That is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who labored at Official Xbox Journal from 2002-2012 in the course of the unique Xbox and Xbox 360 period earlier than becoming a member of IGN, the place he stays “the Xbox man.” Within the run-up to Xbox’s twenty fifth anniversary, he’ll be sharing his recollections from the platform’s first quarter-century.
Youthful readers may not bear in mind a time when Name of Obligation wasn’t one of many greatest franchises in all of gaming, however I promise you that there was a time. I had performed the unique on PC — the one platform it had been launched on — again in 2003. And, sure, I fairly preferred it. It was a wonderful World Warfare 2-set army first-person shooter.
When it got here time for the sequel in 2005, which was slated to be a day-one launch title for the then-upcoming Xbox 360 console, my Official Xbox Journal colleagues and I had been enthusiastic about it, but it surely wasn’t essentially probably the most anticipated Xbox 360 launch sport. (In hindsight, nothing actually was; whereas the unique Xbox had a killer app in Halo: Fight Advanced, it had little else in its launch lineup, whereas the Xbox 360 had a couple of glorious video games — like Undertaking Gotham Racing 3, Condemned: Prison Origins, and naturally Name of Obligation 2 — however no Halo-level must-haves.)
My keen however not feverish anticipation for Name of Obligation 2 modified after I obtained to go to Infinity Ward in the summertime of 2005 to do a canopy story on Infinity Ward’s sequel. And I bear in mind very clearly what jumped out at my first as I used to be proven an early mission from the marketing campaign: the volumetric smoke results. With the elevated horsepower of the Xbox 360, smoke grenades mattered greater than ever throughout gameplay, as tossing them to obscure the enemy’s imaginative and prescient when you darted throughout the trail close by Axis a-holes was built-in into the mission design.
It was a extremely enjoyable option to work the Xbox 360’s new tips into the motion. Couple that with the superb sound results and surround-sound audio work the Xbox had baked in (in equity, the unique Xbox was additionally absolutely 5.1-capable) and I abruptly discovered myself wanting ahead to Name of Obligation 2 greater than another sport within the 360’s moderately massive launch lineup.
Quick-forward to the autumn of that 12 months and the upcoming launch of the brand new Xbox. As I’ve talked about earlier than in a few of my different Xbox twenty fifth anniversary look-backs at my favourite video games from the platform’s previous, magazines are made properly upfront with a purpose to enable time for printing and delivery to our a whole lot of hundreds of subscribers. This meant that we sometimes obtained entry to evaluate builds of video games properly upfront (suppose: two months). This was normally no drawback for builders to supply, because the submission builds they’d undergo the Xbox certification crew had been sometimes fairly ultimate; the age of day-one patches had not but dawned.
However on this case, I needed to go to the sport, moderately than the opposite approach round, as safety was tight round each the brand new Xbox and the brand new Name of Obligation. And so I returned to Infinity Ward in southern California to spend a couple of days reviewing Name of Obligation 2. I started with marketing campaign earlier than shifting to multiplayer (towards the Infinity Ward QA testers and multiplayer crew, who had the distinct benefit of getting performed dozens if not a whole lot of hours of multiplayer in comparison with my zero hours). Bear in mind earlier after I mentioned I fairly loved the unique Name of Obligation on PC? Name of Obligation 2’s marketing campaign on Xbox 360 was considerably higher. Extra motion, extra drama, extra pressure. It was wildly spectacular by any metric, which was particularly vital contemplating that Name of Obligation multiplayer had not but established itself as the primary motive many individuals purchased every new sport.
Make no mistake, although: multiplayer was superior. A number of sport modes, a brief TTK (bear in mind, it was all fairly new on the time!), killer graphics, and remember it was the pre-Occasion Chat period when most individuals truly used the Chat Headset bundled with each Xbox 360 and communicated with their teammates. Wanting again, it was the start of the tip of Halo’s reign because the king of console shooters. Halo 2 was completely nonetheless being performed by a ton of individuals after the Xbox 360 launched (as it’s possible you’ll recall, Halo 1 and a pair of had been the primary two backwards appropriate video games with Xbox 360, and that compatibility was baked into the brand new console out of the field), and Halo 3 would have its second two years later…proper earlier than Infinity Ward’s subsequent venture, Name of Obligation 4: Trendy Warfare, took the crown from Halo for good.
Name of Obligation 2 was, fairly merely, the appropriate sport on the proper time for Xbox 360. It confirmed players what the brand new console was able to whereas additionally being a stellar sport no matter platform. It most likely would not maintain up right this moment, actually, however when you had the pleasure of being there on the time, it was a heck of a second within the historical past of Xbox.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s government editor of previews and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox present, Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of Next-Gen Console Watch. He is a North Jersey man, so it is “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.