So I played Call of Duty 2 today on the 360 at the local EB. The first thing I noticed was the controller being very close to the S-Controller for the original system. It’s pretty nice. I hit that big silver button in the center when I was done playing and sure enough, the new menus for the integrated Live stuff poppped up right overtop of the game and paused what I was playing. It seems a little like overkill since my usage of it will amount to checking if friends are online or talking with them to set up a game, but it’s ok.
The game itself was unimpressive. There is LOTS of shouting in the level they allow you to play and it’s got piles of jaggies. Hopefully there will be antialiasing in the final shipping game because this demo was completely underwhelming. The AI was exactly the same as every other WWII first person shooter I’ve ever played so no real improvements of any kind there. It was all the usual scripting stuff where you run through like a rat in a maze. The “YOU ARE THERE” stuff was ok, but nothing more than what’s been seen in Battlefield 2 on the PC and other similar games.
Worst of all, it was making me nauseous, just like many console first person shooters seem to do. There’s just something about the movement in these games that is sometimes not quite right and sends my brain into convulsions that result in a rolling boat effect on my guts. It might’ve been all the jaggies… I’ve felt that caused problems before. It also might be the need to constantly go from a down-the-barrel view to a regularly hip-fired view? So many FPS games want you to be sniping all the time anymore and I think that helps aggravate my stomach because to perform well, you’ve got to constantly be switching.
I honestly hate to be so negative, but I walked away from the game thinking I’d just play it on PC where it will look and run better (on my rig) than it does on the 360. Plus I never have problems with FPS games on the PC. Like…none. Never get sick at all. It really isn’t very impressive graphically compared to current Xbox games and especially compared to current PC titles. It’s just one game though, and probably not one people here care about, but that’s my take anyway.
On a side note, they have so many pre-orders for the system that there are people who will not get it on day one. Like, they claim to have so many they don’t even know if all of them will get it before Christmas. I wonder if they’re all paid in full? How many of them are planning to turn around and sell it on eBay? Is everyone rich but me? Does everyone trade in their old systems and move on when a new one comes out? I guess we’ll see how well it does when it ships, but it looks like Microsoft will be rolling in money from the launch soon.
–Dave