Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360, 2005)

Call of Duty 2 takes you into the trenches of World War II, starting with the frozen tundra of Russia under attack. High realism levels really draw you into the combat.

You start out as a raw Russian recruit, in the freezing winter of Moscow, trying to learn how to use a rifle and stave off the impending Nazi take-over. You only get a few moments of training before you're sent out into combat to defend your home town.

The graphics are a really nice mix of realistic scenery and helpful gameplay. Items you need will glow gold so that they're easy to find. A compass on your display will point your way to important objectives. Your ammo, health and other indicators are easy to find.

But in the meantime, your main screen graphics are really quite impressive. From the brickwork on the buildings to the smoke-grenade haze, from the uniforms on your friends and enemies, the quality on a HD TV is quite impressive. The widescreen view lets you keep an eye all around you while you move your way through hostile territory. You try to focus while you hear the screams, calls, bullet blasts and grenade booms landing all around you. It's like being in a warzone, which of course it is.

Your teammates are all around you, and they do their best to help you out. Like you, many of them are raw recruits and not very good at things. As you move forward, they get more skilled, as do you. You learn how to pause before aiming, how to use cover and to approach your objective with stealth.

I do wish that you could have more than 8 simultaneous players online during XBox Live. The single player games are great, but of course they don't last forever. When you get through them, the next step is to start playing online to face a "real challenge" with live players. The game would be SUPERB if it let you play large squad on large squad. Maybe that could come with future upgrades. Still, at least playing with 8 people lets you keep enjoying the graphics, the gameplay and the skill set. It's always far more challenging to play against live players rather than playing against a computer set. Computers are great for training, but live players are where the long term enjoyment of a game shines through.

Highly recommended for war game lovers, especially those who enjoy squad-type combat. If you hook up with a team of like-minded online players, this could provide for countless months of online fun, as you face your squad against other highly skilled teams.