The M1 is by no means the only weapon you will use, though. As
you progress across North Africa, you will have to jump in and replace
a fallen comrade on various heavier guns like turret mounted .30 and
.50 caliber machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, and believe it or not,
the chin, belly, tail, and top turret guns on a B-24 Liberator
bomber. Note that while shooting down German fighters from a B-24
was fun, as was dropping its bomb load on an oil refinery, these
missions are a pretty harsh break from the normal ground-pounding one
would expect from an infantry troop. It simply defies belief that
a foot soldier would ever find himself in the role of aerial combatant,
so you really have to work to maintain the suspension of disbelief you
have been able to keep going in prior missions. Again, the B-24
missions are tremendous fun and very well done, up to and including the
requirement to walk through the length of the bomber to get from the
gun and bomb sight in the nose to the tail gunner position, but they do
seem out of place in the overall game.
What made
Call of Duty so special on the PC was the cinematic
experience of feeling like a participant in major battle without the
additional challenge of trying to figure out exactly where you were and
where you needed to be, and that feeling is preserved in Big Red
One. As you make your way across the battlefield, be it an open
field or a claustrophobic village, there are countless peripheral
events taking place that give the feeling of reality. Bombs and
artillery shells are going off, enemy armor is moving into place, and
other troops are shouting to each other pointing out enemy positions
(which can be very, very useful to you!). As explosions rock the
ground, dust and smoke fill the air, sometimes causing difficulty in
seeing the enemy. Shots kick up dust clouds at your feet,
encouraging you to keep moving or to find cover. It can be very
hectic indeed, which again adds to the reality quotient. It was
often the case that I became completely lost in the maelstrom and could
only proceed by finding and following other troops in my squad.
Good thing they weren't looking to me for leadership!
This led to one of my biggest frustrations with the game, though.
It wasn't uncommon to come up against a battlefield situation that took
repeated efforts to get around. There's nothing wrong with that,
but because of the design choice to only allow for the saving of a game
position after a mission is completed it was often the case that I had
to ban younger family members from using the Xbox for hours at a
time. As you work your way through a mission, you will cross
multiple checkpoints. If you are killed in a battle, you are
returned to the most recent checkpoint crossed. That works well,
assuming that you have hours to devote to a single mission. If,
on the other hand, you have spent an hour getting to the most recent
checkpoint and events in the real world require your attention, you are
faced with the difficult decision as to whether you want to relinquish
control of the Xbox knowing that you will have to work through all of
the previous battles just to get back to where you are now or fight off
hordes of kids that want their turn to play. Allowing the player
to save the progress at each checkpoint would have made this decision
far easier and gone a long way towards preventing familial civil war.
I had one other major frustration, although I cannot be certain that it
was entirely the fault of the game. The problem I had was the
overall darkness of the screen on some of the maps. There were
many occasions when the screen was so dark that I couldn't see the
enemy soldiers, and at times couldn't even see the path I was supposed
to follow. On the PC, there would have been a gamma correction
option to allow me to lighten up the screen so I could see what was
going on, but I was unable to find a similar configuration option on
the Xbox. I was playing using a pretty good TV, so although I
can't stated with any absolute authority that the problem was with the
game rather than the TV, I can say that I'm pretty sure that that was
the case. In any event, these were the times that I more or less
allowed my computer-driven squad mates to take the lead and I followed
them to the best of my ability.
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One stresses visual appeal,
cinematic-style scripting, and immersive graphical environments to
provide an entertaining tour of WWII battlefields. The
combination of multiple sensory inputs allows for a very believable
environment and is the primary draw of the game. That said, if
you are a fan of tactical challenges and enjoy commanding troops as you
struggle with a resourceful and challenging enemy, you should consider
something along the lines of
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. If you want to while away a few hours immersed in the world of WWII combat, though,
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is the appropriate choice, and a very good choice at that.
B- | Call of Duty 2 : Big Red One will more than likely be the final version of this well-respected title for the Xbox. While it probably uses everything the aging Xbox platform has to offer, and it corrects at least some of the complaints from the previous version, it can't compete with the sequels available for the PC and Xbox 360. Perhaps titling it Call of Duty 1.5 would have been more accurate. |
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