An unbelievable example of what the Xbox 360 can do and a damn fine first person shooter besides.

Looking at the lineup of games for the groundbreaking Xbox 360, you'll no doubt notice that it is dominated by a majority of EA sports titles and first person shooters. Of the games in the latter genre, only Call of Duty 2 particularly appealed to me. Having played the prequel and its expansion on the PC I am quite familiar with the game's intensity and dramatic representation of World War II. I imagine it's one of, if not the, best World War II game around. I figured if any first person shooter had the potential to really exercise the capabilities of this next generation system, this game would be the one.

Suffice to say that Call of Duty 2 delivers on every single point except one: Duration. The graphics are unbelievable. The controls are exquisite. The story is dramatic and believable. The enemy artificial intelligence scales beautifully on harder difficulty levels and the online modes are perfect representations of the PC counterparts. But the game suffers the same lack of duration that has plagued its predecessors. There are a scant 10 missions in the game (three Russian, four British and three American) leaving me a tad disappointed when I completed the game so quickly. The disappointment is only exaggerated by the fact that the missions that are available are so incredibly enthralling. Had the game been more mediocre, you probably wouldn't notice it as badly. Call of Duty 2 sucks you in, and when the game ends leaves you with some pretty heavy withdrawals.

Which is why I'm playing it again on Veteran difficulty (that and a buttload of gamer points). As a reviewer of games, I consider it rare to actually complete a game. There are just so many out there to review. When I find myself completing a game and then playing it again just to relive the experience I had the first time through, I can tell we have a winner.

Let me start the details of by discussing the graphics of this particular game. Call of Duty on the PC achieved game of the year and for obvious reason. It was a beautiful game with realistic explosions and artfully crafted environments. Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 takes everything from the PC versions, increases the number of soldiers onscreen to an alarming degree, adds unbelievably realistic particle effects (explosions, smoke, snow, and fire) and runs the whole thing in high definition with a frame rate that never once slowed down the entire time I was playing. Though the resolution the 360 is rendering at is not necessarily as high as the best PC gaming rig, the fact that the system is 300 bucks and being output to a Widescreen HDTV and played on wireless controllers makes the gaming experience as far as I am concerned superior to that of the PC.

When it comes to first person shooters on console systems, I always have my reservations. I've had people disagree with me, but I just can't see how a controller can compare to the level of accuracy and speed achievable with a mouse and keyboard. Granted a controller lets you chill on the couch and drink a beer while playing, but to really get down and dirty you need a degree of accuracy. Call of Duty 2 eliminates this issue by providing a capability that auto-aims you at an enemy when you go to look down the sight of your automatic or bolt-action rifle (auto aim does not apply when zoomed in with a scope). You still have to aim your gun at an enemy, but using this feature will line up the gun for you if you happen to be pointing in the general direction of the target. You won't get a head shot using this approach, but if you can control the kickback of your automatic rifle, you can still use it to be pretty deadly. Everything else about the controls is easily considered standard first person shooter stuff, but it's still nice to know that nothing is broken or left out. Grenades are useful and go where you expect. You can stand, crouch, jump or crawl (all very critical postures by the way). You can even smack an enemy with your rifle if they happen to catch you in close proximity while you're reloading, all good things in a war zone.

And you'll feel like you're in a war zone when you play it too. There aren't as many scripted cutscenes as I'd have liked. The scenes from the trailers (one on the beach with grappling hooks, and then another where a British soldier gets Swiss cheesed by an MG42 before he has a chance to kick the door in) are surely the most intense in the game. It's like in a movie where they show the best parts in the trailer and didn't leave anything as good in the actual game. There are plenty of scripted scenes where you're in a truck or you get ambushed or attacked by German infantry units but these scripted scenes don't really come that close to the intensity of what you see in the trailers. In other circumstances this would be a real drag. Luckily Call of Duty 2 is so intense normally, you won't really miss the lack of scripted movies for you to watch. After all, why watch a movie if you can participate in it directly. These cut scenes really are meant as a mechanism for setting the stage and they do achieve that goal. It would have been nice for them to include more dramatic cutscenes like what're in the trailers but I don't believe in docking points for something a developer could have done especially when there isn't a great deal of precedent set by other games.

It's no small miracle that the developers were able to achieve such a level of intensity without simply directing the animation of specific cutscenes. The fact that you can basically throw a whole bunch of Germans and a whole bunch of Allies into an environment and play out a realistic battle is really quite remarkable. If you snipe an MG42 gunner, another German will pick it up and begin shooting. Snipe him too and maybe a third will pick up the gun or maybe they'll decide it's not worth the risk of getting sniped. If you throw a grenade where they can see it, they're liable to pick it up and throw it back at you. I've even seen them go off in a soldier's hand while he was trying to get rid of it (pretty graphic actually). Enemy soldiers that have been shot at will stay hidden for long periods of time to make you think you got them. Then the second you leave cover they pop up and nail you. In these cases, you can flush them out with a well-placed grenade or you can suppress and flank their position. If you are extra brave you can even dash to the next area of cover and let him expose himself to be gunned down by other troopers in your unit.

The game still has its share of triggers where your unit won't advance until you cross an imaginary line, but I'd ask anyone who complains about that to suggest an alternative that would allow you to be the hero that saves the day and not be the guy who decides when to advance (that's rhetorical by the way, please don't send me suggestions for how you'd have done it).

The enemy difficulty scales very well also. On the easiest setting it can be quite difficult to be killed if you have any skill whatsoever. Normal has some hairy battles, but for the most part you shouldn't be too worried. I skipped Hard, went straight to Veteran and had to completely reevaluate how I played the game. On Veteran, if you play like a spazz, you will die no doubt about it. Running into the open is a certified death wish. You're forced to use cover at all times and benefit greatly from learning which weapons work in which situations. It forces you to play smart, use tactics and really get into the game (did I mention that each mission is worth 60 gamer points).

And if you happen to be the type that prefers the more random interaction of a human opponent, Call of Duty 2 has just what you're looking for. Online play for any game can be hit or miss if the server has a crappy connection, but for the most part I didn't experience any network lag. The little lag I did experience on slower servers was not debilitating like in other online FPS titles in the previous generation.

For game modes, it's got the typical deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag you'll find in your typical first person shooters. These are fun in their own right, but the real fun to be had is in the Search and Destroy and Headquarters game modes. In these, you have a more defined goal and more of a need to coordinate and work together to achieve it. You and your teammates will set up defensive positions to hold the objective as long as you possibly can while the other team tries to punch through your defenses and take it back.

Unfortunately, two of the game modes I found particularly intriguing in the PC expansion United Offensive, Base Assault and Domination are not available in Call of Duty 2. I have hopes, though, that there will be an expansion at some point that will include them. Maybe even others.

So Call of Duty 2 is not without complaints, minor blemishes really. It's for that reason and that reason alone that it doesn't receive the superlative ranking. It is still by far an excellent game and plenty worth the cost. You get the single player, the gamer points and an online mode that for first person fans will hold its value for quite some time.