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.
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.