Call of Duty 2 Preview

 by Maarten Goldstein Sep 19, 2005 9:12am CST tags: Infinity Ward, Activision, Call of Duty 2
A few weeks ago I was invited to travel to Poland, where Activision was showing off Call of Duty 2 for PC & Xbox 360 and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One for PS2 and Xbox. You can now read my preview of these two games, and take a look at some great new media from the game. FileShack is hosting a two and a half minute gameplay video, and we have PC screenshots right here and Xbox 360 screenshots here.
Since the first game was so successful, there was no need for Infinity Ward to reinvent the wheel. It is still you trying to survive as the chaos of war is all around you. You'll be moving with your American, British or Russian squad as you're taking out artillery, tanks, and every bad guy you see. One of the improvements in the sequel is that levels have been opened up more. In Call of Duty 1 you usually had just one path to each mission objective. Most of the time there are multiple paths now, and you can backtrack if you're pinned down to see if you can find a better route. The order in which you play the campaigns has also been opened up, as you play you unlock more campaigns and you can then decide for yourself which one to tackle next. On the recommendation of military advisor Hank Keirsey (Army Colonel, retired), Infinity Ward also added a lot more battle chatter. For example if one of your squad mates notices an enemy somewhere, they'll actually shout out their locations. You're also warned about grenades or tanks closing in.
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  • #56
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    By: jrock x
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    The video shows some awesome graphics and very smooth gameplay. I did find it comical though, how typically struggle-icious it is to aim precisely with a friggin' console controller as you can see by the player's use of character strafing to try to line up shots and blatant misses.

    Game looks VERY, VERY good though, and to know it's console footage just makes the 360 even more enticing if you have a sweet TV to display it on. =)

    Not sure I'm very impressed with the AI nor the vocalisations. I'm already tired of the teammate commentary and I'm not even 2 mins into the game. Please tell me you can choose to lower the level of their commentary or even turn it off for all but important announcements. The AI was blatantly doing typical path-finding antics in a couple scenes.

    Oh well, one day someone will have some actually revolutionary AI and the next iteration of cooperative FPS games will put it to good use. :)

    The big explosion at 1:40 was sweet, too. Then the aptly named friendly tank rolled in to save the day with neat effects in tow.
    Sep 19, 2005 1:31pm CST
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