Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

Gray Matter Interactive, Treyarch

     “The U.S. Army consists of the Big Red One and ten million replacements.”

images c/o Neoseeker (PlayStation 2)

Every war has its stories. Every war is a journey, from the first shot fired to the last. Every soldier, every unit, every army, has a tale to tell. The United States Army 1st Infantry Division may not have the most glamorous history — but they have been the backbone for American military power across the world for over a hundred years. And they’ve shed enough blood to show for it, with over twenty thousand casualties across two and a half years of combat in World War II alone. Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is their story.

When Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty was new, it was just another contender in a crowded arena of WWII shooters; its primary selling point was that it was developed by the former devs of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, seen by some as the best in the franchise. Call of Duty’s success was moderate, but enough to get the franchise off the ground. United Offensive was, as befits an expansion pack, more of the same, but was a solid entry from Gray Matter Interactive, the studio that gave us Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It also opened the door for Gray Matter to work on another Call of Duty, ideally released in time for Infinity Ward’s own follow-up. Call of Duty 2: Big Red One isn’t an expansion pack, a port of Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 2, or even a sequel to the less-than-fantastic Call of Duty: Finest Hour. Despite being relegated to consoles to compete with the predominantly console-based Medal of Honor, Big Red One took the better-than-average writing of United Offensive and made it the whole point.

Big Red One puts you in the shoes of one Roland Rogers, a (mostly) silent grunt in the 1st Infantry, as he journeys from the sands of North Africa in the execution of Operation Torch, through to the invasion of Sicily, and finally the long march from Normandy to the Siegfried Line. Along the way, you’ll meet a cast of characters (voiced by the cast of hit HBO series Band of Brothers) who hit a lot of the classic war movie tropes: you’ve got Brooklyn, the chatty, temperamental Jewish kid from the Bronx; Kelly, the studious nerd who winds up taking a leadership role in the squad, Schmitty, the soft-spoken, likely-neurodivergent mechanics whiz, and Vic, the mean, hot-headed ex-linebacker, among others. These are your boys, and you’ll be with them all the way — though not all of them will see the end.

Big Red One’s plot is pretty simple. Unpretentious, even. It’s episodic, each new chapter a different stage of Fox Company’s journey. But it helps string together what in my opinion is one of the very best World War II shooters on the PlayStation 2 amidst a sea of very mediocre ones. After muddling through all those Medal of Honor games I was taken aback by how smooth Big Red One feels; running on a slightly modified version of the original Call of Duty engine (right down to using a lot of the same assets and some UI elements) it looks good and plays good. Aiming to shoot doesn’t feel like pulling teeth, the difficulty curve is pretty generous, and in general it’s probably the closest you’ll get to the classic Call of Duty 1 experience on 6th-gen consoles. It still uses medpacks — controversial given that Infinity Ward’s game introduced regenerating health — but is fairly generous with them. It could be more generous with checkpoints, though — I’ve had moments where I died and it plopped me back further than I would have liked. And like Call of Duty 1, grenades have no indicators, though fortunately at least on easy they’re mostly just an annoyance.

Big Red One isn’t what I’d call ambitious, but it doesn’t need to be. While Call of Duty 2 — the main one — was intended as a step forward for the series, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is essentially a glorified expandalone for the original game, and that’s okay. What I appreciate most is its authenticity — something a lot of World War II games often say they strive for, but often fall short in one way or another, Medal of Honor included. They even managed to get Mark Hamill — who was previously in The Big Red One, the classic 1980 war movie from which the game draws much inspiration — to play newsreel announcer for the expected stock-footage reels that help set the stage for the game’s story.

Gray Matter were honestly pretty daring with the decision to limit the game’s narrative to just a single character and his companions (minus a brief interlude where you play Roland’s brother in a bomber over North Africa.) But it makes the game feel more cinematic, makes the characters feel more real and not just a series of cardboard cliches before we move on to a completely different cast of characters. And as Gray Matter got bought out by Treyarch, they took those writing chops with them, which we can see in the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which to this day is still probably my favorite in the whole franchise.

I’m not here to tell you that Call of Duty 2: Big Red One is some hidden gem. It’s very much more Call of Duty 1, just for console, but after Finest Hour and the general mushiness of Medal of Honor, it’s a solid side entry in one of the biggest video game franchises of the last twenty years and well worth revisiting with your nearest copy of PCSX2.

 -June <3

Part of a series on Call of Duty 

Call of Duty	United Offensive	Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 3
Finest Hour	2: Big Red One	Roads to Victory
4: Modern Warfare	Modern Warfare 2	Modern Warfare 3
Modern Warfare DS	Modern Warfare Mobilized	Modern Warfare 3: Defiance
Modern Warfare 2019	Modern Warfare II	Modern Warfare III
Warzone
World At War	WaW: Final Fronts	World At War DS
Black Ops	Black Ops DS	Black Ops: Declassified
Black Ops II	Black Ops III	Black Ops IIII
Black Ops: Cold War	Black Ops 6	Black Ops 7
Ghosts	Advanced Warfare	Infinite Warfare
WWII	Vanguard	???
Zombies