I’ll freely admit that, way back in around September 2005 when I pre-ordered my Xbox 360, Call Of Duty 2 wasn’t on the list of games I planned to purchase. I’ve never been too sold on the whole PC port thing, and nagging away in the back of my brain was the question most people were asking: does the console world really need yet another World War 2 shooter?

As it turns out, it does. Or did. Having swapped in CoD2 at the last minute (at the expense of Perfect Dark Zero, a wise choice in the end) and having sat down and given it some quality time, I can quite safely say that not only does the game offer up a surprisingly good effort given it being a port, it actually turns out to be a very, very good first-person shooter full-stop.

Single player mode sees you thrown into the shoes of a number of allied troops at various points during the war. Your immediate companion is Vasili Ivanovich Koslov, a young Russian recruit with whom you will learn the various ins and outs of the control system through a few simple tasks, one of which is throwing potatoes as practice grenades. Pretty soon you’re chucked straight into the action across war-torn Moscow, diving and ducking your way through the snow as German troops try to fill you with various different shapes of lead.

It’s immediately apparent - even during the potato-throwing part - that you will not simply be able to dash around and treat CoD2 as a run-and-gun. Enemies spring forward from all directions and in most cases are not easy to immediately pick out, which encourages the player to make use of scattered scenery to hide and fight it out from cover. On Veteran difficulty level in particular the enemies are ferocious and you won’t be able to spend more than a few moments out in the open during skirmishes or you’ll end up in a bleeding heap.

Doing away with a traditional health bar is also a good thing, meaning that you don’t have to spend countless minutes searching round for med kits. Instead, the more damage you accrue results in your soldier’s vision reddening until it gets to the point where they die. To stop this happening, the player must take cover for a short while and allow himself to recover. Dying tends to happen quite a bit, particularly on higher difficulties, so the game has numerous checkpoints lined along each level which means that a player never has to redo more than an approximated 10-minute chunk should he pop his clogs.

In addition to the amount of scenery lying around to help the player avoid this happening, the game gives the player a couple of tricks he can employ should the situation be desperate. Smoke grenades can be deployed using the left trigger button, allowing the player to make his own temporary cover should there be none. The effects of these are pleasing and they most certainly work – at no point during the game do you feel as if an enemy can see through the smoke to shoot you unfairly.

Should this fail the game often offers a few routes for players to take during the more open portions of the campaign. Getting shot at from the lower window of a building? See if you can sneak around the side and go in through the back door rather than the front. Come across a brutal pocket of resistance in an alleyway? See if you can find a side route that will allow you to flank them. Whilst not always offering the opportunity – heck, some Russian streets are pretty narrow y’know – the game still feels much less linear than most shooters.

The single player campaign should keep you going for a while. The majority of the action is played out on foot but there are a couple of tank missions in the middle, although to be frank these aren’t all that exciting and you’ll be glad when you make the return to soldiering. From the snowy streets of Moscow and Stalingrad the player will progress to rain-sodden French villages, blisteringly hot Tunisian streets and infamous cliffs of Normandy. Each portion of the game is played from the viewpoint of a different army, be it the Russian, the British or the United States.

Multiplayer modes are obviously an important feather for any shooter’s cap, and despite initial problems a subsequent patch has turned CoD2’s online portion into a very enjoyable experience. Allowing up to eight players on a number of maps – a few more of which can be purchased on Xbox Live – the game has the standard Deathmatch (both single and team) and Capture The Flag modes, but also throws in a few such as Headquarters mode which sees two teams trying to capture and maintain a section of map for as long as possible whilst the other tries to relieve them of duty.

Much has been made of the game only accommodating 8 players, and perhaps this is a little disappointing given Perfect Dark Zero’s ability to cope with 32. Despite this the maps are all designed very well for the type of action they host and the battles themselves are lag-free and very entertaining, especially if played with a group of friends.

Visually, the game is outstanding and sits comfortably in its next-gen status. Battles involving a large number of soldiers in well-detailed surroundings seem to barely bother the 360’s ability to push the game along at a smooth 60 frames per second. Troop animation is fantastically authentic and sees enemies crawling away if injured, flying through the air if they are unfortunate enough to get too close to a grenade and taking cover behind walls and tables to shoot at you.

The game sounds fantastic too, with some stirring narrative portions and soaring musical arrangements getting you in the mood straight away. The battle noises themselves are even more astonishing, and with a decent sound setup you’ll almost feel as if you’re right there experiencing the ear shattering firing of guns and the stirring war cries of onrushing Russian troops.
This could have turned out pretty badly, you know, and we’re lucky that what we’ve ended up with here is a great title rather than a rather uninspired PC port (Quake 4, anybody?). Yes, it might be another title in an already-crowded niche, but Call of Duty 2 manages to absorb the player into a realistic, tense environment like no other console shooter has done to date. Given how young the hardware is, the future looks very good indeed.