Review - Call of Duty 2: Big Red One 

Even though it has serious flaws, I still consider Big Red One to be my personal favorite because of how much time I've spent with the characters and was saddened when they died in front of me. I could play this over and over again.

I would have to disagree.. This was the first call of duty i ever played and to this day i think it is a amazing game great story and one of if not the best call of duty game out there.. The new games suck. This game was shocking to me when i first played it and jt still plays well.. Not to mention its world war 2..

I agree with most of the aged issues like reload animations and framerate drops, not to omit the fact that some of it may be due to the writing and reading power of at the time disc readers on xbox and ps2. The b-24 mission is a nice step stone to go over the pond so to speak, as when listening to the other pilots, the brother was actually aiding in the destruction of several blockades that will help the Big Red 1 into Sicily. Also it's the first time the player speaks outloud so it's pretty cool for that alone, I think at least. The reason they don't give you time to mourn for the deaths is because that's how war works, I don't know how time for grievance being taken away from you is a bad thing in a story including the point is to show that whiplash of constant emotional movement and pushing on through. I don't think many soldiers would mourn and grieve for a dead friend when there's an invasion going on (like Soap in MW3), ironically if that did happen in this game, that would actually go with your idea of cliche writing, war doesn't give a shit about your feelings and neither does the Army, so you must march on and continue fighting. Also ironic with you being sick of D-Day invasions when this is the only Call of Duty D-Day level that doesn't put you in a Higgins boat. Instead you're on a destroyer. I've seen a lot of people say that they didn't even know it was D-Day since they weren't in a Higgins boat. One other thing on the deaths seen coming from a mile away. When Vic is killed he's unloaded into after breaching a door, you and half a dozen other characters have breached countless doors before this, so I don't know how one door in particular could be seen coming from miles away, Brooklyn maybe could be seen with the line about coming home, and when you said a lot of people died I don't know what game you played but only two people in the squad die, minus the recruit in the prologue, and Hawkins get shot in each theatre, but that's more of a running gag than death. Why I liked the game so much was because it shows a personal view point and a realistic one too. Half your friends either are killed or wounded, and the rest of them, including you, rank up in positions. The only remaining character is the panzy Kelly and the rest of your squad by the end is fill-ins, even the commander is replaced with a no nonsense one. Shit maybe I did play this when I was younger, and shit you're probably gonna dissect this like a frog in grade school, but god damn it this is better than that new WW2 COD game, if most of your problems with the game is that it's aged and it's on console, then wtf, there's a list of games out there that exceed just as this one was as being end life cycle console games, look at 007 Nightfire the PC version was hot garbage compared to the console versions. By a small subgroup of people in Activsion, this game is pretty good for what it is. Simulating a cog in a machine over a 3-4 year period. Also how is this a cash grab to you while simultaneously hiring voice work from Band of Brothers? To me that would need to be a lot a money to pull off.

Again m8, what you only do is hate on its flaws. Game was good in many ways as it was finest hour.

Normandy level is in there because 1st ID was in charge of Operation Overlord with 29th ID and 2nd RBN!

This game looks better then infinite warfare

Big red 1 is a very solid game I don’t get whats awful about the game

I remember playing this game on the ps2 I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

My opinion of Call of Duty 2: Big Red One I will not say is a sequel to Finest Hour, because it was developed by Treyarch, it was completely different form Finest Hour, and plus there was going to be a sequel called Call of Duty: Combined Forces but it was cut. As the game it self, the presentation was not really that great. The story was alright, but it feels like a rehash of the other WWII games. The turret segments is way too much. However, this game should have been Call of Duty 3, so Treyarch could at least have some time to fix the game or improve the game, or Call of Duty 2: Big Red One could have been a Vietnam War Era, because there's so many WWII shooters at that time. I give it a Meh Game.

I think the reviewer is spoiled by having access to too many WW2 games. Had this been a fresh experience for him, he would feel very different.

I always thought people don't mention COD 2: Big Red One, because people just don't know about it.... It also doesn't help that it shares the distinction of being a "second COD" title. Which likely confused people as well.

Your standpoint at reviewing seems cultured around cinematic modern shooters

Ps2 version works just fine.

It was a B-24 Liberator Bomber. B-2 Stealth Bombers didn't exist until Vietnam and after.

Goddamn I loved the bomber section. I even had that never ending issue. Still fun though. Poor Brooklyn... my boy...

hey they probably went to the beach in the game because that's what the big red 1 did IRL

This was one of my first games on the PS2 and I still gotta say that this game was the shit. even pushing nostalgia out of the way the game as a whole is great for its time. overall I wish people can get a piece of what this game was all about and truly see what a good story for WW2 can be.

That doesn't look too bad, you know if I didn't know what year it came out in I'd say it came out in 2003, but that's the thing, 2005: Doom 3, painkiller, fear, Call of duty 2, Half life 2, serious sam 2 etc.

For god sake, what??? People like that game not because of nostalgia but because it's one of the best CoD games. I have never played it as a child, only in recent years (i'm 30), i discovered it, and even though i'm not a huge CoD fan this game was really great. Obviously it's very scripted game, as every CoD game, but it has great, memorable levels, really well thought out firefights (it doesn't play itself like black ops for example), it has it's own style and it's really good on technical side. Graphics are really good for the generation, with rich enviroments, great effects, stable framerate and so much action around - at the same time it just plays great, it's not clunky like many ps2 shooters were. Obviously it's not as good visually as CoD 2 on pc/xbox360, but compared to other ps2/xbox games it's really good in every regard. What are those examples of much better looking games of 6th generation then, apart from Black, and couple xbox exclusives, primarly Doom 3 and Riddick (CoD 2 was also on ps2 and gamecube)? There is a difference in saying that the game now looks dated, but suggesting it was subpar for it's own platform, while clearly it wasn't is just misleading.

I remember when I was a teen I had a stereo set up in my room and I would play the level where you're shooting the 50cal anti air turret (or what ever the caliber is) and I would blast that shit!! it sounded so awesome. GameCube version.

This game was awesome I played it and COD 2 on 360 and love them both. This guy is negative about every game

There is a bit of review om your hate monologue

I loved this game. Sure it kinda sucked but it was really fun to play. Also it was fun to see how terrible some of the reloading animations were.

Imagine calling a PS2's graphics bad in 2016... man I am so sorry its not in HD I would note the graphics are actually good for the PS2 and the story is certainly better then many of the post PS2 generation.

I didn't see his death coming and i had to pause as how hit I was.

I bought this game recently and I think it’s good but I don’t like the character thing because without actual compelling characters like in MW and BO I get bored

I liked this game because of the story and some of the mission levels were unique. This is from 2005 and looking back it looks less fun to play since there are better COD WW2 games that made it basically obsolete. It’s still a good game thought.

Never played the game before but i just picked it up the other day thinking itll just be a ps2 port of cod 2 but tbh i was pretty impressed. Sure the character seems like they were stripped from every other ww2 movie or shooter but thats whats so likable about them. plus the band of brothers cast was awesome. This game had a real good sense of brotherhood and having a team instead of being a one man army. The gunplay is phenomenal in just about every call of duty and this one is no exception, the gunplay was really addicting. Idk maybe im just a sucker for ww2 shooters but this is definitely one of the best ones out there

Make a comparison between the new CoD WW2 and Call of Call of Duty 2 the BigRedOne

I just can't play a console FPS. As of 2013, I have been spoiled by the glory of mouse control and high frame rates.

Nostalgia may be a factor here but I don't remember this game being so bad. I agree that the gameplay is nothing too special and there are a ton of turret sequences. However, I did like the variety of locations and the story was not half bad. To be fair I hadn't seen Band of Brothers yet at the time I played the game. I did pop it into my PS2 and played one level just out of curiosity and I have to admit it did feel choppy. Still, I would give it a replay some time. Again, I'm just curious what I would think of it now.

Did I mention it's like Band of Brothers?

Is it just me or does the game look smoother in this video than on PS2, playing it right now and the video looks smoother

hey DW do you think the video game saurian has any potential if you have heard of the kickstarter?

i remember playing this game back in the day on the ps2 though.

My all-time favorite

this is a great game.

Ah yes I remember the mission where i piloted a B2 Stealth bomber and not a B24 Liberator

F1st! Haha, this meme got old, but I couldn't help myself. Anyways, thanks for reviewing this good ol' CoD subseries, you really did convinced me to get both Finest Hour and Big Red One! CoD3 by Treyarch will be an absolute blast for you as it massively improved on previous console CoDs by Spark.

Did you actually finish the out of place turret sequence that you said didn't end?

DW, I see most of your points, and I get it. This is my nostalgia talking: I love this game; It was my first FPS, and it opened my eyes to a whole new genre of games. Now I'm not going to argue or disrespect you, but I do want to challenge you: for just one second, think about the people who grew up on this game, and other games that you've reviewed, about people who didn't experience Call of Duty 1 or 2, and just try to not be such an asshat in the comments. Also, the reason why you couldn't progress through Mission No. 5: Liberators might have been because you didn't swap between Tail and Nose turrets.

I love Finest Hour and Big Red One but I feel like Call of Duty 2 rehashed a lot of mission types towards the end. Is that odd or my nostalgia just causing this.

People can’t get mad when frames drop and lag happens your not supposed to play older games on newer systems there meant to be played on the older systems

I rember playing this a few years ago.

I strongly disagree with your sentiments towards this game. I think this and Finest Hour are awesome and introduced a bunch of people to CoD that otherwise would never have been able to play it.

I respect your opinion and I guess I don't even disagree with it. I just reserve my right to love this game regardless.

honestly a world war 2 without ohama beach landing....isnt gonna be very good lol. that was one of the most historic battles and I always love seeing how they do it in different games this game being my personal fav call of duty due to its story.

this was being made the same time cod 2 was. and to top it off half of treyarchs team was split in half because treyarch was making cod 3 at that same time. so if cod2: bro had the entire treyarch team it would have been plenty better. 3.5/5

Why is he even complaining about the game not looking as good as CoD on PC? Of course it doesn’t look the same. Your PC from that time had an average of 4GB if RAM and the Graphics Cards of that era had at least 512 MB of VRAM. There were also dual core CPUs. You also had a much nicer hard disk the game was installed to. Even an Xbox 360 had considerably more RAM for both the CPU and GPU. Not to mention a really beefy CPU and GPU for it’s launch time. An Xbox has 64MB of slower DDR... Total... Shared by both the CPU and GPU... and a single core Pentium 3 with cut down cache. Textures, model complexity, animations, ai, all would take a major hit as you need to worry about over taxing the hardware and tanking the frame rate to unplayable levels. Lol. Oh and let’s not forget! All this had to stream off disc. Installing games to a console hard drive still wasn’t a thing on Xbox. Lol.

Still better than MW2.

This game had neater guns than CoD2 though

Can you redux the Kotor Series?

This game support widescreen on Original Xbox ?

This is my favorite call of duty this is how cod should be played instead of the crappy cod with exo suits

Call Of Duty I played and the best one I think out of the series that I have played. Everything past COD4 was terrible, although tbf, everything after this game was terrible, or as a hardcore gamer friend once told me, After COD1 it went downhill. I just finished playing COD1 for the first time and I have to say it is terrible in itself in contrast to BR1 and COD3. Supper rubbish how neither those titles were ever released on PC though, BR1 making sense as it was a console-intended title (although I seem to recall reading it was originally released on PS2) but COD3 not at all. Oh and on WAW, it's clearly a Medal of Honour: Rising Sun rip off. Anyone remember that game, and how ridiculously difficult it was? lol

All you do is complain why don't you just enjoy it instead of saying this about it sucks and drawing it out

it's not working 😳

Will you do a REDUX of Call of Duty 2?

I was disgusted with Finest Hour and disgusted with Big Red One. Their existence merely dilutes the series.

Did you have a bad day when you made this review? Jesus christ lol

Can someone gift him Doom 4 already? I would do it, but my tax return has not come yet.

Bro talking about bad graphics on a PS2 game, ayo, you good?

Ugh, thank you for touching upon reload animations. I know it's a very small thing to comment on, but it's a tiny pet peeve of mine when a game that has a central focus on guns and shooting in an even semi-realistic setting using real guns doesn't bother to have reload animations that make real world sense.

Do one one vietnam conflict bro !!!!!

there's so much rose-tinted nostalgia in these comments