Once in the house, I slowly approached the stairs, knowing that the
Germans had probably posted a guard to protect the back of the machine
gunner. Even knowing that, they still almost get me as I came
around the corner of a low wall alongside the stairs. One soldier
popped out of a room on the other side of the stairs and another was
waiting halfway up the stairs. It took quick reactions to get a
shot off at the soldier in the room, causing him to duck back behind
the wall, and swing the gun onto the soldier on the stairs and give him
a five shot burst. By the time I got that done, the other soldier
was coming after me again. I swung your gun back to him just in
time to get a shot off before he could.
My involvement in all of this action was very fluid and did not feel
scripted, although in many ways it most assuredly is. In a very
clever way, the developers have pre-positioned both friendly and enemy
troops, vehicles, and events along each of the paths through a level
that you may choose to take. Crossing certain invisible points
will cause other troops to move or actions to occur. As in a
movie, all of this is completely transparent to you, allowing a
suspension of disbelief that allows you to vicariously experience a
first person view of large scale, fast-moving fire fights. The
level of action and the highly detailed environment felt almost exactly
like the city-wide fights depicted in the Band of Brothers movies, with
the significant difference of having a high degree of interactivity in
the story.
The fluidity and of the action combined with the autonomous movements
of the other troops mask any feeling of being led through a maze, a
problem encountered in previous generation games of this
type. The feeling of being a soldier participating in a
large battle, following your fellow troops and listening for the
commands of your sergeant but also making on-the-spot decisions as to
how to proceed, is very immersive. Decision making is often
reduced to which crate or wall to duck behind, and how long to stay
there before trying to advance on the enemy. The action is nearly
constant, and there is always the requirement to keep advancing before
running out of ammo. The enemy is aggressive, but will seek cover
or fall back to a better position if pressed hard.
Call of Duty 2 does a spectacular job capturing the essence of
the large scale battles as depicted in the Band of Brothers
movies. The graphical environment and sounds of war are perfectly
tuned to provide an intensely believable background to the tight action
and fighting. There’s another aspect of the movies, however, that
is lacking from
Call of Duty 2. Part of the overall arc
of the Band of Brothers series is the development of the leadership
abilities of Lt. Winters. In
Call of Duty 2, you follow
your squad and act as an infantry man. You aren’t faced with the
significant tactical challenges that confront squad leaders. To
experience that tactical leadership aspect of combat, you have to play
Ubisoft's
Brothers in Arms: Earned In Blood.
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