More multiplayer

There are a few new weapons in the campaign and multiplayer, while others have been tweaked for balance. The Germans and Russians enjoy the benefits of semi-automatic rifles thanks to the Gewehr 43 and SVT40. There are new automatic weapons too, like the PPS42 and M3 "Grease Gun", with the PPS42 serving as the Soviet MP44 equivalent (though it is lighter and doesn’t hit as hard). The Thompson has been reduced to a historical 20 round clip, with the slower-firing Grease getting 32 rounds. The Winchester M1897 "Trench gun" is a six-round pump action shotgun that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to make an appearance in singleplayer but is quite popular on many multiplayer maps. In a nod to history, Infinity Ward added the Webley revolver for the British as their standard pistol. Finally, there are variants of weapons, scoped versions of the SVT40, G43 and Lee-Enfield.

Weapons in general are slightly easier to use; the MP44’s recoil has been significantly cut down, for example. The barrel no longer climbs as much in aimed mode and the crosshairs don’t bounce out so wide when un-aimed. The same can be said for the Garand, which also had its rate of fire slightly reduced. Other weapons like the Thompson have been balanced with a smaller ammo clip, though to our knowledge nothing has been done to the deadly PPSh which is as lethal up close as the shotgun while being better able to handle multiple opponents and ranged shots.

The level of online competition on even public servers is tremendous. Players are better, smarter and faster. Chatter on the built-in voice and text chat often revolves around the discussion of clans and CAL competition, as well as map and weapon balance issues. Few express concerns about the game’s competitive viability, but more casual players are disappointed in the lack of vehicles.

Surprisingly, despite the multiple routes to targets and fewer chokepoints, maps still feel best with about 12-16 players. Any more and you begin to see the usual symptoms of congestion, such as grenade spamming, excessive sniping and a 2-3 minute war of attrition before maneuver can resume, in the case of Search and Destroy. Of course, it all depends on the game mode and personal preference. Team deathmatch is still fluid on smaller maps like El Alamein with 32 players on the server, while Search and Destroy would quickly devolve into that aforementioned grenade spam and attrition.


Overall, I’m personally quite pleased with the way Call of Duty 2 multiplayer has turned out, but there’s no denying that it feels more like a gameplay tweak mod with a few custom maps and weapons. In fact, Quake 4 did more to advance the Quake style of play than CoD2 has done for its genre. Quake even has a more diverse selection of maps and the weapons tweaking is more controversial in Call of Duty. I enjoy both games but I’m wondering if I wasn’t too critical of Quake 4’s multiplayer in my review earlier this week, because Call of Duty 2 is still immensely enjoyable while providing even less.