Games galore.

Many of you will know my passion for UT2004 and I am rather selective about what games I install (as time is an issue) but I have recently been given, due to a combination of kindness and overactive ordering, a copy of Call of duty 2.
Now upon first inspection the game looks very much like Medal of honour, well it is made by the same people, but it it does have some very nice touches.
For staters you begin as Prvt vesilis (real russian sniper, russian hall of heroes, watch enemy at the gate) in the ruins of starlingrd, which makes a change from being a US soilder. the missions are a lot more absorbing than Medal as they amalgamate several into one which enables you to continue along without to much waiting around for loading screens.
Some of the gameplay touches are nice, things like being able to pick weapons up from the dead but also the idea of not just having generic ammunition, russian gun russian ammo.
My favourite touch is to the sniper rifle, in most games when you look through the sight on a snipers rifle you get a static view, you line up the shot, bang. With this one however you get a slight wobble, to steady you have to hold shift at which point you hear a sharp intake of breath and you heartbeat. The longer you hold shift the louder your beat gets until you can hold you breath no longer and your sight wobbles wildly around. All this has the effect of completly emersing you in what you are doing (which ment I got shot in the back a couple of times by erant nazi troopers). This brings me nicely to my next item and that is the AI.
Like most of these games the AI is fairly stupid on the easy setting but having said that they are still fairly tricky buggers to shoot, added to that if you wing them they will lie on the ground and shoot at you with there pistol or try and crawl away, they also have a nice way of relocating and replacing fallen men on gun implacments which gives the game a little more edge.
After the russian missions you move onto british at Al elamein and it starts to get a little more hairy from the start with clearing bunkers, crossing mine fileds with tanks and spotting for artillery.

The overall graphics are excelent and the general feel is great, the balistics and reactions are good (shrapnel etc) and the gameplay is great. But I will reserve final judgement till the end.
The only gripe I have is that in all these games your own men tend to be a little dim and step in front of you while you are shooting, which can be a little annoying.

So far I am about halfway through the game and would recomend it, especialy if you like the whole ww2 genre that is about at the mo.
- posted by J @ 14:07