eveloper Infinity Ward did a lot of things right with the first Call of Duty, especially in terms of cinematic presentation and intense action. In a lot of ways, it was the best wartime FPS of its time. Call of Duty 2, whether you play it on a gaming PC or the Xbox 360, is to its predecessor as the 360 itself is to the NES. Everything that makes war games entertaining – the feeling of defending freedom, the immersion in a warzone, and the glorious thrill of being a hero – is done far better in this title than in any before it. Quite simply, this is the best WWII game ever made.

The greatness of Call of Duty 2 starts with the little things. The level of precision in the technical aspects, from the airtight control to the flawless hit detection, is superb. AI for non-player characters is some of the best I’ve ever seen, with enemies and allies alike reacting to fluid battlefield situations like actual soldiers. Never has AI been able to intelligently use covering fire to advance or grenades to flush out entrenched infantry like this. Your comrades will even call out spotted enemy positions using landmarks and relative directions. "Enemy infantry up on our left, behind those crates!" is infinitely more helpful than the "Nazis incoming!" of previous games. There are no pickups other than the dropped weapons of fallen soldiers, so rather than scouring a level for enough health to complete your objective, you’re just trying to successfully carry your mission out. The little touches, like the grenade indicator that tells you when you’re standing next to a live ‘nade, just make the experience that much smoother. And it honestly doesn’t get much smoother than this.

Everyone (myself included) loves to talk about the "intensity of the action" in games like this to the point that the phrase has lost much of its meaning. Unfortunately, there’s really no other way to describe the gameplay of Call of Duty 2. Upon finishing a mission, I literally had to sit back, close my eyes, and just breathe for a few seconds to remind myself that I lived through it. To get an idea of how crazy it is, take all of the most awesome moments in all of the action games you’ve ever played, and imagine going through them all in a row for twelve hours. The Nazi war machine didn’t allow the Allies any time to rest, and neither does this game. As never before, the player is smack in the middle of a freaking warzone. You’ll typically have a half-dozen allies and two to three times that number of enemies active onscreen at a time, plus the added chaos of various tanks, halftracks, emplaced guns, and incoming artillery. And it doesn’t stop until you drive the Wehrmacht out of France.

The only knocks I have on this otherwise flawless experience are fairly minor. The regenerating health (it works much like Halo shields, where you regain stamina if you don’t get hit for several seconds) cheapens the tension of several levels. When the encounters are only with a few enemies at a time, it’s easy to drop them before they could possibly hit you enough to kill you. Also, while the enemy AI is unquestionably fantastic, by the end of the game it’s fairly simple to convince them to react the way you want them to. Finally, multiplayer may not be the revolution in the genre that the single-player campaign is, but it is extensive and entertaining. At the end of the day, Call of Duty 2 delivers more than enough on both fronts to be a great purchase.