WW2 #22: Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
Honestly the best of the early era
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 23, 2019.
Initial release: November 1, 2005
Platform: PlayStation 2, XBox, GameCube
Developer: Treyarch
Here’s the thing about 6th generation console shooters: quality was incredibly uneven. When you buy a console first person shooter these days you can often expect at least a minimum of polish; 15 years ago that wasn’t guaranteed. Medal of Honor definitely had a role in bringing the average down, but it wasn’t the only one; the early to mid-00s was just straight up an era of jank across all genres. Call of Duty: Big Red One bucked this trend but good. I can’t overstate how happy I am that this game is as good as it is; after spending the entire summer of 2018 sitting through the death march that was Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty: Finest Hour being a bad Medal of Honor game in all but name, Treyarch knocked it out of the park with Big Red One.
Two things stick out. One: it’s almost entirely based on the original PC Call of Duty’s engine and gameplay, using a modified idTech3 called Treyarch NGL; in fact, if you were to port Call of Duty to PlayStation 2 or something, it’d probably look like this.
The other thing is that the entire game is an extended campaign focusing entirely on the US Army’s 1st Infantry Division (founded in 1917, it is the oldest continually serving division in the regular army and well known for their distinctive patches.) You play a single soldier as his unit ventures across North Africa and Europe over the course of two years. Punctuated by clips from the military channel, the plot follows closely the real path of the Fighting First as they dove headfirst into the meatgrinder again and again for the Allies. One character remarks that the US Army is made up of 1st Division and 10 million replacements.
For Call of Duty this was an unusual move for the time, given how much the franchise tried to set itself apart by drawing from various perspectives. But, at least in this case, it works, because this is an extremely character-oriented game, plot-wise. You’ll be seeing a lot of the same guys throughout, each with their own personalities. After seeing hordes of “buddies” die meaninglessly in other games after only a few lines, it’s nice to see Treyarch actually try to put some meaning and emotional impact into character deaths. This trend would of course continue into Treyarch’s later Call of Duty titles, perhaps the most iconic example being the first Black Ops. But it’s interesting to see this trend at work here in a console war shooter that almost nobody played — and why would they, when they have Call of Duty on PC?
Okay, to be fair, Big Red One isn’t unique in this narrative approach. Finest Hour also had a bit of this going, and the Brothers in Arms series puts the character focus in overdrive. But still, the fact that this was so unusual for a World War II shooter at all, not just Call of Duty, is honestly kind of a sad commentary on the state of the industry at the time.
Gameplay wise, what can I say? It’s Call of Duty 1, with all its brilliancy and all its flaws. It looks like Call of Duty 1. It plays like Call of Duty 1. It sounds like Call of Duty 1. It even has medpacks like Call of Duty 1. the only difference is you’re on a controller. The difficulty’s a little smoother but that’s it. But see, that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s not trying to do anything fancy or different that just turns out clunky and unwieldy, with wildly uneven difficulty and stupid ideas that aren’t adequately explained. It’s just pure Call of Duty and I love it for it.
Playing this first wave of World War 2 shooters was quite enlightening. For all their repeated flaws and overused tropes, there’s quite a bit of variety to be found amidst the million re-enactments of Stalingrad and D-Day. Most of it’s locked up in bad games; this one, at least, isn’t.
