Call of Duty 2 (PC)

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The Pointe du Hoc landing is intense

The game looks great too, albeit in a different way to the likes of Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. It's not so much about flash as it is about atmosphere. Whether it's the stunning plumes of smoke spewing from a carefully placed smoke grenade, or the soft lighting casting a glow over an otherwise ugly, war torn village, Call of Duty 2 immerses you into the world like no other game. That's not to say that the rest of the game isn't impressive; soldiers are modelled superbly giving them a real sense of being, weapons could have been lifted from a military museum and environments are pleasing in design and diversity.

Little details haven't gone unnoticed either. Enemies will attempt to crawl away to a safe position if wounded, but still alive. Some even accept their fate, simply choosing to fire their weapon in one last attempt to help their nation. Solider animations are superb all over, from the rushed vaults of your squad-mates as they attempt to scamper over walls, to their lifeless falls to the ground moments after a bullet has pierced their skull, sending their helmet flying through the air. At times the whole experience is staggering, with everything working together to create a truly astonishing videogame experience.

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This wouldn't be half the experience if it weren't for the game's peerless audio. A great score and booming sound effects are pretty much a given, and the game doesn't disappoint in this area, but it's the constant chatter from your comrades that brings the endless battles to life. At times it's scarily realistic, with shouts of "More tanks coming in from the North," "Jerries, in the building on the left," and "Watch out, Potato Masher." It's brilliant, and while certain phrases are repeated, it never feels repetitive; it just sinks you further into the experience

There are some problems though, with the biggest being the game's sluggish performance. Running with all the fancy DirectX 9 features turned on, at a reasonably high resolution isn't for PCs with a faint heart (or GPU). The highest settings made mincemeat of my Athlon 64 and 6800GT, forcing me to cut back on some smoke and texture settings, and to sacrifice my TFT's native resolution. Even when smooth performance had been achieved there would be random performance degradation, often turning a smooth frame rate into a horrible chugging one. Reloading the section sorted things out, but it wasn't an ideal way to play through the game. A DirectX 7 mode can be used for lower end hardware, but while the game is essentially the same, a lot of the atmosphere is lost, making for a less intense experience.

All three campaigns combined take little over ten hours to complete...

The single-player game is also pretty short (although this is becoming the norm these days). All three campaigns combined take little over ten hours to complete, but if played on the highest difficulty setting this number could be doubled. There's also no real story to get involved in. The game is more about throwing you into certain situations and then throwing you straight into another. There's never a dull moment, but you don't really feel any connection to any of the characters either.

The game's developer, Infinity Ward, has also included a solid multiplayer mode, but it isn't for everyone. There's the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag, plus the search and destroy mode that was in the original. In this mode one team must attempt to blow up a certain object or location, while the other team tries to defend it. The only other mode is 'Headquarters' which is essentially a fight for possession of the map. Teams battle it out to set up headquarters in set areas of the map and must maintain their position to score points. The defending team's members can't respawn, so the attackers always have a good chance of overrunning the headquarters and gaining possession themselves. It's a neat mode, and certainly offers something that might gain a fairly large fan following. There's nothing astounding about any of them though, making the multiplayer something that die hard fans of the single-player will enjoy more than casual players.

There's a great variety to the levels

If you've been waiting for this sequel since you finished the original a few years ago, you won't be disappointed. It's a thoroughly entertaining, immersive experience from start to finish that hardly ever skips a beat. Vehicle sections could have been left on the design room floor, and the multiplayer mode doesn't have the simple appeal of Quake 4 or the epic scale of Battlefield, but these are minor quibbles. If you've got the hardware you'd be a fool to miss out on such an involving first-person shooter.

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