Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
We take Treyarch's WWII follow-up for a spin.
Published: October 20, 2005
For a series that was supposed to go toe-to-toe with EA's Medal of Honor games, the Call of Duty franchise has made some awfully nice strides while the competition hasn't budged much. The difference here is that the CoD games have matured most on the PC, leaving the console counterparts in the dust technologically.
On the Xbox 360 (and, eventually the PlayStation 3), however, that's changing as the hardware has allowed the PC and next-gen consoles to share code nicely. The current generation will have to make do with trying to make up for the unfortunately rather lackluster Spark Unlimited effort the first time around.
Given the success that Activision has had using Treyarch as a developer with the Spider-Man games, it's still a little surprise that they would turn to a first-person shooter. Big Red One revisits much of the territory that the first console Call of Duty covered, but from what we can tell, it does it with a bit more immersion, better squad response and more variety to the gameplay.
The biggest difference between Finest Hour and Big Red One is simply that you're the same solider fighting through the whole game rather than trying to deliver the experience of being a Russian, a Brit and an American. It was a novel idea, sure, and showed how the different forces fought, but all the jumping around tended to pull you out of the experience.
Here you're a nameless, faceless (the game is only shown through your eyes) member of the Big Red One, WWII's most highly decorated and seasoned division, and one that saw nearly every major battlefront during the war, from Italy to Northern Africa to Omaha Beach. Perfect source material for a WWII shooter, eh?
The whole idea behind the game is to get to know the rest of the platoon, see your squadmates growing and changing as the war rages on - and they watch them die at the hands of a well-entrenched sniper or a lucky pot-shooting infantryman. The whole idea is that you begin to identify and bond with the other people in your unit, and the limited hands-on time we had with a handful of levels offered some of the best examples of this ever seen in the admittedly overcrowded genre.
From a skirmish through Troina, Sicily) in choked city streets and back alleys to defending a holed-up 82nd Airborne in Piano Lupo, Italy from dive-bombing Stukas with a .50 cal turret to a night beachfront landing filled with floating mine target practice to an artillery strike on an unsuspecting convoy, the variety in mission objectives gives the game a wonderful sense of depth. It also painted a painfully clear picture of exactly how fragile the soliders' lives really were with a couple of especially poignant deaths - only one of which was obviously scripted.
Of course, if you die, it's game over (something the dozens of teammates we had fall in battle would probably take issue with), so there's near-constant chatter between soliders - both enemy and friendly alike. Constant warnings of taking cover, calling out enemy positions and types and a general sense that the guys you're fighting with actually "see" the battlefield does an impressive job of adding a bigger sense of immersion.
This complements the usual assortment of realistic weapons, constant ambient gunfire and occasional impromptu briefings from our highers-up, but the chewy center of the audio, the plinking and the spattering and the rat-tat-tat-tating, that's all well and good too, and we want to make sure that you understand the two of them, the effects and ambiance, and the deeper, more personal narrative work together in an amazing way.
There's far, far more of the game that we want to get to, and hopefully we will, but being understaffed and overworked means shorter previews. Damn you 4th quarter! Look for more in the coming weeks.
On the Xbox 360 (and, eventually the PlayStation 3), however, that's changing as the hardware has allowed the PC and next-gen consoles to share code nicely. The current generation will have to make do with trying to make up for the unfortunately rather lackluster Spark Unlimited effort the first time around.
Given the success that Activision has had using Treyarch as a developer with the Spider-Man games, it's still a little surprise that they would turn to a first-person shooter. Big Red One revisits much of the territory that the first console Call of Duty covered, but from what we can tell, it does it with a bit more immersion, better squad response and more variety to the gameplay.
The biggest difference between Finest Hour and Big Red One is simply that you're the same solider fighting through the whole game rather than trying to deliver the experience of being a Russian, a Brit and an American. It was a novel idea, sure, and showed how the different forces fought, but all the jumping around tended to pull you out of the experience.
Here you're a nameless, faceless (the game is only shown through your eyes) member of the Big Red One, WWII's most highly decorated and seasoned division, and one that saw nearly every major battlefront during the war, from Italy to Northern Africa to Omaha Beach. Perfect source material for a WWII shooter, eh?
The whole idea behind the game is to get to know the rest of the platoon, see your squadmates growing and changing as the war rages on - and they watch them die at the hands of a well-entrenched sniper or a lucky pot-shooting infantryman. The whole idea is that you begin to identify and bond with the other people in your unit, and the limited hands-on time we had with a handful of levels offered some of the best examples of this ever seen in the admittedly overcrowded genre.
From a skirmish through Troina, Sicily) in choked city streets and back alleys to defending a holed-up 82nd Airborne in Piano Lupo, Italy from dive-bombing Stukas with a .50 cal turret to a night beachfront landing filled with floating mine target practice to an artillery strike on an unsuspecting convoy, the variety in mission objectives gives the game a wonderful sense of depth. It also painted a painfully clear picture of exactly how fragile the soliders' lives really were with a couple of especially poignant deaths - only one of which was obviously scripted.
Of course, if you die, it's game over (something the dozens of teammates we had fall in battle would probably take issue with), so there's near-constant chatter between soliders - both enemy and friendly alike. Constant warnings of taking cover, calling out enemy positions and types and a general sense that the guys you're fighting with actually "see" the battlefield does an impressive job of adding a bigger sense of immersion.
This complements the usual assortment of realistic weapons, constant ambient gunfire and occasional impromptu briefings from our highers-up, but the chewy center of the audio, the plinking and the spattering and the rat-tat-tat-tating, that's all well and good too, and we want to make sure that you understand the two of them, the effects and ambiance, and the deeper, more personal narrative work together in an amazing way.
There's far, far more of the game that we want to get to, and hopefully we will, but being understaffed and overworked means shorter previews. Damn you 4th quarter! Look for more in the coming weeks.
