Call of Duty 2

[Bob the Insane]

If shooting 50-100 yards then breathing does not matter that much but to regularly knock down targets at 200 yards plus (especially over 300 yards) you really need to pay attention to your breathing. Personally I always found the Fire Trench to be the most stable positions, especially if you 'cheated' and jammed the base of the magazine into the ground. Then it is breath in, out, in, hold, fire and repeat to get really accurate fire...

Of course I think the game exaggerates effect a bit because the enemy are generally pretty close to you rather than been 200-400 yards away on average...

[Viking]

Dont expect anything as momentous as the fall of Berlin for the ending of Call of Duty 2. The endgame left me wanting more, and not in a good way.

Doesn`t sound good.... Anyway, I am looking forward to try how the D-day landings work out on a different engine. It`s only the 2nd FPS game where you run ashore on the D-day rather than parachuting, right?

I'm going to pick up Brothers in Arms as soon as I can get to the game store. I tried the demo and it's very good. Great fire & movement action. Nice to be able to direct a tank and a squad at the same time. Really opens up a lot of tactical options. Excellent graphics too. I'm able to run BIA (demo) at 1024x768 but CoD2 (demo) only at 800x600.

I read that the new Brothers in Arms, BIA: Earned in Blood, has excellent AI. The enemy moves, retreats, reforms, fixes, and flanks you. I saw a video of it. Very cool.

The only bad part is the iron sight "zoom" mode, which bobbles up and down to simulate breathing, but acts more like someone having an asthma attack. Very, very hard to aim through the sites.

I played the CoD2 demo as well, while good fun and great to look at, it doesn't look as absorbing as BIA.

Sounds good, I might give it a try. There was nothing too exeptional with the original BiA, but it was good.

[Taurus]

No complaints whatsoever in this game apart from the fact that I finished it the day I bought it but the replay value is good so it isn't all bad on that front.

Everything else though is amazing,no two missions are the same. CoD1 was amazing but this is on a whole new level. The AI is great, the graphics are stunning, and the atmosphere is mind blowing, there is nothing like defending a position outnumbered 50-1 with extrememly suitable music playing in the background, bombs going off everywhere, grenades expoloding all around you, ducking for cover from an MG-42...I could go on all day it's just awesome.

Truly excellent game and well worth the money. I advise everyone who has got it to play it NOW and everyone who hasn't got it to buy it and play it NOW


Overall Rating: 9/10

[Kekvit Irae]

Doesn`t sound good.... Anyway, I am looking forward to try how the D-day landings work out on a different engine. It`s only the 2nd FPS game where you run ashore on the D-day rather than parachuting, right?

Yes, but unfortunately, Point du Hauc is in no way the same as the beaches of Omaha or Utah. When you exit your landing craft, the majority of the time you spend on the beach is an in-game scene when your landing craft explodes and you are left stunned on the beach watching others around you die. Once you get control of your character again, it takes five seconds to reach the proper rope to climb (the cliff is FIVE FEET in front of you, unlike Omaha) with virtually no danger to yourself until you get on top of the cliff.
Dont go in expecting something as epic as the rush into Omaha as you did with MoH:AA.

Bleh, I am going to wait for modders to make a truely epic Omaha/Utah/Gold/Juno/Sword beach level. Come to think of it, isnt it about time the British and Canadians get their chance in the D-Day landings spotlight? Granted, Gold/Juno/Sword beaches were not as bloody as Omaha and Utah, but they were as strategically important.

[Viking]

Sounds even worse.... :/

[Alrowan]

CoD2 seems to be lacking in the multi-player from CoD, i just find the game lends itself to spammers and such running about throwing smoke grenades in all close quarters, as opposed to the grinding battles with rifles and such you would get in CoD. to me there is no fun on these urban styled maps where everyone has a tommy or a shotgun (yes its pathetic). Rifles are made pretty redundant in the MP experience, so unless you can point me in the way of some decent rifle maps i think ill be stearing clear of CoD2 MP

[Viking]

Anyone still play this game online...?

[Taurus]

Yes I still play CoD2 online quite frequently. My online name is equiNox°Taurus, and my xfire is taurus1989 if you want to add me.

- Toro

[GoreBag]

I've had the game for quite some time now, and I beat it on the second-to-highest difficulty level after having played the demo to pieces. I was in the process of beating over again on the highest difficulty, but grew bored and eventually uninstalled it.

However, I did find a mod for it, which is still in development, that places the character in the shoes of a German soldier (finally!). The single-player campaign is unfinished, but the multiplayer mod is available.

http://gfm.esgnserver2.de/ It's in German, though, so it may take a little getting used to before you can figure out what's going on.

[Viking]

Yes I still play CoD2 online quite frequently. My online name is equiNox°Taurus, and my xfire is taurus1989 if you want to add me.

- Toro

Cool. I`ve added you. My online name is {VI_Spitfire}-[NOR].

I've had the game for quite some time now, and I beat it on the second-to-highest difficulty level after having played the demo to pieces. I was in the process of beating over again on the highest difficulty, but grew bored and eventually uninstalled it.

However, I did find a mod for it, which is still in development, that places the character in the shoes of a German soldier (finally!). The single-player campaign is unfinished, but the multiplayer mod is available.

http://gfm.esgnserver2.de/ It's in German, though, so it may take a little getting used to before you can figure out what's going on.

I still have to beat the "vanilla" MP to death. Once the SP part is ready, I`ll prolly try it. Thanks for the link.

[Taurus]

Cool. I`ve added you. My online name is {VI_Spitfire}-[NOR].

Ok cool. I'll hopefully see you online soon mate.

[Viking]

Ok cool. I'll hopefully see you online soon mate.

I play the whole day, so, yeah, c' ya soon.

[Androo]

Granted, Gold/Juno/Sword beaches were not as bloody as Omaha and Utah, but they were as strategically important.

Actually, while Omaha turned out to be the most difficult landing, Utah was the least bloody of all the beaches. The main reason being that the first wave of landing craft were fortuitously blown off course and came ashore on a relatively undefended stretch of sand. From the wiki on Utah beach:

By the end of D-Day, some 20,000 troops had safely landed on the beach, along with 1,700 vehicles. Only about 200 casualties were recorded during the landings.

The airborne casualties some miles inland from the beach were much worse, of course.

From the wiki on Juno beach:

In the first hour of the assault on Juno Beach, the Canadian forces suffered approximately 50 per cent casualty rates, comparable to those suffered by the Americans at Omaha Beach. Once the Canadians cleared the seawall (about an hour after jumping off the transports), however, they started to advance quickly inland and had a much easier time subduing the German defences than the Americans at Omaha would...By the end of D-Day the 3rd Canadian Division had penetrated farther into France than any other Allied force, having faced resistance stronger than at any beachhead - other than Omaha.

[Samurai Waki]

CoD 2 had an epic WW2 movie feeling to it, which I kind of liked, but it isn't very intellectually stimulating. I prefered Brothers in Arms and Earned in Blood a bit better because it actually made you think on how to assault certain positions, use your men wisely, and it gave you the feeling like you were really vunerable if you did get shot, you were by no means a superman like you are in CoD.

[professorspatula]

COD2 is the perfect shooter for the generation of players who don't like to die/get stuck for prolonged periods of time. It's gloriously linear and the health system makes you feel a bit like some kind of terminator who can soak up about 200 bullets in an afternoon without breaking into a sweat. It's good fun whilst it lasts but it's a game you know you are going to complete within a couple of sittings. I think it some ways this partial invulnerability thing works against the game as you never really feel inclined to be cautious. Much of the time I spent charging towards the enemy with my Bren/MP44 or whatever, firing until I run out of bullets and take half a dozen shots to the head, before ducking behind a wall, reloading my gun and counting to five and then charging back towards the dumbfounded enemies who were probably convinced they'd killed me already, only to get a facefull of bullets for their troubles. This is how much of the game pans out apart from the scripted moments.

Another thing that slightly distracts from the enjoyment is the large amount of spawning soldiers on both sides. If you don't push forward, you appear to come up against never ending hordes of nazis. It feels a little unnecessary but does at least mean you have some large firefights as your side faces off against a relentless foe, with you gradually moving forward and ducking after taking another 6 shots in the eye. You never really care about your chaps either as when they snuff it, another one appears and takes their place. There was one mission towards the end of the game where I was holed up in a farm house and defending against a massive nazi push. My team consisted of a Bren Gunner, and up to about 8 riflemen/sub-machine gunners. When the battle is over and I returned to the house, there were about 10 bren guns on the floor, suggesting at least 10 or more replacement clone bren gunners had spawned in turning the fight. A shame they didn't all appear at once as that would have been one hell of a battle then.

Btw, does anyone else find the MP44 is by far the most used gun in the game? Really there's hardly any point using anything but it during most missions, aside from ammo concerns and the odd bit of variation.

It is a fun game though. The sort of thing you show your mates or play now and again when you just want to blast the hell out of history's favourite villians. A tad too simplistic and underwhelming to be a true classic, but definitely enjoyable.

[Kraxis]

Agreed PP. The invulnerability was the reason why it took me so long to get it. I hate it wih a passion. And coupled with a stronger health in general (you can soak up more bullets before dying) it becomes a bad concept very fast.

But that is about the only downside I had.
I like that the enemy respawns. No more picking him off from a distance, unless you do it fast and run to take advantage of it right away. It mgiht not be very historical, but thein again it might. But at the least it makes sure we can't take advantage of the limited intelligence these men have. We have to fight for sure.

I absolutely loved the battles in the little town where you are British I think (well all the British battles were great, if somewhat odd at times, especially the tankbusting in the square). You slowly push the Germans back, fighting heated fights from crate to crate, seeing buddies getting blasted, grenades flying (I can't count the times I got killed by grenades), rushing into smoke and removing the last defenders. I LOVED it. I felt like a real soldier, not the usual hero. Of course I was a very good soldier, with positively a couple German companies on my kill list, but still.

Had the Germans had a fixed number, then they would have been easy to deal with. Sitting back with a rifle would do it.

I usually used the Bren or MP44 too, but I always kept a Garant/Gewehr 43 as backup. Especially if the Gewehr has a scope. Those rifles are very much useable as backups when you run out of ammo.
But the PPSh (Pah pah shah) is also a pretty good weapon for those close fights in Stalingrad.

In any event I did use rifles to an extent, and not just for longrange. Sometimes they were also useable at midrange.

[tibilicus]

I didn't really play the Sp but played the MP for a while had alot of life in it.

Im mianly playing CSS as my FPS at the moment though.

[professorspatula]

I haven't given mp much of a chance but from what I've played of it, it didn't really excite me that much. First go I chose a shotgun and remained in the top 3 killers on my side, even with my team being massively outnumbered for ages. The one shot, one kill thing seemed a bit brutal but effective. Then I tried a few other game variations and weapons and found myself a bit bored and frustrated. The Mp44 seems a killer weapon for the Germans, and the Spagin allows the Russians to spam fire for fun. It reminded me a bit of Hidden and Dangerous 2 online, albeit it much faster, with much better hit detection, yet not as fun. Perhaps I miss being able to play HD2 online with just a knife and a grenade and come top too much to appreciate being a middle of the road nobody in COD2 with a submachine gun or whatever. I also found the online experience to be full of whiners complaining about cheaters every 5 seconds. That really annoys me because everyone ends up paranoid all the time often over nothing. Most games seem to suffer from that though I suppose.

[Proletariat]

What level of difficulty are you folks who are mentioning being invulnerable playing on?

[Kraxis]

Not invulnerable, but just that you can soak up a good deal of damage, then rest and get it filled up again.

[Viking]

I haven't given mp much of a chance but from what I've played of it, it didn't really excite me that much. First go I chose a shotgun and remained in the top 3 killers on my side, even with my team being massively outnumbered for ages. The one shot, one kill thing seemed a bit brutal but effective. Then I tried a few other game variations and weapons and found myself a bit bored and frustrated. The Mp44 seems a killer weapon for the Germans, and the Spagin allows the Russians to spam fire for fun. It reminded me a bit of Hidden and Dangerous 2 online, albeit it much faster, with much better hit detection, yet not as fun. Perhaps I miss being able to play HD2 online with just a knife and a grenade and come top too much to appreciate being a middle of the road nobody in COD2 with a submachine gun or whatever. I also found the online experience to be full of whiners complaining about cheaters every 5 seconds. That really annoys me because everyone ends up paranoid all the time often over nothing. Most games seem to suffer from that though I suppose.

I usually play at a server where shotguns is not playable, and where whiners will be shut if they don`t have any evidence for what they`re saying. Shotguns are just plain boring, you don`t stand a chance against them in close fights, so I never use them even on servers where they are allowed.

[Taurus]

Yes but the invulnerability very much changes in mp. You should give it a go if you havn't already, it's definatly one of the best mp FPS's out there, IMO.

[Proletariat]

I never really play these games (FPS types), so that might explain why I die alot playing on one setting above normal. I second your comments in this paragraph..

I absolutely loved the battles in the little town where you are British I think (well all the British battles were great, if somewhat odd at times, especially the tankbusting in the square). You slowly push the Germans back, fighting heated fights from crate to crate, seeing buddies getting blasted, grenades flying (I can't count the times I got killed by grenades), rushing into smoke and removing the last defenders. I LOVED it. I felt like a real soldier, not the usual hero. Of course I was a very good soldier, with positively a couple German companies on my kill list, but still.

..but I also think it's worth trying to play a few areas while limiting yourself to a K98k procured from a fresh German corpse. If you hit someone center mass, they're likely to die instantly, somewhat offseting the slow bolt action provided you have some decent cover to use between shots. Makes it more fun to me, anyhow

[Kraxis]

Yeah it is a pretty strong weapon when you hit, just like the British rifle (I actually used it for a while).

[Alexanderofmacedon]

CoD is a game I'd love to get. I need to come up with $50 somehow

[Taurus]

You won't be dissapointed.

[Monarch]

The 1.2 patch is out including two new multiplayer maps :)

[Viking]

Although I have only played the Rostov map once, I didn`t like it. I played german in a tdm, and we didn`t stand a chance against the Russians who just sprayed you down shortly after you had spawned. Not fun.
The trick was that the map consist about only of small streets, and that the Ppsh is superior to any german weapon under such conditions.

[Monarch]

Although I have only played the Rostov map once, I didn`t like it. I played german in a tdm, and we didn`t stand a chance against the Russians who just sprayed you down shortly after you had spawned. Not fun.
The trick was that the map consist about only of small streets, and that the Ppsh is superior to any german weapon under such conditions.

Lol, that's so funny because I came to the same conclusions and typed in the chat thing "great, another machine gunners map" which basically one fanboy replied and was going on about how it's a great map and you can use rifles on it, to which like 5 other people backed me up.

[Taurus]

I feel the same way about the Rostov map too, but the Wallender-Germany map is awesome in my opinion especially for search and destroy.

A lot of people have indeed complained about the new patch though.