3.5/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Call of Duty 2: Big Red One.

This one was a huge surprise for me. After my previous Call of Duty experience on PS2, I was dreading getting through this one. But shockingly, this is a pretty good Call of Duty game! This is Treyarch’s first stab at a Call of Duty game, and right off the bat it feels like a Treyarch game. Gunplay is snappy, cinematic are impressive for the time, and the writing was VERY well done. This is the first time Call of Duty ever told a story beginning to end with a singular character/group, and it works so well. I genuinely felt sad when characters would die in front of me, which I was not expecting from a PS2 Call of Duty title. Similar to Finest Hour, there’s only Easy, Medium, and Hard. So, I picked Medium. Except this time, it really felt like the middle of the road in difficulty. Treyarch seemed to understand the limitations of the PS2 and equivalent consoles, so they don’t throw a million enemies at you, nor do they expect you to react very fast. As much as I love the PS2, it doesn’t have the most versatile controller. No disrespect to Spark or anyone who worked on Finest Hour, but Big Red One seemed to understand the assignment more. Missions were a lot more varied here, with various turret sections, tank missions, and trench clearing. The story also borrows characters from Call of Duty 2’s campaign, which really helps seal this all together as a package game. Since I don’t have a way of connecting my PS2 to the internet, (and I’m fairly certain no one is playing this game in 2023) I won’t be reviewing the multiplayer. My main gripes with the game are the lack of music, broken sound effects, choppy frame rate and other technical glitches that brought the experience down. Don’t get me wrong, it performed WAY better than Finest Hour. And the fact this feels like a mainline title on the PS2 is impressive on its own. But these were still noticeable enough to knock the score down. That being said, if you’re at all nostalgic for PS2-era video games, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is a BLAST! Can’t recommend it enough. Hopefully this is one that comes to Xbox Series X through backwards compatibility/GamePass soon. It’s definitely a hidden gem.