If you enjoyed the first Call of Duty, you will surely enjoy Call of Duty 2.
In the single-player part of the game you play as three soldiers from three different nations of the allies, all with one common goal, eliminate the Nazis! You will play as the Russians defending their homeland at Stalingrad, the British fighting in North Africa against the tough Afrika Corps, and last but not least, the Americans in the heart of Germany. The missions for all these nations are all fairly similar. Although, there are a couple of interesting tank missions in the North African desert and some missions where you must defend your truck while you are sitting in it with panzerschreks. The missions may bore some but if you are a shooter fan, you will enjoy them greatly. The AI is pretty damn good for an FPS that has many enemy soldiers that you will encounter in one mission. Although, you will not have to go about the missions alone. In about every mission you will have many teamates to help you defeat the German war machine. They are not the stupid ones either, in fact they are very helpful. For example, they call out many enemy locations such as, "Second floor, 4th window!" The weapons in Call of Duty 2 are the same as they were in the first CoD. You have your usual MP-40s, M1 Garands, Springfield snipers, etc. The weapon sounds are also similar too what they are in the first CoD, which isnt quite a bad thing.
Speaking of sound, if you have a surround setup, this is a great game to use it for. This game has great sound to immerse into the action. You may feel that you there on Point du Hoc, inside the hot tank chamber of you tank, or crawling through the pipes above Stalingrad. It is a very intense game, just as the first Call of Duty.
The graphics in this game are such an improvement over the first game. Although you may need a fairly hefty rig to max out the settings. However, Call of Duty 2 can be enjoyed on many lower graphics settings. Head over to http://www.srtest.com/referrer/srtest to check if your machine can run Call of Duty 2, and how well. But hey, isn't the gameplay that matters? Hehe.
The multiplayer is where some think CoD2 shines. This part of the game is what makes this game some re-playable. All the guns from the single-player aspect of the game return for some fragging! Also returning are the mult-player game modes. Such as, the usual deathmatch, team deatchmatch, capture the flag, and search and destroy (which is similar to Counter-Strike's bomb-defusal game type). There is also a wide variety of maps ranging from the snowy lands of Stalingrad, to the hot, blazing desert of North Afirica. The maps you will recgonize from areas the the single-player aspect of CoD2. You can either play as American/Britsh/Russian soldier or a German soldier in the multi-player modes. You can get very addicted to the multi-player in Call of Duty 2 and play for hours on end.
Overall, Call of Duty 2 is an extremely fun FPS that has high replayablity. It is more of the same of the first Call of Duty, which is most certainly not a bad thing. I strongly recommend this game to any shooter fan that has the PC to run it. And of course I recommend it to any CoD fan.
Pros: Very similar to the first Call of Duty, crisp graphics, a verimmersive experience.
Cons: Very similar to the first Call of Duty, demanding graphics, single-player is fairly repetative.