Call of Duty 2 [X360]

It's like being brought in for debriefing. There I was, in the basement of a well-preserved Polish country house when the officer (actually a PR rep) came for us. And I was doing so well with the multiplayer modes of The Big Red One. Apparently my own vodka haze wasn't as thick as everyone else's. That's the only explanation. I was led to a car, eventually to arrive in a small room within another house. Inside was a monitor larger than the bed and an Xbox 360, quietly humming away. I was handed a controller, and discovered Call of Duty 2, 360-style.

And for a minute there, it all faded away. I was in North Africa with a crackerjack squad of guys who, surprisingly, didn't just wait for me to make all the moves. Soldiers called out enemy positions, sometimes in great detail (sniper on the third story!) and then moved to deal with the threat. Meanwhile, I was still getting my bearings with a new controller and a stunning, totally new graphics engine.

First things first, though. Call of Duty 2 is in every way a sequel to the original. It gives players the opportunity to experience real battles as part of the British, Russian, and American armies. The campaign is relatively open, however, so it's possible to jump from one front to another at will. Single-player maps are more open as well, in addition to being several times larger than anything seen in the original.

Activision offered the chance to play missions in Stalingrad, Toujane (in North Africa), and Pointe du Hoc. Each one, while generally following established mission modes, was more challenging and detailed than anything seen in Call of Duty.

Several things are quite new, however. When former Lt. Col Hank Keirsey was brought into the mix as consultant, he emphasized the need for two additions. One is the constant level of noise and chatter that any soldier hears on the battlefield. People are constantly calling directions, warnings, and objectives to one another, and that level of information overload is remarkably well-represented on screen. Soldiers are constantly calling info to each other, as with the aforementioned warnings about snipers. At first the effect seems to be slight, but with the AI cranked up to the most difficult, paying attention to the chatter became essential.

The other element is portable concealment, better known to laypeople as the smoke grenade. We've seen smoke implemented to various degrees in games before, but the mechanics in Call of Duty 2 surpass every previous effort. Lob a canister of smoke, and what billows out is thick and shifting. It reacts with light wonderfully; I encountered a small group of enemies while in the midst of smoke and the way they could be seen to various degrees through the particle cloud was fantastic. This will change the way the game is played, period.

The most noticeable change in gameplay, however, is the health system. In as few words as possible: no more health packs. Instead of littering the ground with packs that players will inevitably try to ration or spend extra time backtracking to recover, Infinity Ward has ditched that classic shooter conceit altogether.

Instead, players will regenerate health, often fairly quickly depending upon the extent of damage. In a variation on the shellshock effect that worked so well in the first game, the edges of the screen will pulsate red, deepening as damage gets worse. Taking cover will be enough to regain some health, though taking too much time out will eventually result in squadmates getting killed as they move on ahead, ultimately making the player's task much harder.

I also had plenty of time with the basic deathmatch multiplayer game. And while Activision wasn't showing off anything that was glaringly new, the maps were well-suited to fast-moving combat, and the weapons, some of which are all new to the series, were balanced nicely. Thankfully, my favorite element of the original game returned -- the death cam pointing out the location of the camper who just popped you.

Call of Duty was a lot of things -- thrilling, immersive and loud. The sequel is set to ratchet up the intensity across the board. It's got an elusive mixture of dramatic moments between soldiers on the run and giant war machine action that proves so impossible for most WWII games to capture.