25 January 2013

Review: Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (Xbox)

Big Red One is a spin off on Call of Duty 2, exclusive for the home consoles. Instead of the regular mish mash of storyline telling it focuses on one single company, namely Big Red One. Is it Call of Duty? Yes it is. Is the gameplay intact? Yes it is. Is it one of those generic World War II-shooters? Yes it is.

I for one did not get all that in to the "WW2-games" that ruled the earth a few years ago. This is probably why I found this particular game to be very intriguing. It has a lot of intense action, it is very fast paced, it has engaging and believable interactions between the characters and it is over all a very polished and fun experience. Like most of the Call of Duty installments, that is. I am not what you would call an Call of Duty-fan but I do think the series have a lot of sweet moments and I still buy the CoD-games coming out for the PS3 and 360 nowadays.

One of the very first things that bothered me though, with this game is the controls. Or the button layout to be more precise. I have to choose between just a select few predetermined setups and of course they all have some irritating faults. There is, for exampe, no way to put the reload on X and the "aim down the sights" on L at the same time. If I choose to have "aim down the sights" on L, then I have to have grenades on X - and reload on one of those fiddly buttons called Black and White - which I never seem to find fast enough with my thumb. That way I throw grenades everytime I try to reload since I am very used to reload with X. If I put reload on X, then L becomes grenade, so naturally I throw a grenade every time I want to aim down the sights. It is a mess.

While the story is not really all that interesting, it is easy to see why Call of Duty became so enormous. It has got tight gameplay, responsive controls and it quite honestly feels pretty up to par with even todays games in ways. Do not get me wrong, there are a few classic older bugs like characters getting stuck and stops the game from progressing, a few minor things like a certain weapon not being able to reload properly and so on... But it has a intense and immersive atmosphere to the point that when I was not playing I only thought about playing. It can be had for dirt cheap, it is a must have!