Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
Added November 23rd, 2005 by Sallizar
Introduction:
Figuring out the version and naming scheme for the Call of Duty franchise is a full time job these days. Even though Call of Duty 2: Big Red One for the Xbox shares the same version number as Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360 they are not the same game at all. While the 360 version is getting all the hype these days, the Xbox release is no slouch. CoD2: The Big Red One features a single player experience that puts the character in the shoes of a member of the US Army’s First Division. In addition there is a multiplayer mode for Xbox Live subscribers. I’m also betting it has a D-Day invasion level. You think?
Gameplay:
Another day, another World War II FPS title. Obviously, the weapons, uniforms, and environments are all as authentic as possible. We all know the basic plot (kill Nazis for those not in the loop) by now. So, how is CoD2: Big Red One different than other WWII shooters? The games subtitle is the first clue. The games single player campaign focuses on a group of soldiers in the Army’s First Division. Known as the Big Red One because of the red one arm patch on their uniforms, the game is based on true stories from veterans of the unit. Through in game cut scenes fellow squad mates will be introduced as you fight your way through Africa, Italy and the aftermath of the D-Day invasion.
Figuring out the version and naming scheme for the Call of Duty franchise is a full time job these days. Even though Call of Duty 2: Big Red One for the Xbox shares the same version number as Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360 they are not the same game at all. While the 360 version is getting all the hype these days, the Xbox release is no slouch. CoD2: The Big Red One features a single player experience that puts the character in the shoes of a member of the US Army’s First Division. In addition there is a multiplayer mode for Xbox Live subscribers. I’m also betting it has a D-Day invasion level. You think?
Gameplay:
Another day, another World War II FPS title. Obviously, the weapons, uniforms, and environments are all as authentic as possible. We all know the basic plot (kill Nazis for those not in the loop) by now. So, how is CoD2: Big Red One different than other WWII shooters? The games subtitle is the first clue. The games single player campaign focuses on a group of soldiers in the Army’s First Division. Known as the Big Red One because of the red one arm patch on their uniforms, the game is based on true stories from veterans of the unit. Through in game cut scenes fellow squad mates will be introduced as you fight your way through Africa, Italy and the aftermath of the D-Day invasion.
It sure sounds good, but it just isn’t executed very well. The personalities of the squad are fleshed out very well, but I never really identified with them. Mostly because they are invincible. In a section of Italy we were pinned down by enemies that had the high ground. While I was looking for a good position to snipe from, I heard a grenade land nearby. As I turn to locate the grenade, it exploded at the feet of a squad mate. Nothing happened. I watched this happen five additional times in a row and my teammate just kept returning the enemies’ fire. A level or two later when the same squad mate was killed by machine gun fire in a scripted cut scene I wasn’t incredibly moved. It was obvious that he was never in any danger until that specific moment anyway.
Since I’m on the subject of scripting, Big Red One is stocked full of it. While it does create some very tense moments, it also forces the player’s hand very often. If you’re given a sniper rifle and told to take out the enemy machine gun nests, you better do it. Well, what if I wanted to crawl on my belly under their fire and toss a grenade in the bunker. Nope. How about if I flank the bunker and… NO! Just snipe the guys and move on. The worst example though is any time you see an unmanned mounted machine gun, this means you’re in for a good three or four minutes of mindlessly shooting the same guys that keep appearing in the exact same position. The other obvious “Hey, go this way” element is the fact that you can’t open doors. A squad mate has to open every door for you. I’m a believer in the “kick down the door, rush in, and shoot everything that moves” method, so I was a bit peeved every time my squad got to rush into a new area ahead of me.
Underneath all those criticisms though is a good first person shooter engine. Treyarch gets a big thumbs up for authenticity and the dignity in which they handle such a touchy subject. While I wasn’t impressed with some of the game design decisions, there were quite a few moments when I was sucked completely into the experience. One such level has you manning the gun turrets and bomb sight of a B-24 Liberator. Not only was it a good break from the run and gun FPS levels, I was on the edge of my seat franticly trying to shoot down what seemed to be the entire Luftwaffe. If you don’t mind giving up a bit of freedom in favor of the scripted set pieces and can look past a few oddities such as your invincible teammates, you’ll enjoy this game.
Graphics:
Ack! Invisible walls! I can’t count how many invisible walls I ran into while playing CoD 2. The game is incredibly linear and scripted, but it seemed like every time I came up with a good flanking maneuver I’d be unable to reach the area I wanted to get to. There are also some minor animation quirks that look weird. For example, the gears in the tank treads on the Stuart tanks don’t move. It’s not a huge deal, but your eye is drawn to it and it breaks the illusion of reality quite a bit.
Since I’m on the subject of scripting, Big Red One is stocked full of it. While it does create some very tense moments, it also forces the player’s hand very often. If you’re given a sniper rifle and told to take out the enemy machine gun nests, you better do it. Well, what if I wanted to crawl on my belly under their fire and toss a grenade in the bunker. Nope. How about if I flank the bunker and… NO! Just snipe the guys and move on. The worst example though is any time you see an unmanned mounted machine gun, this means you’re in for a good three or four minutes of mindlessly shooting the same guys that keep appearing in the exact same position. The other obvious “Hey, go this way” element is the fact that you can’t open doors. A squad mate has to open every door for you. I’m a believer in the “kick down the door, rush in, and shoot everything that moves” method, so I was a bit peeved every time my squad got to rush into a new area ahead of me.
Underneath all those criticisms though is a good first person shooter engine. Treyarch gets a big thumbs up for authenticity and the dignity in which they handle such a touchy subject. While I wasn’t impressed with some of the game design decisions, there were quite a few moments when I was sucked completely into the experience. One such level has you manning the gun turrets and bomb sight of a B-24 Liberator. Not only was it a good break from the run and gun FPS levels, I was on the edge of my seat franticly trying to shoot down what seemed to be the entire Luftwaffe. If you don’t mind giving up a bit of freedom in favor of the scripted set pieces and can look past a few oddities such as your invincible teammates, you’ll enjoy this game.
Graphics:
Ack! Invisible walls! I can’t count how many invisible walls I ran into while playing CoD 2. The game is incredibly linear and scripted, but it seemed like every time I came up with a good flanking maneuver I’d be unable to reach the area I wanted to get to. There are also some minor animation quirks that look weird. For example, the gears in the tank treads on the Stuart tanks don’t move. It’s not a huge deal, but your eye is drawn to it and it breaks the illusion of reality quite a bit.
Overall though, the game is great looking for an Xbox game. Characters, especially the main characters, are all modeled and motion is captured very well. The wide variety of firearms are all modeled perfectly and animate accurately. Level design is varied with plenty of cover and interesting areas for firefights. Treyarch has done a good job of bringing the intensity and confusion of World War II battles to your TV screen.
Audio:
The flak cannon scared the dog! After making my way through a few hangers full of enemies, the unit’s Sergeant hollers orders for me to man the flak cannon and shoot down the Stukas that are strafing the airfield. Up to this point, all the gunfire, grenade explosions, and artillery shells crashing down hadn’t sparked any reaction from our dog. He’s used to the TV making all sorts of weird racket. When I opened up with the flak cannon he jumped straight up and ran to the door to see what was going on. It’s great when a game’s audio has that much of a difference in volume for the various weapons. It really makes you feel as if you’re firing more than just a teeny little cap gun.
Since the whole premise of the game is following around the characters in the “Big Red One”, one would expect stellar voice work. Luckily, Treyarch was actually able to get several of the actors from the HBO mini series “Band of Brothers” to voice many of the main characters. It’s one of the most well acted games I’ve ever played and combined with the exceptional sound effects work, you’d be hard pressed to find a better sounding WW II game.
Controls:
If you’re a developer on a first person shooter title for the Xbox, do me a big favor and play Halo a time or two, then model your control scheme after that. Besides the right trigger being your weapon firing, the controls in Call of Duty 2 are not intuitive at all. I’ll start with throwing a grenade. To toss a grenade you use the X button. What makes it worse is that you have to HOLD the X button if you want to cook it off a bit and have it explode at just the right time. Also, because your right thumb is on the X button and not the right thumbstick it makes it incredibly hard to aim. So what all important task did the dev team assign to the left trigger instead of grenades? Zoom. Yes, they assigned sighting down the barrel of your firearm to the left trigger. While playing on Xbox Live I got wasted more than once because my Halo instincts kicked in and I was too busy checking out my iron sights when I thought I was tossing a ‘nade.
The rest of the control scheme isn’t much better. Y and B are setup as the jump, crouch, and prone buttons. Huh, wait. That’s three commands assigned to just two buttons. Yep. If you’re standing the Y button is jump and B moves you to a crouch. From a crouch Y makes you stand and B drops you to the dirt in a prone position. For changing stance it works ok, but having Y as jump is a bit odd. My biggest beef though is the White button being assigned the reload chores. We’ve all seen the redesigned 360 controllers by now, so it should be obvious to anyone that the White and Black buttons on an Xbox first party controller are difficult to get to in the heat of combat. Assigning such an important task to White is just bad control design.
Replay:
Any self respecting FPS fan will burn through the single player game in a few days. While it’s a well executed experience mostly, it’s so tightly scripted that there isn’t really any compelling reason to play through it again. A co-op mode would have been nice, but in lieu of that we do get a fairly solid multiplayer mode. Multiplayer consists of the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, the ever popular Capture the Flag, and Domination modes. Nothing new there, but at least you can jump right in without having to worry about anything but learning the maps. Speaking of the maps, there are plenty of them with a good range of size and terrain types to satisfy even the pickiest gamer. The only thing that really keeps the multiplayer from being a cookie cutter affair is the rank system. As you rack up kills, you gain ranks which unlock additional weapons based on your starting weapon. This leads to an arms race so to speak as everyone attempts to bring heavier firepower to the field before the opposing players do. It’s still not anything I’ll be raving about to my friends, but it’s a lag free, balanced multiplayer experience that I’d recommend to anyone who needs to give their dual SMGs and plasma sword a break.
Audio:
The flak cannon scared the dog! After making my way through a few hangers full of enemies, the unit’s Sergeant hollers orders for me to man the flak cannon and shoot down the Stukas that are strafing the airfield. Up to this point, all the gunfire, grenade explosions, and artillery shells crashing down hadn’t sparked any reaction from our dog. He’s used to the TV making all sorts of weird racket. When I opened up with the flak cannon he jumped straight up and ran to the door to see what was going on. It’s great when a game’s audio has that much of a difference in volume for the various weapons. It really makes you feel as if you’re firing more than just a teeny little cap gun.
Since the whole premise of the game is following around the characters in the “Big Red One”, one would expect stellar voice work. Luckily, Treyarch was actually able to get several of the actors from the HBO mini series “Band of Brothers” to voice many of the main characters. It’s one of the most well acted games I’ve ever played and combined with the exceptional sound effects work, you’d be hard pressed to find a better sounding WW II game.
Controls:
If you’re a developer on a first person shooter title for the Xbox, do me a big favor and play Halo a time or two, then model your control scheme after that. Besides the right trigger being your weapon firing, the controls in Call of Duty 2 are not intuitive at all. I’ll start with throwing a grenade. To toss a grenade you use the X button. What makes it worse is that you have to HOLD the X button if you want to cook it off a bit and have it explode at just the right time. Also, because your right thumb is on the X button and not the right thumbstick it makes it incredibly hard to aim. So what all important task did the dev team assign to the left trigger instead of grenades? Zoom. Yes, they assigned sighting down the barrel of your firearm to the left trigger. While playing on Xbox Live I got wasted more than once because my Halo instincts kicked in and I was too busy checking out my iron sights when I thought I was tossing a ‘nade.
The rest of the control scheme isn’t much better. Y and B are setup as the jump, crouch, and prone buttons. Huh, wait. That’s three commands assigned to just two buttons. Yep. If you’re standing the Y button is jump and B moves you to a crouch. From a crouch Y makes you stand and B drops you to the dirt in a prone position. For changing stance it works ok, but having Y as jump is a bit odd. My biggest beef though is the White button being assigned the reload chores. We’ve all seen the redesigned 360 controllers by now, so it should be obvious to anyone that the White and Black buttons on an Xbox first party controller are difficult to get to in the heat of combat. Assigning such an important task to White is just bad control design.
Replay:
Any self respecting FPS fan will burn through the single player game in a few days. While it’s a well executed experience mostly, it’s so tightly scripted that there isn’t really any compelling reason to play through it again. A co-op mode would have been nice, but in lieu of that we do get a fairly solid multiplayer mode. Multiplayer consists of the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, the ever popular Capture the Flag, and Domination modes. Nothing new there, but at least you can jump right in without having to worry about anything but learning the maps. Speaking of the maps, there are plenty of them with a good range of size and terrain types to satisfy even the pickiest gamer. The only thing that really keeps the multiplayer from being a cookie cutter affair is the rank system. As you rack up kills, you gain ranks which unlock additional weapons based on your starting weapon. This leads to an arms race so to speak as everyone attempts to bring heavier firepower to the field before the opposing players do. It’s still not anything I’ll be raving about to my friends, but it’s a lag free, balanced multiplayer experience that I’d recommend to anyone who needs to give their dual SMGs and plasma sword a break.
Summary:
While it’s a good game, I don’t really know who to recommend it to. Xbox 360 launch victims will surely want to get Call of Duty 2 for that system instead. Halo fans are going to despise the control scheme. Casual fans of first person shooters have more than had their fill of the World War II setting. So, I guess if you’re a World War II buff you’ll have a good time playing through the Big Red One’s adventures. Even with all the quirks, Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox would have been a hit just a few years ago, but I just can’t figure out who the market is today. It’s unfortunate to see a quality game get lost in the shuffle. If you’re looking for a break from Halo and don’t mind reprogramming your fingers give it a try.
While it’s a good game, I don’t really know who to recommend it to. Xbox 360 launch victims will surely want to get Call of Duty 2 for that system instead. Halo fans are going to despise the control scheme. Casual fans of first person shooters have more than had their fill of the World War II setting. So, I guess if you’re a World War II buff you’ll have a good time playing through the Big Red One’s adventures. Even with all the quirks, Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox would have been a hit just a few years ago, but I just can’t figure out who the market is today. It’s unfortunate to see a quality game get lost in the shuffle. If you’re looking for a break from Halo and don’t mind reprogramming your fingers give it a try.
