Controlling your virtual solider is fairly easy. The left thumbstick controls movement while
the right thumbstick controls where you look.
The right trigger fires you weapon while the left trigger allows you aim
your weapon using the iron sights on the gun or the scope of a sniper
rifle. The left and right bumpers handle
smoke and frag grenades respectively. The
face buttons handle switching between weapons, jumping/hurdling, reloading, crouching/lying
down and interacting with items in the environment. The controls are solid and fairly intuitive
(especially if you’ve played any of the previous COD console titles). While the controls aren’t nearly as accurate
as their PC counterpart, they get the job done rather effectively. What does separate the console version from
the PC version is the excellent use of the 360’s rumble capability. This feature is used well and provides
another level of feedback in the game, something that you really don’t get on
the PC.
Graphically Call of
Duty 2 is easily on par with the PC version set at the highest detail
levels and is easily among the best looking games in the 360 launch. What’s great about the game is not just the
big stuff like realistic weapons and environments but the little things like
the ultra-realistic snow in the Russian levels (which blows side to side as
well as up on occasion) to the fine little touches on all of the weapons
(including dents on the bolts of the guns).
The only negative I have about the graphics is that the people do look a
little too plasticy and you do seem to kill the same fat German soldier with
the Hitler mustache quite a bit.
The single player side will take the average gamer standard
ten hours to get through on the standard levels with a few more hours needed to
finish the game at the higher difficulty level. The Xbox Achievements in the
game are OK. You get an accomplishment
for completing the training mission and the single player campaign on normal
difficulty with additional achievements for completing the levels and campaign on
the veteran difficulty level. It would
have been nice to see some achievements for multiplayer play but you will
really have to work to get all of the points available in the game.
The multiplayer is where the game does stumble a bit. The game only supports a maximum of 8 players
total in a match (down from 16 on the PC side) and includes several multiplayer
modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF, Headquarters, and Search and
Destory). The different modes are nice
but the multiplayer is a bit laggy if you have the max number of players in a
game. This is a bit concerning since the
game doesn’t support that many players.
Hopefully the folks at Infinity War will work on fixing this and will
release a patch over Xbox Live. If you
are looking at Call of Duty 2 for a multiplayer experience you might want to
look at Perfect Dark Zero instead.
Call of Duty 2 is
easily one of the most cinematic games released on any platform. The graphics and sound grab you from the
first mission and carry you through to the end of the game. The only thing that is really holding the
game back is the buggy/laggy multiplayer which will hopefully be fixed
soon.
B | One of the best FPS games I’ve ever played on any platform. Call of Duty 2 is one of the few launch titles that really takes advantage of the 360’s hardware. The excellent single player is tarnished by the buggy and laggy multiplayer side though. |
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