Call of Duty 2: Big Red One Preview

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When Call of Duty: Finest Hour was released on consoles last year, something was a bit lost in the translation between the game and its older PC brother. The game was lacking in terms of intensity and a sense of realism and paled when compared to Call of Duty and its PC expansion pack. However, Big Red One, the next COD to hit consoles, is looking to reintegrate the sense of action and intensity that was missing by featuring a brand new campaign that takes the player around the frontlines in places like Sicily and North Africa. This time around, you are placed in a true to life squad of soldiers, known as the Big Red One, which since the First World War has been on the frontlines of many a conflict. The game takes the familiar successful Call of Duty gameplay formula and builds on it, making it a realistic and engaging experience.

The gameplay in Call of Duty: Big Red One still feels a lot like the other games in the series. You work closely with your squadmates to complete missions, and they operate quite intelligently and wholly separate from you.

The game takes place primarily in North Africa and Italy, representing those areas very well. The graphics for the new areas look fantastic and the environments can be somewhat destroyed by your gunfire and explosions. The environments do a good job of portraying what the battle situations must have been like, as the intensity level has noticeably been raised in this game. The worlds will be a lot more populated, with more non-playable characters on the battlefield than ever.

Graphically, the game will be a noticeable improvement over Finest Hour. The gun and hand animator actually went down to Las Vegas in order to fire all of the guns in the game, just to get a sense of how the look and recoil in order to add authenticity to the gunfire. The character models have also been cleaned up a lot, and the animations have been improved. The damage that the areas can take is also pretty impressive.

Call of Duty: Big Red One is looking to improve upon the original and give console gamers the Call of Duty game that they deserve. Look for it this fall.

For All E3 2005 Previews