Call of Duty 2

Red Army Training

Moscow: December 16, 1941

You begin Call of Duty 2 as a raw recruit into the Soviet army, possessed of nothing but the wits in your head and the rifle in your hands. But hey, you don't even have a rifle in your hands! You'll have to follow the orders of your little squad commander here to get outfitted, at which point you'll be stuck in a bit of a tutorial level. If you're an old hand at FPS games, then none of this should be unfamiliar; if this is your first, then the tutorial itself will help you more than anything we could say will.

Although most tutorials are their own, self-contained levels, this one will actually extend into a bit of combat, as you'll discover that the Germans are massing for an attack on your position. What follows is a rudimentary bit of combat, as you'll have to make your way through the town, taking cover, learning about smoke grenades, and the like. So long as you don't run into the path of the machinegun that's firing down the street, you should find it relatively easy to avoid dying (although all bets are off on Veteran difficulty).

When you get closer to the Panzer Hummel, the mobile artillery that the Germans are using to shell you, you'll have to take out its guards, then approach to the Hummel itself and destroy it with explosives. Don't forget to aim down the sights with your PPsh gun, as it'll greatly help your accuracy.

Demolition

Stalingrad: December 2, 1942

It's been almost a year since you joined up with the Soviet army, although it feels like just a few minutes! Odd how time flies. Anyway, the defense of Stalingrad was one of the turning points of all of World War II, as the German army surrounded the city and lay siege to it. The Russian resistance and counterattack sparked a battle that lasted for almost 200 days, and is still regarded as the single bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, with casualties estimates ranging up to two million.

Most of the Stalingrad battle involved dirty fighting in the streets and ruined buildings of the city, and this level is no different. You begin inside a department store, and have to push your way through heavy German resistance to reach the far windows, which are of course missing by this point. Your teammates here can be counted on to take the bulk of the bullets for you, as well as put up a strong fight, but you'll have to prod them along by attempting to stay out in front of them, as that will encourage them to move forward themselves. This is especially true of the no-man's-land between the first two buildings here, where you'll have to rush out, lie prone behind a wall until your teammates come out behind you, then repeat the process until you reach the far building.

After you crawl through the trench here, you'll have to repulse a German counterattack on your position. There are going to be at least a couple dozen German soldiers coming your way from across the field here. Now, if you're playing on a normal difficulty setting, you may be able to pop your head out of cover and actually attack some of these guys, but on Hard or higher, you're going to get chopped down to size relatively quickly if you actually try to stand up and fight. It's far better to sit back in the building here, around the corner from one of the windows, and chuck a few grenades in the path of the incoming Germans. When you've done that, just sit back out of sight and let them get right up next to the window. By the time they get close enough to shoot, you can pop a few of them from your little hiding spot; shortly after that, you should get the signal that the Germans are retreating, and retreat they will, back to their local HQ.

Your last charge here will be to get to the far side of the courtyard. Unfortunately, it will be covered quite well by enemy MG's. If you picked up the Scoped Mosin-Nagant back at the house, then you can probably pick off a few of the baddies from a good distance away. Alternately, you can just lie prone in one of the trenches off to the left and crawl your way to the building, which will let you flank the gunners and kill them, providing an easy approach for the rest of your teammates.

After clearing out the building, you'll be asked to grab some dynamite and rig the building to blow. Follow the compass to reach the engineer that'll hand off the charges to you, then find the three hotspots and place your explosives. Watch out for holes in the ceiling through which the trapped Germans will fire on you. When the building's destroyed, then you're done with this level; you'll also unlock the first British campaign for play.

There is no doubt that when the original Call of Duty hit the stores back in ’03 it made waves in the FPS, War simulation genre. Call of Duty was a huge success and sold bucket loads of copies. It raised the bar in the world of cinematic quality in war games and since then other titles have had to up their standards to align and compete. So, a lot of time has past, Activision are back with Call of Duty 2. Has the wait been worth it?

For those who didn’t get to play Call of Duty, we are basically talking about a first person shooter set in WW2. You play through interwoven campaigns which see you as a British, Russian or American soldier fighting against the German army. As I mentioned before the cinematography is what set the original apart from the pack and you find yourself in many heart stopping scenarios, for example, firing out of the back of trucks as the driver speeds up narrow mountain passes and so on. The game isn’t like some of the other free roaming titles out there; you progress through the game on a fairly rigid track which can take away the feeling of actually being in a war zone but keeps the tempo high and the story moving. This said Call of Duty was still a cracking romp and was accessible to all kinds of gamer’s not just hard-core war players.

Call of Duty 2 is very much like its predecessor you control an allied troop in various WW2 scenarios. One thing that has changed is you can jump from mission to mission instead of having to play through in sequence. This is no big shakes really but it is a nice option to have. Graphically COD2 is looking hot! Much better than before but saying that, computer hardware has advanced a lot in two years. Like many new games COD2 auto-detects what hardware you are running and alters display settings to suite. On my machine at a fairly healthy spec the graphics are outstanding, this graphical beauty brings a lot of atmosphere to the game, and sometimes when you should be hiding you just want to look around to appreciate the scenery. Once you hear the bullets whistle past your head you will soon be keeping a fairly low profile. The music, as players of the original will remember, also plays a major role in the game. When the music swells you know s**t is about to hit the fan! And your pulse does race