What, you're serious? They're still making World War 2 games? I know, its incredible - but here we are. Since the games industry discovered that there are a stack of people out there that dig battling the Nazi horde, it has been a non-stop crankathon to see who can get the most games out before the trend ends. In the last few years gamers have been treated to a bunch of awesome titles - and have been subject to some terrible ones.

Call of Duty is one of the former. The developers, Infinity Ward, included a bunch of guys that worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, one of the original titles that set the scene for the WW2 genre explosion. From there, they went on to create Call of Duty, which quickly established itself as one of the leading brands with a combination of solid single player and excellent multiplayer.

Call of Duty 2 puts you back in the boots of a soldier - several soldiers, in fact. First up, you'll play a Russian soldier in some of the war torn cities of the Soviet Union. From there you'll take up the role of an Englishman as you battle Rommel in the deserts of North Africa. Finally, you'll join the US Rangers on D-Day as you storm the beaches of northern France.

As you can no doubt surmise from the above, you'll get to experience World War 2 in a variety of environments, ranging from shattered urban wastelands, to barren desert, to lush green farmlands. Some of these you'll have seen before in other games, though Call of Duty 2's Quake 3 engine has been given an extensive overhaul and now features an all-new graphical subsystem, so its safe to say you won't have seen them looking this good. All the scenes are jam packed with stuff that will keep you interested in your surroundings, like a dogfight between Spitfires and Messerschmitts in the skies above.

The vast majority of the action is on foot, though there is the occasional foray into a vehicle - usually as a passenger or gunner, but there's one cool (but short) mission in North Africa where you assume command of a tank and take part in a large scale tank battle. The most significant improvement you can expect is that a massive amount of effort has gone into making you feel like you're actually taking part in a big war between two sides, as opposed to the more traditional lone-soldier-vs-the-Third-Reich that you might have become a little weary of. You'll take part in massive attacks with heaps of your comrades on one side and a sea of defenders on the other, with reinforcements coming in waves from both sides.


Sure, this sounds awesome - but we've all played games with AI-controlled buddies before, and we all know how well they usually fare. Fortunately for all, the AI on your side has been well implemented. Your squad mates will cover you (and ask for cover when they're reloading), they'll move forward well, and they'll let you know if an enemy grenade is about to redecorate the wall with your guts. Of course, on the flip side - having such good AI on your side means you're going to be up against equally good bad guys. And you are. The enemy move well as a group and they use cover effectively - and they run away when they think they're toast. It's not just their skills you have to worry about either - their numbers are also a problem. Expect wave upon wave of Germans to come flooding at you, all of them using every trick at their disposal to make you dead.

One of their favourite moves is the old grenade-o-hurl, and this deserves a bit of attention. One of the main goals of Call of Duty 2 is to try and immerse you into the action, to get you really feeling like you're involved. The game is intense right from the start - you'll have a brief training scene which quickly evolves into full-on combat. There were a few things that I found detracted from the experience though, and grenades were one of them - when an enemy has tossed a grenade at you, you'll get a little icon on your screen telling you roughly where it is. This appears to be a gameplay device that was introduced after the developers got nailed a zillion times by bad guys fragging them with a well-aimed 'nade. It is very handy - in fact, I would say necessary, because the grenades are very deadly - but its just one more thing that separates you from the action.



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