The Best Call of Duty Everyone Forgot 

One quick thing!: There are sten guns and crosshairs in the VANILLA version of the game, which I was NOT playing. I was playing a gore mod, and I've had it for so long that I forgot that sten guns and sights ever even existed in the game to begin with. I don't think the gore mod changed anything except for a few small things related to weapons, so all the rest of the input in this video should still be accurate, if a bit subjective. Thanks to all the civilized commenters who pointed that out. 👌

People forget that cod used to be a very well made and innovative series. Biggest fall off in gaming

Fun fact: In the Soviet training mission, right after you leave the room with the German prisoner in it, you can hear a very distinct shot. If you then go back in the room, you can see that Letlev has shot the prisoner.

Honestly the dynamic callout system was one of my favorite things about the game. Especially with the fact that the soldiers shout out each others names. It makes the soldiers I'm fighting with in the game feel much more real, hearing them shout something like "O'Brian, I'm reloading, cover me!" or "Matese, german soldiers by the lower wall, watch yourself!"

@22:50 "Sgt Randall, the guns are gone!" "WHAT?" "THE GUNS. AREN'T. HERE!" That line will forever be embedded in my memory

Call of Duty 2 was the first game I ever played. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

It's incredible to me that one of the best singleplayer mission structures ever was in a game as early COD 2 and almost never seens again, the Sniper defense mission in Stalingrad where any enemies that you can't kill from afar actually makes it into the house and you need to engage in close-quarters combat instead. Absolutely amazing game.

MY LIFE WILL BE COMPLETE WHEN THEY REMASTER THIS ONE DAY. I have been dreaming of this for YEARS. It’s my favorite COD. It’s my very first COD I’ve ever played.

The reason why you never had a cross hair for the tank portion, was due to the fact you weren't playing the vanilla version. You had some sort of realistic mod in place. Extra gore/blood splatter, more dynamic rifle manipulation, and some other improvements

If you want something to really blow your mind.. Call of Duty 1 and 2 were released only 2 years apart but are VASTLY different in terms of visuals, sound design, 3D models, textures, etc. It's truly insane to look at. It shows how fast gaming tech advanced in the early 2000s. Call of Duty 2, 4 and WaW are the best CoD games and nothing after that has hit the spot.

I first played the game when I was 9. I vividly remember the opening scene for D-Day and the name Taylor. Later that year around Halloween my mom got me a beautiful blonde German Shepard. I named him Taylor for reasons that should be obvious. He died last year at 13 years old. I miss you my boy.

I played Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 and I was so shocked at how gripping and fun it was that I 100%'d it. I remember struggling with one particular mission in insane difficulty, trying to clear out a church filled with Germans. I'm probably going to grab it on Steam at some point and relive it. Truly a wild experience.

Call of Duty 2 feels like a game where you relive the memories of veterans. Wish future cod games could've kept in the same spirit as thay

There is a sort of "prequel" mod in cod 2 called the Spanish civil war mod. Apparently actual veterans were consulted in the making of it. Definitely recommend.

Unknown fact: The game included the Spanish blue division, as some soldiers in German uniform had in fact the Spanish flag on their helmet

its refreshing for me to see this game shines again in Modern CoD Fanbase. And it surprise me that many folks here actually does the first ever game played with this masterpiece.

I adore the pre-COD4 games and how they played out more like a documentary, or a flashback from a veteran telling his tales. I even remember playing COD 3 and watching the bonus features you unlock, which were interviews with different veterans from the war. Really felt like a tribute to the people of that time, and some of the later ones like World at War and Black Ops still felt historical, in a way, like using real events and war footage. Even COD 4 had a lot of that same classic tone to it, even if that was a more story-driven game before MW2 cranked it up.

World at war always seems to overshadow 2. 2's really good though and I prefer it to waw as well

"You hear Norman has been sent home?" "Lucky bastard."

COD 1 and COD 2 will always have a special place in my heart, playing them as a teen is the experience I will never forget.

This game had a vibe that your school required you to play this game all the way through as a homework assignment, for some reason. I always did love the educational aspect of this, I was hugely into WWII as a child, and even I never knew the battles of Stalingrad, or the North Africa campaign of the British Royal Army.

Call of duty 2 was a very early peak for the franchise imo

5:25 so as someone who’s degree is in history, this really did happen. Many Red army soldiers were often given one to two clips of rifle ammunition and told to follow another soldier and to use his rifle upon his death. Furthermore, USSR Order No. 227 contains the line ordering all soldiers that “not a step back” should be taken, and political commissars can and often did shoot those that retreated.

Never ever forgot this gem. Still feel the same when I play it today. It got me so interested into the dark history of ww2 and that it was actually a real horrible event.

I think that is really true. COD campaigns felt so much better when they weren't James Bond movies. In COD4 the missions as the marines it felt great because you didn't feel like you were in a super secret task force and it felt much more realistic as if it were an actual infantry unit.

Couldn't agree more. I wish the way damage was calculated in cod 2 was kept in later games :/

This game will always bring back memories for me and just pulled it out again after watching this. Had just gotten my first job working in a small supermarket, saved up my first month to buy a 360 in a package deal with this game only, couldn't afford the memory card so played the Russian campaign over and over the first week 😂 My friend brought his 32 inch absolute tank of a TV up to my box room and we somehow squeezed it in, split screen 4 player on Caen defending one of the houses in a game we completely made up 😂 These were the days 🙂

Who said it's forgotten ?

I remember my dad played this game with me when I was younger. He loved it. He doesn't play video games often

19:20 I don't know what mods you were using while recording, but in the vanilla version the British do use Stens in the European portion of their campaign. Very nice detail how they use the Thompson (incorrect one as they used the M1928 but still) in 1942 and Sten in 1944

i taught my grandpa how to play this game and we played it togeather every weekend, he was not a ww2 vet he was a kid during the war but loved the game

Dont know how to describe it but unlike in other COD games in COD2 you can really "feel" the punch of the bullets hitting enemy bodies.

About 5:25 ... that did happen, yea... but not in Stalingrad, it was during the the first moments of barbarossa, during a big pincer movement in Ukraine, many soviet units were encircled, they tried to break out of the pocket, but since it was the start of the concflict, not everyone was well equipped, and in one of these attacks, not everyone was armed with rilfes, some only had pistols or straight up knifes, It happened in Odessa if I'm not mistaken And about executing retreating soldiers, it also happened, not in Stalingrad, but still in Ukraine in 1941, I dont remember who exactly, but a pesky officer was desperate for a victory against the advancing german army, i think it was near the border between Ukraine and russian, he sent a unit to attack, they retread, he was super mad at it and shoot them with his revolver, but he was imprisioned and executed for it. The USSR did have many barrier troops and penal battalions though But those are isolated cases, results of bad leadership, logistics and desperation, the USSR was absolutely awnful and horrible, but these specific things were not the rule

Beating this game on max difficulty has to be one of the toughest fps challenges I’ve done. Hill 400 was a brutal slog and helped sell just how insane a task it was irl. But it’s also one of the most fun fps challenges I’ve ever done, really enjoyed it!

I'd love to play a remastered version of this game

Defending that bloody hill in the American campaign towards the end was a nightmare on Veteran. Towards the end of it, I had like two invincible AI teammates left and German tanks were just parked near the bunker. Somehow managed to pull it off, but I spent a lot of time prone and popping up only to shoot a panzerschreck at the nearest tank.

Call of Duty 2 always held a special place in my heart solely for the Pointe du Hoc landing mission : the landing took place only a few kilometers aways from a village where my grandparents used to live and where they are buried today. During my childhood, every summer, I would spend a month here and would often visit the Pointe du Hoc site. To this day, you can still see the gaping holes left by the intense shelling of the area and I'm amazed how accurate the place look in-game compared to its real-life counterpart. My parents also befriended a US veteran (thanks to a veterans organization I believe) from the 2nd Rangers Batallion who landed there and climbed the cliffs. My father told me once that this veteran came back to France once for a ceremony in Normandy. My grandfather took him and my father on his fishing boat so they could see the cliffs from the sea. That veteran was an old-school rugged Texan who spend his entire life in the military, but according to my father, he cried a lot when he saw the cliffs from the sea. So even though I'm having fun playing CoD 2 from time to time, I often think about guys like this veteran, or unlike him, I think about those who weren't lucky to survive this war, and I feel grateful for never having to live through such an atrocity and I can't thank them enough for their sacrifice. Sorry for the long comment, I got a bit carried away ^^' EDIT : I'd like to add a funny story about that veteran. We have a picture of him in shaking hands with Ronald Reagan in 1984 for the 40th anniversary of D-Day, the day Reagan made his speech that you can hear at 25:50. Being an ardent republican, that veteran gladly shook his hand. However, a decade later, for the 50th anniversary, it was Bill Clinton's turn, who was then US president and a democrat, to make a speech and meet the veteran. In order to avoid shaking hands with Clinton, the veteran pretended to have his right arm in a cast.

The golden age for the series was COD 4 to Black Ops 2 but the first 3 games that came back in the early to mid 2000s were also pretty damn good. After all Call Of Duty's roots were in World War 2 where you could play as multiple countries

People forget that Call Of Duty was a Medal Of Honour competitor.

Unironically my first cod, I'm not even that old. it was like peak BO2 when I first played this. Also I fucking love how the old cod games had little documentary snippets

Usually there are crosshairs on the mounted weapons & tanks. Whatever mod you have installed which increases the gore (the base game doesn't have any dismemberment) seems to have changed a few things elsewhere which have contributed to your issues. The guns also don't usually lag as much behind your aim as they do in your version, some of the sounds are changed (like the assault on pointe du hoc scene where you're dismounting the boat), and in the british missions there are usually Sten guns, not sure what mod you have installed which is changing that. Still enjoyed the video, I tend to agree with most of your thoughts and also wish there were more missions. I think the main reason cod2 felt so good to shoot targets in was because all the rifles are what became sniper rifles in later games, just without the scope. The high damage means you have a very powerful weapon at most times, rather than having an assault rifle whose damage is similar to a submachine gun.

i sat down and played cod 2 last year and it was one of the first games I've sat and just played from start to finish since i was about 18. its not as flashy as new games but dam does it feel amazing to play its just fun and never stops being fun. even the bits that arnt as good you just keep playing because you know it will be worth it just to see what else this game has in store.

5:30 It is exaggerated. But it happened for penal troops, they did have machine gunners behind them. Blockade troops that prevent retreating were used in USSR every time they were losing, also in civil war. They were not necessarily gunning people straight away but were arresting them, handing prison sentences and also executing them.

The amount of time I spent only on Multiplayer and having fun, meeting new people, playing on weird servers is just whole other type of experience we had back in the day when internet was not really available especially in my country. Miss those old Xfire days 😮‍💨

The tank mission is actually good in cod2... Something was really messed up with your settings since you had no crosshair and the guns were flaling all over. Idk which version you played but the steam version does not have that amount of gun movement when you pan the camera and you do have a crosshair on the tank mission. You also have a crosshair on the binoculars, which you can use to aim at tanks long distance. Apart from that, great video, cod 2 is severely underappreciated!

The D day section in Cod 2 is still one of my favorite missions in any game purely from the sound design perspective. Hearing shells wizzing around and impacting combined with gunfire and soldiers yelling makes for peak immersion. Much better then cod WW2. Edit: Cod fans who play HLL and don’t try to actually learn the game are irritating as shit

This game was my first multiplayer game I've ever played. I just remember playing almost 24/7 in those internet caffes with strangers and friends, oh the memories.

I remember being obsessed with COD2 on PC. The online multi-player was amazing. So many different mods, I remember COD2 being rhe first online game to introduce me to the zombies mod. Game starts with a few survivors and a group of "zombies" (German soldiers with knives and bloody cloths lol.) Also remember low gravity servers and full auto bolt action/unlimited ammo servers. So many fond memories back aro6nd 2006-2007 can't remember exactly.

There is something wrong with your game, The tank mission should include crosshairs, i also noticed the reticle was missing while you were using turrets. Anyways great video man, i grew up with this game and love it dearly, also to add to the pointe du hoc mission, i went there a few years back, and the game's representation of fortifications and their locations are all incredibly accurate, they really did their homework on that level

Hill 400 to this day is one of my favorite missions, working your ass to get to the top and then having to defend it, looks crazy when you set dead bodies on insane.

The callouts in this game were definitely carried over to the OG MW trilogy. In those games, you can hear the operators giving callouts over the radio like "Ghost, tango on the second floor at 12 o'clock" "Copy, I'm on him!" or "Sandman, targets by the loading dock, 3 o'clock!" "Negative, I don't have a shot!" It's something that has definitely gotten lost in CoD but it didn't die with CoD2.

YES I played the demo of this game too. I must have played through it almost a dozen times before realizing that there was a larger game that I could nag my parents to buy.

Sten's are in Finest Hour as well.

Call of Duty 2 was by far my favorite CoD, especially once you got to the US missions. You really feel the inspiration from band of brother in the banter between the NPC soldiers, like the "Silo" mission where the exchange about the mg crew leaving behind the ammo can makes it feel so much better.

CoD2 was my introduction to proper first person shooters. It was an incredible experience.

CoDs 1, 2 and 4 were huge parts of my childhood. Masterfully crafted games and I'm glad you're giving the oldies credit. On PC 2 had so many cool modded servers and 4 had awesome modded modes like prop hunt, deathrun and paintball

Cool historical fact of the day: late actor, Christopher Lee actually was part of the British campaign in northern Africa, under the SAS, conducted a lot of top secret missions, and later in his life, a reporter ask him what he did in those missions, he said, and I quote! Christopher Lee: “Can you keep a secret?” Reporter: “yes.” Christopher Lee: “So can I…”

Will always be one of the best fps games made

I actually feel the shooting mechanics in this game are closer to real life than what they developed into

The OG Call of Duty. When I first booted it up, I was just stunned by the graphics and then...then the campagne hit me. Perfectly orchestrated.

The victory theme when you finish the long series of battles at Pointe du Hoc is so goddamn fulfilling, it really gave the feeling of a hard battle for days and the speech at the end is the icing on the cake.

I definitely remember using sten guns in the caen levels in cod2, I think you're playing with a mod so it might be that and also this is a very good video

I mean, after the invasion of Barbarossa, the Russians had to move like dozens of manufacturing plants and other industrial hardware for their war effort further East in order to have a better logistical chance to defeat the Nazi invasion. Keep this in mind, at the beginning of the invasion in 1941, the Soviet Union did have a lack of arms and ammunition but did not lack in man power, so they decided to somewhat throw Soviet soldiers into battle without sufficient training, supplies, or hardware just so that the Soviet Union could have enough time to adequately move their manufacturing bases further East without significant damage to them. In a way, the Soviet Union did actually throw their soldiers into battles like in some of the extreme cases you see in these games or movies, but not to the same wide spread extent or time that is depicted.

For those of you not old enough to enjoy the CoD1/CoD2 e-sports scene, it was extremely fun. There were several online leagues and you could do all of the matchmaking/team building on an IRC server, which is sorta like a massive discord where people would tryout for teams that did league play, find matches, or do pick up games (early form of matchmaking). CoD2 had about 1/5th the population of CSS/1.6. It was the same pace as counterstrike, but played more like battalion 1944 without sprinting (could lean, prone, etc.), which was more suitable for S&D than modern CoDs imo.

I booted up the CoD2 like 2 weeks ago and I got goose bumps playing soviet Demolition chapter. I was so glad to return to such smooth gunplay and amazing atmospehere.

@19:22 I have the steam version of COD:2. And to my recollection, I recall during the European campaign for the British there being SOME Sten Guns even if the player might not start the level with one, I'm fairly sure it's possible to pick one up if another allied NPC equipped with a sten drops it. I usually would go for the Bren instead though.

The finale of the Stalingrad campaign takes place in Dom Pavlov. It's a bit obscure for history buffs but you will always lose the squad sergeant to a sniper beforehand. A new sergeant named Yakov Pavlov will replace him. Pavlov is frighteningly competent compared to the Commissar but you are are harassed nonstop by German mechanized foot and what used to be an entire division is reduced to a handful of squads. Pavlov leads you into an apartment building for a last stand when he realizes you are the only building that can overwatch the entire area that's still held on the German controlled Volga river. The Germans are mad as hell about it and throw everything they got and take a warehouse across the street to use against you and you pretty much have to alternate between suppressing reinforcing armor and the nonstop war of attrition against the guys in the Milk House and hiding whenever the Luftwaffe can be assed to strafe the house. The entire battle is the recreation of the story of Dom Pavlov compressed into a single battle, where you guessed it, a sergeant named Yakov Pavlov took an apartment building with 60 men and held out against the entire Germany army for two months until Soviet forces counter attacking rescued them. The Soviets used it as a morale boost and General Chuikov claimed the Germans lost more men trying to take the house from Pavlov than capturing Paris. It's probably neck and neck with the siege of the Danzig Post Office (50 mailmen and their children hold out against the Waffen SS and SA for an entire day using a cache of weapons and postal parcels) and Castle Itter (friendly German Wehrmacht troops team up with Americans against Waffen SS diehards threatening to execute French POWs) for the most interesting sieges of WW2.

I played this campaign over and over at least 10 times and i always want to come back for more. Really with we could have camaigns like this, where it introduced multipule storylines about you being a soldier. No super secret stuff, No epic heroes, just war. Pure war.

"Knowing the state of hll they might add red dot sights soon" XD

As an English boy when I first picked up COD2 and played through a Campaign with actual British infantry fighting in a historical battle, with Lee Enfields and winning gunfights, I was blown away. Almost all my previous knowledge of WW2 British history though games and films was that we just had special forces and spies and a navy, and our soldiers never really got the attention they deserved in ground warfare. Made me so proud to finally be represented as teeth arms troops in a FPS.

Watching commentary since 2015 and knowing all the memes in the video to do with it makes this video so much more enjoyable. You remind me of the earlier days of game commentary.

I remember growing up and playing CoD original, none of my friends had it. No one had heard of it, and it was my own little special find. Now everyone I know also doesn't play it.

I used to play the British tank missions over and over again. They were my favorite.

Hey, I’ve seen your videos floating around in my reccs and wanted say I really enjoyed this one. As a fellow history nerd I appreciate the perspective you bring that I feel a lot of other reviewers don’t have. People DO learn history from these games, so efforts to preserve the authenticity and accuracy of the events is always welcome. Also, your humor is hilarious.

Loved the video, great concept and the balance between memes and seriousness was perfect, would love for a WAW review

I think the missing crosshair and the way the damaged are dealt are mostly due to the fact that you're using a mod

I used to have CoD 1-3 on the ps2 and loved playing them over and over. One thing I liked about older CoD games is that they’d have information on all the guns and vehicles you’d encounter in the game like a documentary slide

This game was my childhood, alongside the old total wars. My dad was certainly old and a therapist, in his free time he used to play multiplayer cod 2 with me... Good times.

COD 2s campaign feels like the only COD campaign made to be played on thr hardest difficulty. Its a brutal frontline war conflict story. I tried it on hard instead of veteran, and it didnt seem right, enemy would stare at me for 3 seconds before even shooting. On veteran i have to actually use smoke grenades, and the games lean mechanics just to gain that extra edge around cover. Truly felt like i was a frontline solider with the odds stacked against me, had ti have died like 100 times on D day.

This video was informative, nostalgic, historically rich and unhinged af. Perfect. Chef's kiss.

Growing up playing this game I will never forget a time I had sniper rifle and went for a headshot. The helmet flew off the dude's and he flinched, looked behind him, and felt his head. At the time that was the coolest thing I had ever seen in a game. So many games now don't have those cool little touches

this was the first cod I ever played and I replay it to this day because I love the campagine and the memories I have made while playing. thanks for talking about such an amazing game

Earned a sub, the meme edits are top tier. On a side note Cod2: Big Red One was my first COD and holds a special place in my heart

Thank you for doing this game justice! This the first game I played on Xbox 360 and I can thank this game for making me the history buff I am today.

5:52 just letting you know the soviets did use human wave tactics during the battle of stalingrad. So the game ain’t the most inaccurate. And that’s why I love the early call of duty games because of how accurate they were. Now we have vanguard

Dude your video gave me 2009 RU-vid nostalgia thank you friend.

Ironic how you chose to put a German march in the background when you were talking about Benjamin Franklin and how he hated Germans. The march is Hohenfriedberger March.

Loving all these smaller channels pumping out these banger video essays

Imagine a Call of Duty game set in Italy during the Gothic Line campaign playing as New Zealand, Indian, Canadian, Polish, Brazilian, South African and Italian partisans.

It's been 18 years and I still have the CD key of the original Call of Duty 2 my dad bought me memorised by heart.

I was in high school when I first played the demo mission at GameStop for the 360. Years later I bought it for PC and have replayed it so many times. I made it a priority to visit Caen and Point du hoc in France and it was amazing. Fortunate to own both an M1 garand and Lee Enfield from the time period. Awesome video.

This popped up when I was reliving my old teenage nostalgia, my first self purchased console was the 360 and I played Call of Duty 2 so many times. The campaign seemed perfect and as Scotsman I thoroughly enjoyed seeing North Africa as that is where my Grandfaither fought as part of the 8th Army. You were spot on with the observation that WW2 British forces are always overwhelmingly portrayed as English with a few of us token Commonwealth nations thrown in, it’s even worse for the former colonies who receive basically zero representation in WW2 media here in the UK. Nice to hear the gameplay holds up, great video which made me subscribe, keep it up!

The Sten and Bren were definitely used heavily in the Africa campaign. This is the game I first learned about them from

Finally, someone standing up for COD 2

I just came here to say yes. This one was my favorite. It had the best campaign (pretty sure it was the longest) and really took you through the whole war past Barbarossa.

I used to play the demo mission on repeat so much as a kid, didn't even play the full game until years later, good memories

CoD 2 and 3 are super underrated among fans nowadays unfortunately

Finally a good video on CoD2. Call of Duty 2 was the first cod i ever played and remains my fav of the series besides Black Ops 1-3 and MW1-3

I completed COD and COD2 the the years they came out. Loved them. Completed them over and over. In order to appreciate these games you had to be there.

The sten was in the console version and so was a crosshair in the tank mission