Better than the first.
One of the best things in Call of Duty 2 is the sound in the game. When you are fighting in a battle, it actually sounds like that you are fighting in WWII. There is also very great music in the game but sometimes you won't be able to hear it over all of the gunfighting. The game sounds very real almost too real.
Call of Duty 2 also looks very great. The environments in the game are detailed very well and there are some very cool visual effects in the game. Sometimes when an explosion happens right next to you you can't hear anything and you are only able to just look around at the fighting while you are very dazed. Eventually you regain control and go back to fighting. The explosions real, and the way they are supposed to be. Meaning that if there is only a small blast happening you will only see a little debris fly, and if you see a big explosion a lot of debris will fly. What I am trying to say is that the explosions are consistent to their magnitude, which is something some games aren't. It's also really cool to see the tracers fly around next to you the game overall looks fantastic.
The gameplay in COD2 is very fast paced. There is very little rest in between missions, and you rarely fight alone. The campaign takes about 10 to 15 hours and you only spend about 15 minutes tops fighting alone. So you are always fighting in bigger battles, which is nice because you don't have to do all of the work. However, you still have to do most of the work because the AI is not always dependable. During the champaign it always felt like the enemy AI was always smarter than your friendly AI that worked with you. Something that bothered me was that sometimes your fellow rangers would either get in the way of your firing, run torwards danger instead of away from it (like a grenade), and what bothered me the most was sometimes I would advance in position and the rest would not do anything for a few minutes. I don't know if it was intentional or not if you were supposed to do some parts alone but it was annoying when they wouldn't back me up when I was going to do something. The enemies seemed to be too accurate when it comes to throwing grenades. 9 out of 10 times if they threw a grenade and I didn't move then it would land perfectly were I am standing. It is nice to have AI that knows how to throw grenades, but they don't need to be too accurate like that. Also it always felt like in any battle that the sides weren't even. I'm not talking a little uneven, but some battles it felt like it was 4 v 15. There are a couple of battles where its supposed to be like that but I felt it was too uneven for too long. What was a nice idea was to do the no health bar thing like in Halo 2. Its nice to not have to worry about finding health it keeps you focused on the fighting more. I think that more games will pick up on that type of health.
Multiplayer in COD2 is not revolutionary, but it is still a whole lot of fun to play. The champaign is what got you to come to the game, but the multiplayer makes the replay value really high for COD2. Most of the gametypes are team based and you can choose what type of class you want which all feature different weapons you can use. Also what was brought over from the first game was the death cam, which is really nice to see how you died.
Call of Duty 2 a superb game that is even better than the original. It is worth playing for anybody no matter who you are.