Call of Duty 2 [PC]

If you're going to do a game that's been done before, you should at least make it better than the other ones. This is pretty much what Infinity Ward has accomplished -- and not much else -- with their latest in the burgeoning genre of World War II "war movie" shooters.

It all began with Medal of Honor and has since been repeated ad nauseum. To the credit of the developers at Infinity Ward, they did a great job of turning it up to 11 with Call of Duty, which was continued the United Offensive expansion pack by Grey Matter. And although there's a certain sameness throughout this latest reiteration, it's got enough energy and technical glitz to keep it from feeling like the tired retread it actually is.

All the usual trappings of the genre are present and accounted for: the jeep-on-rails mission, the holding off waves of attackers mission, the look for the bazooka to take out the tank mission, the D-Day storming of the beach mission, the mow down enemies with a convenient machinegun emplacement moment, the airplanes saving you at the last minute moment, and the man the AA gun and shoot down planes moment. You've been here before. You know the drill.

Even the locations are tired. In Normandy, for instance, you fight in -- stop me if you've heard this one -- a French village. Then you fight in a French village at night. Then you fight in a French village in the rain. Finally, you fight in a French village at night and in the rain. Oh, and a few hedgerows. Finally, there's Wallender, which isn't too terribly different from a French village.

Although the new North African front looks great aesthetically, there's really no new gameplay to be had in the sweeping deserts of Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia. There are a couple of missions in small tightly built villages in the middle of the desert (including an engaging siege in which you spot for artillery), but the tank battles take place on disappointingly small patches of ground linked by tunnels. And then there are some absolutely silly tank battles which consist of hurtling around at top speed to approximate the historical reality of inferior British tanks desperately charging at German Panzers.

But throughout the gameyness and the sameness, Infinity Ward keeps thing lively with some seriously buff technology. United Offensive pushed the Quake 3 engine probably as far as it could be pushed, so Call of Duty 2 is built entirely from a new proprietary engine. It looks great and is obviously tailored to the game's needs. Namely, lots of erratic geometry, lots of superbly animated character models, and long drawing distances. This ain't no Quake 3 engine. Once again, the weapons are a perfect storm of audio, animation, and effects, lending Call of Duty 2 the heartiest sense of gunplay this side of F.E.A.R.

There are plenty of impressive atmospheric touches, including the desert dust, a lightning dotted thunderstorm, and some of the densest and most useful smoke you'll find in a first-person shooter. Smoke grenades are your best friend and they have a noticeable effect on the AI, which is also considerably improved this time around.

The soldiers, friendly and enemy, have a much wider range of activities, and an incredible amount of context-sensitive battle chatter (serious props to the voice actors, who give it their all and must have had very sore throats at the end of the day). You'll even see entire groups of enemy soldiers falling back to better defensive positions. Your own troops will almost never get in the way of your shots and there's very little of that confused AI shuffling you see in a lot of shooters with AI controlled squads.

Although there are still plenty of corridor missions that progress along a predetermined path, several of the missions are wide-open, offering room to flank or take objectives in any order you like. Other games have done this, including the latest Medal of Honor: European Assault for console systems, but none have done it with an engine this good. Compared to the relentlessly linear crawls offered in F.E.A.R. and Quake 4, Call of Duty 2 has a handful of levels that are well worth replaying for how dynamically they unfold.