First Words
Call of Duty. Released in a time when WW2 shooters were announced one after another, it seemed like just one of them, untill the first people got a chance to play it. The action was intense, and really made you feel like you were in the heat of the battle. Chaos, large numbers of soldiers, and numerous scripted events, all brought with perfect sound made you feel like no war game ever achieved. Now, it's sequel is released. Call of Duty was a great game, but expectations were low, so it was all the more easier to amaze the masses. This time, expectations are sky-high. We've been given promises of new light effects for real time reflections, fellow soldiers shouting useful information as they would in the real world, and so much more. Can CoD2 live up to these expectations?

First Impressions of the game
After going through an (in my opinion) bit of old-fashioned setup, I start the game, and must admit I am quite impressed by the intro. It's not as good as the BF1942 one, arguably the best intro ever, but it certainly manages to set the right atmosphere. The menu is just like the one in the original CoD, nothing wrong with that! I check the graphic settings in the options menu, and notice almost everything is on low, resolution even at 800x600. My pc may not be perfect, I thought of it better than that. Resolution goes up (yep, I'm quite stubborn), and I start the game, soon to find out I have to turn the resolution back to get a steady framerate. When my new pc arives next week, I will update the graphic part of this review.

Gameplay
Call Of Duty is know for it's hectic, intense experience, more than anything else. Does it succeed here? I played the game on medium diffuculty, and watched my brother play on easy (bit too much ego to play in that setting myself to be honest), and can't say I was that impressed. Yes, it is a nice game, but not what I expected from it. The first bad thing I noticed was the feel of the weapons. They seem to weak for me. If I have a M1 Garand, I expect to have an instant kill if I hit somebody in the chest, rather than only in the head. Submachineguns have very little accuracy, therefore it would be nice if they were deadly, but I can only recommend they be used at short distance. In fact, the best tactic often seems to be to flank, then go berserk with a submachinegun. Running straight at the enemy, shooting as much as possible actually get's you through 80% of the game. In CoD1, carefully sniping the opponent was the best way, so personally I think is a step backward. The mission objectives are good though, and you do get pulled right in the game. Gameplay get 7.5/10

Graphics
This is quite a hard one to write, because as I said before, I had most settings at lowest. Still, I thought they were great. Even at low resolutions it's nice to watch the faces of different soldiers, each being (as far as I saw) more or less unique. Smoke spreads in a realistic way, and it's great to see great clouds of dust in the desert levels. It really adds much to the experience. Water has two sides: the sea in the D-day level looks just plain lame: one blue area with a few waves. On the other hand, when you get in the trenches, the reflections in the pubbles are great. Possibly, the sea will look nice too, if I raise my settings, so I'll come back to this. Overall, I love the details, there obviosly has been a lot of work in this. Graphics get 8.5/10, untill I have a chance to see them in full glory.

Conclusion
This game has everything it needs to be a great game, but not, like it predecessor, an instant classic. I hate having to say this, because I've been looking forward to this game for ages. It's probably partially the reason it's not that special: with such high expectations, how can it live up to it? Still, like said before, it is a great game. The atmosphere is nice, and the visuals quite stunning. It's just not what I expected of it, yet enough to keep me playing for 7 hours straight. Yes, I know, this is going to get me accusations of being addicted, and I more or less am. But not like I was with CoD1. Overall, this game gets 8/10.

System Specs of the testing machine:
- P4 2,66GHz, 533Mhz FSB, 1MB cache
- 512MB Dual Channel DDR RAM
- ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB
- 120GB HDD @ 7200 rpm

 

 

 

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I play COD2 on full graphics cause my PC configurations allows me to

The graphics are pretty nice. Much better than in Call of Duty. So I would give it a 9.0/10 for the visual.

CPU: Socket 939 Athlon AMD64 3500+
RAM: 512mb DDR 3200 x 2
HARD DRIVE: SATA 160GB
VIDEO: ATI x800XL GDDR3 256mb PCI 16x

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