By Gary Kearney

Obviously there are a lot of WWII first person shooters out there, but when quality is good I don't really care. I would rather play a high quality game in an over-saturated genre than a horrible original game. But to have to play a horrible game in a saturated genre is just the worst. So now comes along Call of Duty 2: Big Red One by Activision and Treyarch for the PlayStation 2. What's its deal? Let's find out shall we...

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is the current gen console brother to the the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty 2 ,and while not in same league technically as these, BRO does its best not to get left too far behind in the fun factor. Also, this game is different than the Xbox 360 and PC games and will probably be the last in the series for the current generation consoles.

BRO gets its name from the arm patches worn by the 1st Infantry Division that have a big red number one on them. This is one very noisy and active game where the sounds and atmosphere add a nice intensity. There are bombs constantly going off around or even, unfortunately, on top of you with lots of debris and dirt flying around. Adding to this chaos is an incredible amount of human chatter where many of your objectives will come from. Getting your tasks verbally from other soldiers during the heat of battle really adds to the feeling of being in the heat of the action.

New with this version of CoD is that you will play as the same character throughout the game and you stay with the same squad as you travel to North Africa, Sicily, Europe, and France. As the game moves on you get to know your squad mates well and this makes the game a little more personal when, for example, one of your tasks involves helping out one of your buddies. Having this level of comradeship certainly adds an immersive feel to the game. One small down note - your friends might not be the most original pack around as the developers seemed to have taken a few stereotypes and thrown them together. But it's not really that bad and their voices are top quality as several were done by the cast members of the HBO series Band of Brothers.

BRO has many scripted events and this has both pluses and drawbacks and has a way of showing up awkwardly in the AI. Sometimes it seems that the AI is purposely waiting for you to do the heroic work while the rest of your squad is very much in the background. Other times your team will work like a well-oiled machine. At least the enemy AI is on par with your teammates; I've seen a good guy and bad guy get in a firefight with each other only feet apart and neither one could hit the other. It would be nice to see that someone on your team was capable of opening a gate, but that type of action is normally left to you.

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