Call of duty is a franchise that has definitely seen its ups and downs. Mostly when people talk about the ups it’s the same, Modern warfare 1 and 2, black ops 2 and world at war. Those are some of the ones that come to mind the most. But there is one game that is up there as well that doesn’t get mentioned as much as those;

Call of duty 2. This was another WW2 call of duty game.

The game was released in 2005, 2 years after the Call of duty 1 was released and 1 year before Call of duty 3. The Mac and mobile versions (yes this game surprisingly had a mobile version) were both released in 2006.

Note that I am reviewing the PC version, so some things like the online might differ with the consoles.

Graphics: 9/10

An important thing to discuss when talking about the graphics is that it was released in 2005, When the weapons and details, etc were not as detailed as we are used to now. 

While now the game may look a bit blocky at times and a bit gray and brown at the time it looked fantastic and in my opinion is one of the best looking FPS games its generation.

The tanks look massive and the nazi buildings have a great presence to them.

Overall the graphics look pretty good good, and looked fantastic for its time.

Gameplay: 8/10

This is the classic call of duty formula, scripted events galore. The gameplay is not the most complex for an FPS, but it is really fun, and in the end that’s most important.

I mentioned the scripted events, and those are a big part of this game. Unpredictable at first and generally really cool these events really add a nice layer of depth in to the game.

Depth: 7/10

Now, this game used to be an active online experience but 10 years later that’s not the case anymore.

While there are some people left it’s not very active anymore, so you’ll pretty much only be playing CoD 2 for the awesome campaign. It isn’t very long, but it’ll keep you busy for a bit.

The campaign is split up in 3 parts, the Russian part, the British part, and the American part. They are not short, but not very long, either, but they don’t really need to be, if it was longer it would feel like it was dragging.

Story: 10/10

I admit that I am very interested in WWII, and I have been for most of my live. The german propaganda actually subconsciously worked in my mind, which was actually pretty amazing that a call of duty game did that.

Do I really need to tell you about the ‘’story’’ of WWII? I don’t think so.

The characters also really shine in this game, my favourite character in this game would be pvt Macgregor, Scottish, of course.

To sum it up: This game’s story gripped me more than any other WWII game, and is in my opinion the best WWII story in any game ever.

Addictiveness: 6/10

The addictiveness being low compared to the other categories is mainly based on me and how I experience First person shooters.

I never play an FPS in one long go, I always take breaks. This game’s sheer intensity actually made forced me to take more breaks, and not play it for all too long.

This is only me so anyone else will probably not encounter this problem.

Difficulty: 7/10

You’ll die in this game, especially on the harder difficulties. I generally played it on the medium difficulty, though.

This is a CoD game so there is regenerating health, which I actually like. It might not be the most realistic but it definitely adds another layer of strategy.  

The final mission is really difficult and it took me a while before I managed to get through it.

One thing I have to mention about the difficulty is that there is definitely a spike in difficulty somewhere in the Russian campaign. It’s not too bad but I definitely had to mention it.

Sound: 10/10

Just wow. The sound in this game is where a lot of the atmosphere comes from. The german loudspeakers, the german screaming, the gun sounds, and the music. Speaking of which, there isn’t much of it as you would expect but when it is there it is sublime and totally fits.

Being a primitive german speaker I didn’t understand some of them very well because they have some sort of dialect or accent that I didn’t understand, but it is still done very well.

Memories

(Reason I don’t rate memories is because I used to and it doesn’t really make any senese)

I have decided to bring this back because I did like it.

My mother was pretty strict about what games I was allowed to play (she no longer is) so I wasn’t allowed to get it when I saw one of my friends getting it

I played it at his house anyway and I really loved it. I wasn’t old enough to understand some of the really well done things in the game, but I do remember being amazed by the feeling the game gave me even then.

Overall: 9.6/10

Whoa that’s really high, I hear you thinking. Didn’t you give some of the scores like addictiveness and depth a pretty low score for it to be this high?

Well those were 2 categories that didn’t have big issues, for depth the reason I gave it a 7 was because the online wasn’t active anymore. But that’s more an issue of the times and it being an old game. As for the addictiveness it’s just a problem that is present for me so I didn’t want to crack down on the score just because of a minor issue that I had.

Anyway this game is an amazing piece of art and is my favourite FPS of all time.

To sum it up: Atmosphere can make a game, and with help from the gameplay it definitely has here