Genre: FPS
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Release Date: November 1, 2005
Buy 'CALL OF DUTY 2: Big Red One: Xbox | GameCube | PlayStation 2
Duty
First
It's not uncommon for games set in well-worn historical
contexts to mistake the accumulation of details for authenticity of experience.
Period-appropriate weapons and war machines make for good window dressing,
but accurate representation of artifacts doesn't automatically equal excitement.
If the only difference between a shooter set in World War II and one set
in Vietnam is the bad guys' accents, the shallowness of the approach is
going to reveal itself sooner or later in less-than-exciting gameplay.
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
nails the surface considerations, with visuals significantly improved
over 2004's Finest Hour and an intensified maelstrom
of mortar rounds and strafing Stukas threatening you at every turn. As
far as authentically harrowing gameplay goes, Big Red One
does World War II better than European Assault, this
year's installment of the Medal of Honor series, but
the relentlessly linear design of many single-player missions and too
many simple, repetitive mounted-gun and anti-air segments punctuate the
satisfying on-foot shooting. A handful of excellent multiplayer maps elevates
the experience on the Xbox, but not quite enough to make this good FPS
great.
No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great
Working familiar dramatic territory, Call
of Duty 2: Big Red One gets underway with Operation Torch, wherein
you storm into North Africa with the renowned 1st Infantry Division –
the Fighting First, or Big Red One – to oust German forces. The
storytelling conceit this time around is that you fight with the same
group of soldiers – your own Band of Brothers
– throughout the game, presumably developing an emotional attachment
to your squad as you move on to Sicily in Operation Husky and eventually
back to Europe via the Omaha Beach invasion.
From the prologue on, every battle scenario is
tense and chaotic. It's thoroughly chilling, for example, when Rommel's
Afrika Korps tanks roll over distant sand dunes as you're trying to take
out artillery. Later in the Sicilian countryside, you have to hold off
another tank attack as they pound the bunkers you're using for cover,
reducing the concrete walls to rubble and leaving you prone and scrambling
for bazooka ammo. The feeling of being under constant, desperate siege
only intensifies when you land in Normandy and make your way up a small
canyon, protecting your engineers as Axis riflemen and Panzerfaust tank-killers
strike from all sides.
Problems arise when the mission design begins to
assert itself at the expense of your being an active participant in the
action. Too many go-here-do-this tasks remind you that a game designer
is your real commanding officer here. Jump behind that anti-air gun and
blast Stukas while avoiding friendlies. Man a halftrack-mounted machine
gun while an NPC buddy drives you around. Crawl back-and-forth through
the bowels of a Liberator bomber to man the tail gun, ball turret and
bomb sights. This is where the mission design works against the otherwise
immersive sense of hyperkinetic drama. Squatting behind a turret and picking
off sitting ducks simply doesn't make you feel for your buddies.
Weapons and vehicles do fill out the historical
texture of Big Red One. The weapons are organic to
the setting and are for the most part well-balanced. The Springfield is
the sniper's best friend, with one-shot lethality from great distances,
while the Thompson is an effective, all-purpose run-and-gun assault weapon.
The Stuart tanks, on the other hand, feel toyish and weak in the single-player
campaign, though that's partly due to the default third-person tank-driving
perspective that shows their stubby design.
Your squad's AI impresses more than their ability
to inspire any emotional connection. They assume positions behind walls,
around corners and on the safe side of rocks and rubble, and they're smart
enough to fall back and duck when you toss a grenade. They occasionally
make your job too easy, like when you're ordered to clean out machine
gun nests, and they go about it perhaps more aggressively than they should,
letting you hang back while they do most of the dirty work. This does
have the effect of unnecessarily shaving off a few difficulty points,
but it also makes you feel like you're fighting alongside competent soldiers,
even if you're not particularly moved when they fall in battle.
Snipe While the Sniping's Good
Much richer in presentation and more supportive
of differing combat styles than Finest Hour's older-school
sewers and empty desert towns, Big Red One's multiplayer
maps encourage tactical variation in more thoroughly realized settings.
Capture the flag and the (tragically underplayed) domination games are
less plentiful online than death match and team death match skirmishes,
but even in the simple frag fests, the handful of solid maps – from
Gela to Bizerte to Snowy Peaks – offer plenty of hiding places and
sniping positions to get the jump on the enemy. While there are only four
multiplayer modes, the maps are well-imagined enough to keep snipers,
grenadiers and machine gunners happy match after match, even when considered
in light of other recently released installments of online juggernauts
like Rainbow Six and Battlefield.
Do Your Part!
Visually, Big Red One is a far
piece ahead of Finest Hour, especially as far as character
models and animations go. Private Kelly stands out in particular, with
his glasses and naive semi-grin, and everyone moves gracefully through
the cratered streets and up bunker stairs. The destroyed villages are
much more alive with fire, smoke and sharper textures, and they feel more
densely drawn than the facades in Finest Hour that
sometimes looked like low-budget movie set miniatures. Reloading animations
are so slick, especially with the heavier weapons where you can see the
huge rounds, that they make reload delays almost enjoyable. When too many
massive explosion effects and disintegrating Stukas fill the screen at
once, the framerate does chug a bit, but never so much that you don't
want to take part in the action.
Weapon effects stand out among audio elements,
as the Springfield, Kar and Garand rifles report with a frightful echo
and tripod-mounted machine guns pump out jarring pops. The writing and
voice acting tries to reinforce a sense of belonging with your fellow
infantrymen, with lots of character-building dialogue like the ongoing
routine about your buddy who's nicknamed "Brooklyn" even though
he's from the Bronx. In multiplayer, the crisp, crunching snow and footsteps
on wood floors alert otherwise vulnerable snipers to approaching threats.
The score, while appropriately dramatic, is strictly background material.
The Military Channel filler footage provides extra
details on what Operation Torch accomplished in North Africa, how the
Fighting First contributed to Italy's surrender and other real-life information.
While not uninteresting, it does create a certain distance between the
player and the events the game depicts by reminding us of their historicity.
That's unfortunate in a game that relies on immediacy and immersion for
much of its appeal. If the gameplay is sufficiently compelling and the
storytelling is suitably affecting, we shouldn't need an external source
of historical context to remind us that the battle is worth fighting.
It's Fun Because It's True, Right?
True-to-life rifles and colorful dialogue don't
make a great game unless those details support the essential thrill of
the gameplay itself. With an engrossing, chaotic presentation that's sometimes
at odds with the repetitive tasks you're ordered to carry out, Call
of Duty 2: Big Red One asks you to overlook some questionable
gameplay as you toil alongside the rest of the Fighting First. With several
of the more tedious segments confined to the first third of the single-player
game and some solid multiplayer action to sweeten the package, it's a
worthwhile tradeoff for Live subscribers and those
willing to wait a bit for the meatier fighting.
Score: 8.0/10
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