An excellent feeling game first and foremost—loud, overwhelming and oppressive at times. The levels are quite long, making for pretty intense and frequent shooting segments only made better by the health pack system everyone seems to shun. A stray bullet hurts a lot, making for a more methodical approach of desperately trying to shoot down the enemy closest to you to lower the chances of getting hit as much as possible. This is faciliated by the quicksave system which is there for a reason—if you get hit too hard you just reload and rethink your approach. It's a unique gameflow, which the following games unfortunately completely give up on.

The defence sections on Veteran, be that the bridge in the American campaign or the multi-level building in the Soviet campaign, are some of the most memorable moments in any FPS I've played—there's this level desperation of trying to get past a horde of enemies, make just a small opening with a few shots to get to an anti-tank weapon before it blows up your position. It might seem unfair, but in reality the size of these levels allows for switching firing positions and experimenting with your approach to defense, which is really lacking in the next game. For those moments alone the game comes highly recommended.

Worth noting is that the switch from the first two campaigns to the third one is really jarring, the Soviets are misrepresented in a pretty clear attempt at glorifying the US and UK forces by contrasting them with the "reality" of the other side of the war. The scenarios they showcase are just ripped from a movie Enemy at the Gates, and not even based on some of the true cases from history which have not been easily disproven.

Regardless, good game, surprisingly good even. Give it a shot.