Big Red One was the most abysmal experience I had with Call of Duty, and I am not even exaggerating.

Big Red One was the first CoD game by Treyarch, who is known by now as one of the biggest developers for this franchise. Their first game is focusing on a "personal" story, which tries to showcase how horrible was the second world war through the perspective of a division (1st infantry to be more precise).

What makes Big Red One horrible to play are the awful graphics, the very unresponsive gunplay, the clichés etc etc. Everything is pretty much mediocre at best, which makes it even worse as the game goes on.

The main campaign is divided into 3 chapters or locations, which are not that different when you play through the chapters. The soldiers use different weapons in different regions, but the locations are overall pretty dull and the developers do not use unique architecture or something, to make them stick out more from the rest.

What I hated the most is the boring mission designs as some always start with the "XY GOT HIT, USE THE MG AND DEFEND US". They always bring out these lazy turret sections for fake suspense, when some of the objectives are just there to pad out the length of the game.

At least some of the weapons in the first chapter are unique and less used in WW2 shooters.

I abandoned this one because it clearly became a chore for me, and I literally had no motivation to play with it. I tried for a very long time, but I just cannot finish it.

Big Red One is not an iteration over Finest Hour. It's instead a seperate experience, and a different preliminary take Treyarch would have on the franchise. The game's focus on improved storytelling and different mission design largely work.

Big Red One is another side story for the main entry at the time: Call of Duty 2. My guess is that Activision, realising the install base of the PS2 was too good to pass up on, and the relative success of Finest Hour, found it a good idea to greenlit this title.

In retrospect, it's found it's importance as being the first Treyarch CoD game, as they'd go on to be integral to the endless CoD machine to this day. I always find the Treyarch games to be more interesting, they tend to be bold enough to try out new sutff. This is not an incredibily experimental CoD by any means. But unlike the typical Call of Duty till that point, here you'll find yourself joining the 1st Infantry Division as a silent protagnoist. Starting off as a Private along with your "Band of Brothers", he works up the ranks as he (you) battles through North Africa, Italy, and major parts of Western Europe.

Gone are the British and Russian storylines, but I don't miss them that much. The experiment to stick to one squad pays off in my eyes. They'll bounce of one another between the missions, giving needed refrain. As your work your way through the story, they'll become disheveled and act more tough. The game clearly wants you to care about this group of people, but I wasn't that attached to them. Did I enjoy their prescence? Yes, the voice actors here deliver some good performances. They really would've benifitted from having more cutscenes featuring them to make the major moments hit harder. Even though Treyarch's ambition for the storytelling is palpable here, it's clear that they're boxed into the confines of console shooters of that era.

As your teammates are in the midst of combat, they are much smarter this time around. I was able to rely on my squad to clue me into the situation. Should I push or stay put? Push? "MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!" Stay put? "STAY RIGHT THERE PRIVATE." Or when a nade is thrown... "GREEEEEENADDDDEEE!" The devs did a good job here about making you feel like part of a unit. But things get a bit buggy in the latter half, they'll be acting dumb again in some parts. For the most part they do their job right. They'll open doors, provide suppresive fire, and kill a load of enemies. This is a game that encourages constant movement. If you stand in place for too long, especially in the final levels, the enemies won't stop coming. If this were Finest Hour, i'd find myself stuck and annoyed on what to do. But with Big Red One, I can lean on my squad and not be worried. Sometimes that is, there's some pre-World at War nade spam in the latter portion.

Gunplay is a major improvement. The hit detection rarely falters. Playing with the controller this time was more fun when compared with Finest Hour. The aiming here feels tight and responsive. Guns are individualistic, and I had to experiment with what I liked. You can also be more strategic with movement. The level design here accomodates for some gnarly cover spots. Figuring them out was very enjoyable. The linearity is really not a limiting facor.

The game does, eventually get repetitive. In each level, you'll fight through a section, then have to use some special weapon to deter some sort of invasion, then fight through another section. In between the missions, the cutscene is some variation of "there's a change to the plan." It's only at the end of levels where things get unique. Again, this is all the more apparent in the second half of the game, although I found the last three levels to be a standout.

I played on Hard, and apart from a few moments, it was fun this time! Of course, normal is the way to go, but quick to kill but quick to die system works well. The turrent sections can be frustrating, especially with the Terminator aim enemies have sometimes. On Hard, it takes a few tries to get it right, but this time the checkpoints and my teammates made things bearable.

The checkpoint system is such a simple change, but it works it's wonders. This time, I didn't have to worry about being stressed over losing a bunch of progress over some cheap death. Trust me, you'll encounter some. There's some problems though. If you quit the game, you have to do the level again. Why is this a thing? Also, whatever health you entered in towards the checkpoint, is the health you'll have when you retry. Such a minor oversight that I was frustrated by. It's all minor when compared to Finest Hour.

Audio here is a downgrade. The SFX is stellar, but where's the music? It's sparingly seen, and can make some moments feel quite dull. It's not something I noticed too often when playing through the game, but still, it would've been nice to see.

There is not much to be said about Big Red One. It's the penultimate pure console shooter for the CoD franchise. Treyarch here appeared to be ambitious. Did it work? For the most part, yes. They hit the landing with the enjoyable combat, level design, and decent story. There is some blemishes, but it's hard to fault when the core game is solid. The game is not pushing any boundaries, but it's a solid 6-7 hour ride. I say give it a try.

It's a bit of a departure from the original game and the flagship CoD2. In those games the point they try to make is that WW2 was won by millions of nameless heroes who all sacrificed themselves for the greater good. There are many fellow soldiers who fight alongside you, but they are just random NPCs, so you can hardly form an emotional attachment to them. Those games also switch between soldiers from the different allied countries, so you don’t even play as the same person throughout. In Big Red One they tried something different – you play as a member of 1st Infantry Division (a.k.a. the Big Red One) throughout the entire campaign. The members of your squad are proper characters and you get to know them over time. This is the main standout feature here and arguably makes the game the most interesting of the CoD titles released on PS2.

Most WW2 games at the time were trying to imitate successful contemporary movies like Saving Private Ryan with varying degrees of success. The technology and the production values weren’t quite up there yet and I’ve seen some pretty pathetic attempts, but this is one of the better ones. They actually hired some of the actors from the Band of Brothers series to voice your squad mates and do the mo-cap as well. It’s not actually Band of Brothers, but it’s a decent effort for what it is. The characters are reasonably well fleshed-out. After not having played the game for over a decade, I still remembered them and the major story events, so the developers must have done something right. If you're into these kind of movies/games, you’ll probably enjoy it.

In terms of gameplay, there’s nothing special here. It’s similar to the original CoD from what I remember. It still uses health packs, rather than regenerating health. The controls are not too far off from a modern shooter. I’d say they overdid it with the mounted turret sections and the friendly AI has a tendency to get in your way, but there’s nothing too offensive. Just an average shooter overall.

What it has going for it is variety, but that’s mostly cosmetic. You have your obligatory D-Day landing, but you also get to fight the Vichy French in Africa and the Italians in Sicily. Each level offers a unique location and you get to use some French and Italian weapons which are not common in WW2 games. Said weapons do not change much gameplay-wise. On normal, enemies seem take two shots to the torso to go down no matter what you use (snipers being the only exception). Still, it’s a nice touch and the guns in general do look and sound good.

The PS2 version plays OK when it runs OK, but it can feel very heavy when there’s slowdown and there’s a lot of slowdown in some of the later levels. It looks decent enough, but it’s not up to the level of a first-party game. It has a 16:9 mode that actually gives you a wider field of view which is rare. The collector’s edition version has some extra featurettes and concept art to check out, but it’s the same otherwise.

My earliest memories with this one were watching my older brother play the PS2 version when I was younger. And if I'm being honest, I didn't really care to ever give it a try when I got older. That's a shame, because I ended up actually really liking this one!

While it shows its age more than COD 2, I'm willing to chalk it up to the fact that I played the GameCube version. Additionally, there's a lot more jank in the level progression than I ever noticed in other earlier CODs I've played. Cutscenes wouldn't start unless I positioned myself just right, and there was even one instance where a character just vanished, leading me to having to restart a whole level. Still, I enjoyed it enough to not let it bug me.

Honestly, just play this one only if you're curious or you're nostalgic for the pre-COD 4 Campaigns.

First Call of Duty game by Treyarch, who would go on to make Black Ops. Largely a disappointment. The worst offense is the sound design, the game is incredibly quiet and music cuts out and doesn't start again after you die, making playthroughs on the hard difficulty often be just... silent. In all the presumed chaos everything is actually so quiet that you can hear the tracks of background noise looping. This does not fit with the tone it sets out, which differs from the previous games.

This is the first Call of Duty game that really feels like war is not treated as something truly awful. The narrator talks in this American TV voice from the time, by the end he goes "this many people from the division have died!" as if it's a badge of honor of some sort. The plot is actually character-driven (Brooklyn my boy) so there's a lot more quips and the characters do die, which means that there's more emotional attachment in theory, but it's all rather basic and forgettable, and it is largely due to the aforementioned lack of atmosphere.

The game is rather easy for the most part, easier than the previous games, there's certainly missions in the latter half that took a long time to beat on the hardest difficulty but that is the standard for those games at this point; the ridiculous ramp up in difficulty is as big a staple of these WWII-era games as the M1 Garand is.

The shooting feels great, maybe better than it does in Finest Hour, but their sounds are just as weird as everything else here, plastic almost, making firefights not as satisfying. The feedback for hitting enemies has also been slightly reduced. What has been added, however, is RAGDOLL. It can make for very funny moments, which I appreciate.

The missions follow the basic formula, and there is sadly no real standout. There are definitely missions that are more difficult and you spend a lot more time on those, but even with that they fail to make an impact. The tank sections are fun, different but still good. Really makes me wish they stuck with one control scheme and made a console-exclusive Call of Duty: Tank game.

Not really worth playing over any of the other games up to this point I don't think.