Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

Available on: PlayStation 2, Game Cube, and Xbox
Played it on: PlayStation 2
Approximate Playtime: 10 hours

RATING: 9/10

This game is quite a good sequel to Finest Hour. In fact, there's not anything that the developers didn't improve for this installment, from the voice acting to the physics. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a sequel is supposed to do.

Right off the bat, it's evident that Big Red One is a step up. The graphics are sharper, and the textures look much more detailed. Not that Finest Hour looked bad, but this kind of improvement in just a short year is quite astonishing, to say the least. It does have to be said that these early CoD's for the console were essentially ported from the PC, but Big Red One differs significantly from its PC counterpart Call of Duty 2. In some ways, it even tends to look better than the PC version. Now there's a sentence that nobody ever says. The guns look very detailed, and more realistic than Finest Hour, with chips, dents, and other wear and tear. The characters look more battle hardened and dirty, like they aren't just fighting a digital war. The environments look like they've actually been through an intense and prolonged amount of fighting. Every part of the visuals promotes this realism and virtual mimicking of the Second World War with fantastic depth. Northern Africa looks alive.

The visuals aren't the best part of the upgrades, though. The scripting and voice acting have clearly been better planned and executed in this second installment, and because the game doesn't switch between six different characters like the previous title, it can do a lot more with the characters in the Fighting First. Both Call of Duty narrative styles accomplish something in their own right, but Big Red One is something we've grown used to in recent years: a single hero that survives the war against strong odds. Back in 2004 when this came out, however, those stories weren't a dime a dozen. Games like DOOM or Duke Nukem have a single hero, but they're superhuman. To tell the story of a Private in the Army First Division surviving World War II is very powerful, and Big Red One did it right. Other main characters die around him, and while the player knows that as the main character, he has to survive, it still creates the sense of real fear. Maybe he won't survive this war. Maybe this character dies at the end of the game, something like that. It creates a proper sense of tension for the subject matter, especially with missions like storming the beaches of Normandy. The voice acting perfectly compliments and enhances the experience, and the characters sound very real, and it's obvious that, for example, Brooklyn (who's from the Bronx, as he says many times throughout the game), is only using bravado to mask the fact that he's afraid of dying. And who wouldn't be in that situation?

In order to complete the more realistic atmosphere, Big Red One does something that is almost never seen anymore: it removes the hit marker, and gives the player a health bar with no ability to save up health kits. There's not an option to turn the marker off or on, there just isn't one. The player doesn't know how many bullets it takes to kill an enemy because there's no indication of whether or not the bullets are even connecting. And what about the player? That health bar runs out really quickly in an all out firefight, so it's not possible to just take a stand. Take that, modern shooters. Want to make players feel like they're fighting a war? Give them a very limited health bar and no indication of whether or not they're doing damage. Oh yeah, and no health regeneration, either, only medical bags and bandages lying on the battlefield. Good luck!

This game is a great role model for what a shooter series should strive for. A perfect sequel that feels tighter, looks better, sounds great, is written well, and is nothing but a better game. With such a great improvement here, it's hard to imagine what Call of Duty 3 will offer, but come back next Tuesday for that review.