be are vehicles: like the original they haven't made it into the online game. If history continues to repeat, they'll feature prominently in an expansion pack. Until then here's a word of caution: fear the combat shotgun.

Pulling its trigger condenses everything that's right about Call of Duty 2 into a single moment. Online or off it is the epitome of visceral thrill seeking. Think of it as the big-budget summer blockbuster movie: you don't go to be impressed by its thought-provoking drama or brilliant character portrayal; you go for the ride, the special effects and above all else the euphoric feeling of going through it all and coming out the other side.

When the original Call of Duty was released a few years ago, it made an impact both on critics and on consumers, even in the already-crowded WWII shooter genre. Call of Duty's visceral action struck a chord with PC shooter fans, thanks to a well-designed campaign, enjoyable multiplayer, and outstanding sound effects. If you liked those aspects of the original, then you're sure to enjoy the sequel, which stays true to the strengths of its predecessor, while enhancing the sense that you're just one soldier in the midst of a massive war machine. It doesn't really break any new ground, but the game nails the core aspects of first-person-shooter gameplay so well that it doesn't need to.

As in the first game, Call of Duty 2's campaign will put you in the shoes of a few different soldiers fighting for different Allied factions. You start off as a private in the Russian army, visciously fighting off the invading Germans in Moscow and Stalingrad. The British campaign is unlocked after beating the first Russian mission. For most of these missions you'll be fighting in the sand-swept deserts of North Africa alongside the Desert Rats against Field Marshal Rommel's troops. The final mission in the British campaign sends you to the bombed-out houses and hedgerows of Caen, France. After you're done with that, you'll play as an American corporal in Europe. Yes, you will be doing a D-Day landing, but not on Omaha Beach or Utah Beach, which you've probably played several times before. Instead, you'll be scaling the sheer cliffs of Pointe du Hoc as artillery with the Army Rangers. If you already thought rock climbing was an "extreme" sport, try doing it with artillery and machine-gun fire raining down on you.

Each of the game's 10 missions is broken up into a few different stages. If you play the game on regular difficulty, you could blow through it in about 10 hours. Ratcheting up the difficulty a notch makes the game much harder and more tactical (this is probably the experience the designers intended). Since you'll be creeping and peeking more carefully through all the encounters, you'll lengthen the campaign significantly, and enjoy it more.

Breaking up the campaign into several different narrative vignettes arguably weakens the impact of the plot as a whole, although that was never the strength of Call of Duty in the first place. What this does is allow the designers to put you in a lot of different, interesting situations. One memorable moment in the Russian campaign has you crawling through a raised pipeline to sneak behind German lines and into a fortified factory building. As you make your way through the pipeline, you'll spot and snipe small pockets of German infantry through holes in the pipe. When they fire back up at you, you'll notice bullets tearing through the rusted pipe, ripping open holes for shafts of light to poke through. It's a thrilling effect. You'll also get quite a rush from both participating in and defending against all-out infantry charges across open city squares in Stalingrad. But just as the novelty of these wears off, you're shunted over to the British campaign in North Africa, where you'll do things like participate in night raids of small Tunisian towns, climb up to the top of spires to call in artillery on enemy tanks, and even drive a tank yourself. The American campaign has its own memorable moments, like scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, or sniping at German mortar crews from the top of a grain silo. The game paces itself so that you're always on your toes, and you'll find yourself switching back and forth almost constantly from an offensive position to making a defensive stand against counterattacks on the objective you've just captured. Yes, at the end of the day you're still just shooting a lot of Nazis, but the constantly varying contexts of how and why you're doing it keep the game compelling from start to finish.

You won't be participating in these forays alone; far from it. In every setting you'll be surrounded by what seems like dozens of soldiers, both friends and foes, who move and act in a realistic fashion. Lots of your artificially intelligent mates will die by your side, along with the dozens of enemy soldiers you kill, but more will come in from the rear echelons to take their place. The designers often do a good job of reminding you that the war isn't just the infantry skirmish in which you're fighting. From time to time you'll see planes engaged in dogfights flying overhead, or when you complete an objective of capturing a German harbor, you'll call in a naval strike and see enemy merchant ships being sunk at the docks.

In each confrontation, you'll find yourself setting up at logical stopping points to exchange fire with German resistance. You can snipe dozens of enemies out of the windows and from the trenches in front of a house, for example, but reinforcements replace them. It never feels as though the game is cheaply spawning in more fodder for you; it just does a great job of making you feel like there are a realistic number of soldiers holed up in a building. You need to get a feel for the flow of each pitched battle, and this can be done by advancing your line when the enemy ranks look thin enough, and then breaking into the house or bunker. Your allies will follow you in and help you clear out the objective. Of course, if you're too meek at attacking and pressing your advantage, the enemy AI is wily and aggressive enough to take charge. They're not afraid to pour fire on your position and toss tons of grenades at you. Thankfully, a handy grenade danger indicator lets you know when and where you have to scurry away from an impending blast. When you do die, the game reloads very quickly, and you're even treated to a quote about war from various historical figures. One that sticks out in our minds is an ironic one from Solomon Short: "The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky."

In 2003, Infinty Ward racked up numerous awards for its rookie effort, the WWII shooter Call of Duty, including GameSpy's own PC Game of the Year. Today, IW and Activision released a single-player demo for the upcoming Call of Duty 2, offering a single level set in El Daba, Egpyt, in November 1942.

While brief, the demo -- called "The End of the Beginning" -- offers a nice look at the balance between scripted events and more open-ended combat Infinity Ward has been working on for the sequel. You're still part of a squad, and as you and your fellow soldiers fight through the sandy village, there are a number of opportunities to venture off the main path and flank enemies from the side.

Some other bits of interest from the demo: it appears to support most video cards (although no support for Windows 95/98/ME), and has built-in widescreen support, which, as we tested, looks pretty gorgeous if you've got a nice big screen to play it out. It's also interesting to note that there's no health bar: there are visual cues that you've been injured, and retreating to cover will usually put things right.

The demo weighs in 671MB, and is available for download at Fileplanet. Activision also released the final box art for the game, which you can see to the right. Call of Duty 2 is currently scheduled for a fall 2005 release.

Call of Duty 2 lets players experience four individual soldier stories as they overcome insurmountable odds in multiple campaigns. Players have the freedom to follow each of the four storylines through for the ultimate character-driven experience, or they can engage in the historic battles chronologically for quick hitting action. Along with the new missions, the game features an enhanced engine, advanced AI, and even more authenticity than before.

Being the little brother of one of the most highly acclaimed shooters of 2003 is not necessarily an enviable position. While it means a certain degree of easy sales, you have a lot to live up to. However, Activision and company were careful not to crank the Hype-O-Meter up too high, choosing instead to talk about the game in small doses; an interview here, a batch of screenshots there. When I got the 6-CD package amid a flurry of other shooters coming out in the same time frame, my initial reaction was mild. Then I began the install, the music swelled, and all those fuzzily warm memories of ricocheting bullets and constant explosions came back like long-lost friends. Call of Duty, it's been a while. We're glad to have you back.

Like its older sibling, CoD 2 covers World War II across three interwoven campaigns featuring the Russians, the British, and the Americans. However, now you can skip ahead from one faction to another, once you've played through a batch of missions. I personally wasn't champing at the bit to play one or the other, but I guess it's nice to have the functionality there. The game also auto-detects 16:9 and 16:10 widescreen ratios, as well as the funky 5:4 ratio for LCD monitors (like 1280x1024). You'll have a solid selection of performance tweaking options, or you can let the game set what it thinks will be optimal settings. With a 6800GT, 3.0GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM, the game plays quite smoothly at 1280x1024, with anisotropic filtering (to make textures look nicer) and 4xAA (to reduce jagged edges). There were slowdowns when it rained and when there was a lot of smoke on screen, but it was otherwise quite playable with the latest official nVidia drivers. Speaking of those guys, there's also an "Optimize for SLI" toggle, but I don't have the luxury of two hot boards, so let's move on.

Many of you who grabbed the single-player demo noted that the game didn't run all that great. All I can tell you is that the retail version appears to have been optimized. Textures look great, and there's lots of shiny stuff going on. Normal mapping is fairly subtle, except for a few elderly character models who look like they're bathed in a sheen of sweat. It's not quite on par with FEAR, but I think even the hardcore shooter fan will find little to complain about. Most importantly: I saw little sign of cutting corners for multi-platform development (as the game is also coming out on the 360). I'm pleased to report that everything looks quite sharp.

And CoD 2 is about the grisliest game I've seen get the ESRB T rating. There's no blood and guts splashing all over the place, but you will have dying soldiers attempting to drag themselves to safety, only to be bludgeoned to death by a nearby enemy. And they'll scream bloody murder when they die. On the other hand, the only blood you'll see is when you shoot someone, and the profanity stays firmly in PG-13 territory. And there's none of the chunky dismemberment we've seen in Brothers in Arms.