There is not one mechanic that was changed in this game that I like. The regenerating health sucks. In the first game getting hit by a stray bullet was noticable, here it's NOT getting hit that's noticable, because if one or two bullets from an entire magazine do not hit you, you can just run-and-gun into the enemy with no repercussions. Submachine guns feel better here, but the rifles suffer a good bit. Maybe I could enjoy this change if they didn't remove the quicksave feature. I'd be more than happy to charge in if it didn't mean going back several minutes every time. No idea why the sprint from the expansion pack was removed (especially since your allies can sprint but you cannot) making the checkpoint system even worse as you have to slowly get to the point you already were in, but due to the incosistent enemy behavior you sometimes will die retreading these steps. The levels are also much smaller and shorter, you can see this especially during the defensive ones. The Soviet campaign ends with something akin to Pavlov's House from the original, but instead of the building you defend being several stories tall, here you have two rooms one each floor, two floors total, and a staircase next to each room. There's just not enough space to maneuver. Also, one of the biggest selling points of Call of Duty was moving together with your squad, I think, but here your squad is trash and cannot shoot enemies standing right in front of them and nobody is checking their behinds, meaning you will occasionally get killed by a random enemy who spawned behind you or didn't peek their head before. And possibly the worst thing is the grenades spam. Some chokepoints are just annoying in the worst sense of the word, super unsatisfying, and on harder difficulties alternating between running away from grenades and running into cover after getting shot once means you can spend way too much time on one checkpoint.
Also, why in the world does a sidearm take up an entire weapon slot now? You move much faster with it so it could totally fix the sprint issue, but it takes up as much space as an anti-tank weapon apparently?

As for additions, I like the multiple objectives in theory, but these missions tend to get more frustrating than anything due to the endlessly respawning enemies. There's apparently thousands of enemies just behind each objective that disappear when you walk next to the building's window. Also, nobody secures the objectives you already captured, meaning that the AI who runs there will still run there and you will, again, get shot in the back. Smoke grenades are my favorite addition, they allow for cheeky plays like running through the smoke to catch enemies unaware provided you know their positions, because they do not move.

Game could still be fun if it had larger levels, there's still that great sound design and those good feeling guns. Some okay bits but largely I was just reminiscing of the better missions from the original. Big ups for being able to throw potatos at NPCs in the tutorial, best part of the whole experience tbh.

Recommended
10.2 hrs at review time
Veteran difficulty
Gameplay 5/10
Music and sound 5/10
Screenplay 5/10
Technical 5/10

This is where the Call of Duty formula came into its element. The first game feels almost like a prototype compared to this. Everything that Call of Duty tried and failed to do was brought to a functional condition here. The regenerating health was the missing piece of the puzzle. The level design was also improved significantly, now allowing for some basic flanking and maneuvering. The "horde-mode" missions, which IW seems to love for some reason, in the first game were infuriating, but here they work pretty okay. The tank mission, while still pretty dumb, was actually kinda fun here because you're just thrown into an open field with other tanks and infantry, and your tank's speed is way higher, so it ends up feeling like a WW2-version of Carmageddon. All scripted scenes work as intended most of the time (after a long battle towards the end of the game, I was ran over by a reinforcement car as my fellow soldiers cheered. Ngl it was hilarious), even though the scenarios the game throws at you are nothing we haven't seen before. It's still nice to get a more polished version of what's essentially the same game. With all the improvements and innovations, CoD2 is just more fun in general.

With all that fun, however, came a major shift in direction. The original CoD and MoH:AA were games with a specific rhythm. They both drew heavily from cinema and alternated between big battle set-pieces and quieter, more immersive moments, like infiltration missions, sniper sections or those village missions where you had to clear a house after a house with little to no action in between them. CoD2 ditches that structure in favor of continuous chaos. Except for that one bit with the pipe-crawling from Enemy at the Gates, the entire game consists of loud, large-scale battles with dozens of enemies on the screen simultaneously. It honestly gets very exhausting. But worse than that, it actually deprives all these events of value. That one D-Day mission in Allied Assault felt memorable because most of the game was quieter. CoD 2, on the other hand, ends up feeling like a Michael Bay movie.

It isn't helped that with the more intricate level design, the AI seems even dumber than before. With all the flanking and the increased number of enemies, you end up feeling like a super-soldier, as you drop down on the heads of unsuspecting soldiers and gun down like 10-15 people at a time single-handedly. Again I am reminded of that phrase CoD fans repeat when praising the game: "it makes you feel like one of the many expendable soldiers on the battlefield", and while there was a sliver of truth in that in the first game, here that goes out the window.

The resulting effect actually made me think of how this is a game about the bloodiest conflict in human history, and whether it's ethical to turn it into a fun explosion bonanza, while still presenting it as a somewhat realistic depiction. Where's the cost of war? This never bothered me before because earlier games felt very focused on the low-scale special operations (with very rare set-pieces), but here you witness hell for 7.5 hours and the entire time it's accompanied by triumphant music and a sense of inevitable victory. Where are the stakes? Where are the consequences of the Nazi invasion? Where are blood and gore? Speaking of the lack of gore, there seems to be very little difference between various guns precisely for that reason. The impact of a heavy machine gun is barely different from the impact of an assault rifle. Thankfully, IIRC, World at War fixes this problem in the future.

It all concludes, of course, with a very anti-climactic ending, just like the first game. After what seems like another regular battle, it just kinda ends, leaving you confused as to what you've been doing this entire time. Despite its level of polish, from mission to mission, Call of Duty 2 delivers mild entertainment and little of anything else. Unlike its predecessor, it is an actually good game with little to no flaws, but one that is extremely unremarkable. I would say this is probably one of the most generic and forgettable gaming experiences I've ever had. Which, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make me never wanna play this again.

Un juego redondo, con un diseño de niveles muy simple pero efectivo. Cuenta con una campaña dividida en 3 partes (URRS, USA e Inglaterra) y en todas ellas es sorprendentemente precisa en cuanto a ser históricamente correctas! La variedad de vehículos que aparecen que en juegos modernos ni se huelen es abismal, la variedad de armas tanto tuyas como de los enemigos es bastante amplia y las cantidades son las... correctas?? No todos los soviéticos van con PPSH o todos los Alemanes tienen STGs o MP40 y eso es algo que para el gameplay igual no es tan divertido pero se agradece y hace que sea mas variado.
La campaña mas allá de ser historia belica generica no tiene mas, los niveles y las misiones son divertidas pero como suele pasar en este tipo de juegos lo que es la historia de los personajes es practicamente anecdotica