Other memorable levels include D-Day, scaling the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc was exhilarating, especially when you reach the top and see mortar explosions and tracer fire coming at you from all angles. It’s hugely impressive and on Veteran mode, close to impossible unless you make extremely good use of your smoke and frag grenades. On veteran mode you have to conserve these two grenades as much as possible to utilise them at the right moments. I found myself without any smoke grenades on many key occasions where I could have successfully used them at certain checkpoints where Sniper or MG42 nests were lurking. Frag grenades are equally as important for taking out large groups of enemy, or just forcing them out of their hole. Sadly grenades once thrown at you cannot be thrown back which is something CoD 3 implemented after many suggestions from the fans.
CoD 2 utilises a now common health system that differs from CoD 1’s health packs. When you now take damage, your screen will flash red with damage direction arrows indicating roughly where the incoming fire is coming from. As you near death, your character will begin heavy breathing as well as having heart palpitations and sometimes blurred vision. The moment you start taking in fire, simply run and take cover and your health will slowly regenerate and your character will calm down. The system works incredibly well and I prefer it this way, instead of backtracking through a level hunting for health packs - it seems the gamers agree too as a lot of new games use the same system very well.
While you’re fighting what seems like a one man war, you’ve got your squad mates by your side who taking up flanking positions and utilise cover quite well. They’re not the cleverest of AI but it works. On Veteran mode they will start dropping like flies but the moment they do, more soldiers will come in from the rear and replace their position so you’re never devoid of your team mates.
Gameplay on CoD 2 is very enjoyable for the most part. Infinity Ward has created a variety of missions that are very atmospheric, action packed and in quite a few places very memorable. Your squad mates rarely hinder your progress and their AI isn’t bad at all. However the enemy AI on the latter two difficulty levels hugely ruins things in a big way. A lot of the time you’ll be slowly crawling through the various missions, right into a choke point in which you have to defeat enemy soldiers holed up in a house/barricade/ruined building etc. However when you shoot and dispatch an enemy or even a group of soldiers, they’re quickly replaced by reinforcements - either that or they respawn. You never gain much of a sense of accomplishment as you dispatch soldiers only to see them replaced right away, and on Veteran mode this makes things extremely difficult. You end up quickly dispatching the enemy and trying hard to advance to the next checkpoint so you get that all important ‘Checkpoint Saved’ message so when you die, you’ll appear right at that point. Now I don’t mind respawns or a specific number of replacement soldiers but after being stuck for 20mins trying to get past a chokepoint only to see what seems like the ENTIRE German is there for backup, it just kills the fun factor.
At some points I was literally scared to pop my head up in case the overpowered Veteran enemy AI would pop a shot with its pinpoint accuracy smack into my eye ball, which is how it should be to an extent I agree, but the respawn issue really almost made me sell this title. The Germans never advance at you, they’re just happy to sit back in their encampments and trenches and let you take the fight to them, and you must if you’re to remotely get anywhere.
You’ll find yourself and your squad mates constantly advancing and retreating from time to time depending on how stable the enemy ranks look. Sometimes you can overrun poorly fortified areas and take out roughly 4-5 enemy soldiers and watch your squad move into their positions, this alone is very gratifying. Sometimes you’re pinned down so bad, you have to swallow hard and just take charge over a poor situation and rush out and take the fight to them, which will most of the time result in death so you need to adapt to the situation and learn from your mistakes.
At one point during the defence of Hill 400 on the American mission, things were so bad that I ended up having to retreat into a small trench hole. Every time I did this, a grenade would mysteriously roll in from an unknown location somewhere outside, so I would be forced out and to my death almost every time. At one point I wanted for the grenade to appear and rushed out to see no enemy in sight, so the grenades were a poorly scripted event. Poor if you ask me.