{"id":1884,"date":"2012-12-10T15:02:50","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T15:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2012-12-10T15:02:50","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T15:02:50","slug":"my-top-100-43-call-of-duty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1884","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #43 &#8211; Call of Duty 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1900\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CoD2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1900\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1900\" title=\"CoD2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CoD2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1151\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CoD2.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CoD2-208x300.jpg 208w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/CoD2-711x1024.jpg 711w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1900\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2005 &#8211; Activision (Xbox 360, PC, Mac)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I know, I know, I know&#8230;\u00a0 &#8220;Andre&#8221;, you&#8217;re saying, &#8220;you\u00a0piss and moan\u00a0about how <em>Call of Duty<\/em> games are going to lead to the downfall of gaming as we know it, yet here you are, putting a <em>CoD<\/em> game this high on your countdown.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well, there was once a time where there wasn&#8217;t an over-abundance of war-based first-person shooters.\u00a0 EA\u00a0had recently been\u00a0getting into the swing of\u00a0making\u00a0good World War II shooters with <em>Medal of Honor<\/em>, and\u00a0Infinity Ward\u00a0hit it big with their PC installment of <em>Call of Duty<\/em> (although the console\u00a0edition was\u00a0only so-so).\u00a0 There were a few other attempts at making\u00a0unique\u00a0shooters based around\u00a0major events in the war, <em>Brothers in Arms<\/em> being the most obvious one,\u00a0so we weren&#8217;t being bombarded by the same\u00a0formula over and over again.<\/p>\n<p><em>Call of Duty 2<\/em> would be\u00a0one of the launch titles for the 2005 release of the Xbox 360, and I wasn&#8217;t sure\u00a0I&#8217;d be\u00a0willing to fork out\u00a0a considerable chunk of\u00a0money to get one.\u00a0 I had just purchased my\u00a0first vehicle, and that financial responsibility was nagging at my consciousness.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t necessarily have to be cheap, but I had to be cautious\u00a0about what I spent from that point on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Buying a gaming console around that\u00a0time would just be too much, too quickly.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00a0made one of my regular trips\u00a0to EB Games, and through the larger-than-usual crowd of shoppers, I saw a sharp-looking LCD TV playing some kind of action-packed shooter.\u00a0 It was\u00a0an Xbox 360 kiosk\u00a0with a\u00a0<em>CoD2<\/em> demo, being shown off in all its next-gen glory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5uGy5gvyvfU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Any doubts I might have had about\u00a0the 360\u00a0being a leap in quality were squashed, right then and there.\u00a0 The way the light was reflecting off those soldier&#8217;s helments, and how the frame rate\u00a0was\u00a0so smooth&#8230;\u00a0 how the hell was this possible??\u00a0 I mean, yeah, technology was advancing like crazy, but we were a couple of years\u00a0removed from the friggin&#8217; N-Gage!!!\u00a0 Who was to say that &#8220;new&#8221; was automatically\u00a0&#8220;awesome&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Holy crap, though, this looked amazing, and ran so bloody smoothly.\u00a0 If <em>Call of Duty 2<\/em> looked this good, imagine games\u00a0further into the console&#8217;s life-cycle.\u00a0 The possibilities seemed limitless!\u00a0 AND OH MAN, PERFECT DARK ZERO WAS OUT TOO; OMIGAD.<\/p>\n<p>I let go of the controller (although I didn&#8217;t really want to),\u00a0moved to the right about three feet, and asked Shawn (the clerk) to sign me up for a pre-order.\u00a0 I was a bit late in doing so, and I&#8217;d be getting my own 360 whenever the &#8220;second shipment&#8221; came in, but I was fine with one last big investment before Christmas.\u00a0 I initially expressed some reservations about doing so, but I was surprised when both my mother and sister both said something to the effect of &#8220;you only live once!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>CoD2<\/em> was an eye-opening experience.\u00a0\u00a0Being a sniper in the\u00a0snowy battlefields of Russia, scaling the rock walls at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, and fending off hordes of\u00a0Nazis\u00a0under the\u00a0hot desert sun in Egypt; they were all sides of the conflict we had seen before, but never had it been so immersive, so <em>real<\/em>.\u00a0 I can play this game now, and still have that awestruck feeling I had in those first few months of playing it.<\/p>\n<p>It was new, it was refreshing, and it\u00a0smashed any expectations I\u00a0had for the new Xbox.\u00a0 This console might just do OK.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1903\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ngage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1903\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1903\" title=\"ngage\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ngage.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ngage.jpg 480w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/ngage-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1903\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This isn&#8217;t my picture, or anything, but Tomb Raider was the only game I ever played on N-Gage, and I gotta tell ya&#8230; it was awful.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I know, I know, I know&#8230;\u00a0 &#8220;Andre&#8221;, you&#8217;re saying, &#8220;you\u00a0piss and moan\u00a0about how Call of Duty games are going to lead to the downfall of gaming as we know it, yet here you are, putting a CoD&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1884\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,63,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-100","category-ww2","category-xbox-360"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}