Mit für damalige Verhältnisse sehr realistischen Raucheffekten bedeckte Schlachtfelder und zerstörte Häuser erzeugen eine dichte Atmosphäre in diesem zweiten Hauptteil der CoD-Reihe. Der recht gute Soundtrack sowie ganz besonders die deutsche Synchro mit den kontextabhängigen Rufen der Soldaten tun ihr Übriges.

Eine kleine, aber feine Neuerung stellt das Schadenskonzept dar, denn das teils nervige Haushalten mit Medipacks wird durch automatisches Heilen beim In-Deckung-Gehen ersetzt – ein erfrischend moderner Gameplay-Aspekt. Auch die aus anderen Shootern seit jeher bekannten explosiven roten Fässer sind nun ebenfalls mit von der Partie.

Ganze vier Kampagnen bietet Call of Duty 2, darunter eine russische, eine britische und zwei amerikanische; diese Einzelgeschichten sind allesamt erstaunlich lang. Lediglich das unnötig patriotische Propaganda-Introvideo der Amerikaner nervt einfach nur. Immerhin gibt es – ähnlich wie im Konsolenableger „Finest Hour“ – mehrere Länder bzw. Kontinente zu sehen und ein wenig zu erkunden, darunter Afrika, Russland, Deutschland und Frankreich. Ganz besonders schön und eindrucksvoll umgesetzt ist die D-Day-Mission, bei der man als Soldat an der Küste zusammen mit unzähligen anderen im Boot ankommt und erstmal per Seil die Steilküste zu den Schlachtplatz-Gräben heraufklettern muss.

An der Panzersteuerung hat sich endlich etwas getan, sodass diese eine für PC-Spieler natürlichere Bewegung ermöglicht. Dank der extrem flüssigen FPS, durch die mein Framerate-Graph zu keiner Zeit auch nur einen Hüpfer gemacht hat, ist das Spielgefühl insgesamt ein sehr gutes.

Das ist übrigens mein dritter COD-Teil.

Gespielte Fassung: Uncut-Windows-Version mit deutscher Synchro unter Linux

Foi um jogo que me surpreendeu.
Depois de 18 anos do seu lançamento e já tendo jogado os CoDs atuais, não esperava gostar tanto assim!

CoD2 é um jogo que marca conceitos que até hoje a franquia carrega; Campanha cinematográfica, batalhas focadas em
movimentação, missões com múltiplos objetivos, tudo isso já estava presente aqui (em uma menor escala).

Meus pontos negativos ficam por conta da falta de Feedback: Inimigos são praticamente camuflados com os seus aliados (e ter friendly fire também atrapalha nesse aspecto), mini-mapa no formato de bussola que leva pra lugar algum, dificuldade de confirmar se o inimigo morreu mesmo ou ainda esta no chão, atirando...

São várias arestas que vieram a ser polidas nos jogos posteriores da série, mas aqui você ainda as sente.

Apesar dos pesares, continua um bom jogo!
Recomento revisitar esse clássico dos FPS ;)

I don't like to drop games but I got soft-locked about halfway through the British campaign in this (so around halfway through the entire campaign as well), already wasn't having a good time, and decided I would probably be better off just leaving it there. Apparently, this is one of the "good" Call of Duty games and while the series is certainly in pretty abysmal territory now I don't think CoD 2 is anything to strive for either. It is cool to see a WWII shooter that has you play through campaigns as the Russians in Stalingrad and the British in North Africa before doing the generic American D-Day stuff, but the actual missions are monotonous, the gunplay is weak and unsatisfying, and outside of some decent skyboxes, the presentation isn't much either. Worst of all the game is painfully linear, something that stood out especially because this is the game people always bring up when criticizing the linearity of modern CoD games. I think everything I've played or seen from the series since Black Ops 3 has been awful, but outside of a lack of scripted setpieces there's not really any choice or freedom to the mission design here either. The game wants you to think there is, and constantly tells you that you can deal with mission objectives in any order, but each time it did the variety boiled down to two or three identical clusters of enemies or pieces of artillery that were never more than a quick sprint apart. If you aren't looking at the minimap you probably wouldn't even register them as various different objectives instead of normal enemies populating the level. The lack of flashy setpieces only highlights how weak the gameplay really is with nothing to break it up. I think playing Isonzo at the same time as this killed it for me, that game is both more interesting on every level and more fun and satisfying to play. Maybe that's an unfair comparison since Isonzo is an online-only game that came out just a couple of years ago while CoD 2 is two decades old now, but it's not my fault people hyped this game up to a ridiculous degree!

I feel like I should at least try to bring up some stuff I liked about this game so here are some notes:
- Again, it is really neat to do a WWII game that starts you off with the Eastern Front and North Africa, but I wish they went all the way and had the American campaign be in the Pacific instead of just doing Normandy again. I think World at War has a Pacific campaign so maybe I should try that instead.
- I like that you've always got a small squad with you that moves through the whole level and can cover for you at times, for a while every CoD game had this and I wish it would come back in modern shooters.
- Constantly seeing Patton quotes on the death screens reminded me that I really need to watch the George C. Scott movie about him at some point.
- The tank missions (before I got softlocked) made me want to rewatch Girls und Panzer or just finally start watching the Finale movies.
- most of these attempts at finding positive qualities in this game were just me wanting to spend my time watching/playing other, better things. Make of that what you will.


Maybe the only good games in this whole series are MW2 and Black Ops.

Randomly got the urge to play COD games on Veteran

After bringing back the MP servers for multiple cod games I randomly got the urge to play through the campaigns on veteran difficulty. I beat all the COD campaigns up until ghost BUT never finished one on veteran so I thought it would be fun and thus COD 2 has been FINISHED.

Was it as good as I remembered?

I was never the biggest fan of COD 2 but I could respect what it did for the genre and I do LOVE some of the moments the game has. In addition it just feels good to play an older style COD game really making me miss the simpler times in gaming where you just booted up a game and have the full experience right in front of your eyes versus dealing with all these DLC , MICROTRANSACTION and becoming Nikki Minaj in warzone. However, while I still think it's a good game, COD 2 does have some issues in terms of how it's aged after all this game. That isn’t to say it's a bad game because noooooo that is far from it , the game is still a solid time if you want to play through a good campaign.

What were my issues?

To get this right out of the bag having no sprint feels insanely terrible and makes the game feel so much slower. I can’t tell you the amount of times I wish I had sprint throughout playing the game again after so long and after playing so many CODs since then. Furthermore, some of the later levels were insanely difficult on veteran, really making for a quite simply frustrating experience as I slowly made my way through each level. I know veteran is supposed to be very challenging but when you have moments where you literally are stuck in one spot and will get one shotted the moment you peak from 6 different angles is not fun lol. I bring this very specific situation up because there is a specific level ( if you played this on veteran you most likely know what I am talking about) where you have about 5-6 objectives on the screen at once where you need to take over all these buildings. Imagining running around an open field sometimes or just running from building to building having constant streams of bullets showered at you the moment you try anything. Oh you cleared the streets? Well tough luck you got hit from a window , oh you cleared the house? You better hope there isn’t one last guy upstairs aiming straight at you the moment you walk up. I could go on for a long time about this mission but the layout made for one the worst levels I have played in awhile lol. Furthermore, I also had some bugs and glitches where the game would give me checkpoints , I would randomly die by a nade that wasn’t even marked on my screen and even a weird glitch where my character FLEW backwards very fast which was funny lol. In addition, I really don’t like the weapon pool the game gives you. To explain , most of the time you will be picking up MP40s or Kar98s off enemy bodies since you will run out of ammo from the weapons you start with. This makes for a very depressing pool of weapons since you almost can never refill ammo on the guns you start with unless your AI teammates die.

The AI???

This needs to get its own little section because if there was one thing that this game really made me appreciate was good AI teammates. My lord when I say playing around your AI teammates is VITAL to winning I really mean it because the AI in COD 2 is honestly very good in the sense that your teammates will actually KILL THE ENEMIES….. Crazy I know right? It really makes you think WHY they made the AI worse as time went on lol.


Overall

Even though I have issues with the level design of some levels making for some very frustrating moments I overall still enjoyed my replay of the game. I was amazed by some of the moments the game had really given me a newfound respect for what they were able to accomplish cinematically during this era of gaming. I am not sure how fast I will tackle the other CODs because playing on veteran is truly a mental crushing experience that should probably not be done back to back lol. If you for some reason have not played COD 2 by now I do recommend giving it a playthrough. It's a solid game !

Yet another classic shooter. In my opinion this one of the few times this franchise peaked.

(Campaign Only)

-The gameplay is fantastic, basically just CoD1 but they knew exactly what they wanted to improve, what to add, and what to remove. It is obvious there was a passionate team behind this game. Playing it right now might not seem such big deal; because these mechanics are now a norm and in some cases a must, but at the time of release many of them were brand new, or at least not as well done as in this game.

-The campaign is divided into 3 parts; Russian, British, and American. Each of them have their unique atmosphere, and I'm not talking about simple things like the accents. Each campaign has a unique set of guns (except for the Germans, which use the same guns). Other than that each campaign take place in a different place, which makes it hella fun. The Russian campaign is majorly in the snowy Stalingrad (and other parts of Russia), the British campaign is in the deserts of North Africa, and the American campaign takes place in France and Germany. There are also some missions (like controlling a tank) which are a breath of fresh air and makes the game more interesting.

-The graphics are amazing for 2005. First of all, for some reason the game supports up to 4K. And second, the particle effects are amazing; the smoke grenades, the mists, pieces of dirt flying around when a grenade blows up, etc.

-Sound design and voice acting is also great specially considering nobody really took games serious in 2005.

-The only real issue is that there is basically no story.

Played this in 2011 or so when i was wee lad and the dday mission was the first thing i tried since my brother made some progress and it blew my mind. Always look back on this game fondly and recently i've finished it for the first time properly in many years.
Decided to play on Veteran and it was really fun! Surprisingly doable, it takes a while to actually die and you can easily react and get in cover reliably... unless you encounter a machine gunner, then it's a 50/50. This makes the second to last mission the hardest in the game because you get little to no cover and enemies pour from every corner. Another problem is the insane screenshake whenever you get shot, making it difficult to even see anything.
Game's a fun romp however it really starts to get repetitive by the last third since there is little else you do other than murder nazis. Still, i like the set pieces and atmosphere of the game.