Ngl, I think the only reason I decided to replay this game was because I started black ops 6, and didn't realize it was kind of a sequel to Cold War, and from someone who hasn't played a call of duty campaign since WW2, I decided to just stop since I want to experience the overarching story without being confused on certain story beats, so screw it, I've played the first call of duty somewhat recently, so why not replay Call of Duty 2 and get some of the achievements I've been lacking, which all revolved around beating missions and the campaign on veteran difficulty.
This was loads of fun, and brung back so many memories, but wow is the veteran difficulty a pain in certain areas of the game. Playing 3 different campaign sections, each playing a different ally, you're tasked with the same ideology; kill and obliterate the Nazi regime. The first section (The Russian campaign) was a great introduction for what's to come, and had a few moments that felt like the game was just punishing you for playing on such a hard difficulty. I did like with this game, there's no more health packs, and your health regenerates overtime, making this game way easier than the first game, but still, certain parts of this game would of been actually impossible if that was the case. The second campaign (The British campaign) was a step up in difficulty bringing tank war in the mix, but actually playing as the tank was fairly easy. What made this campaign more difficult was the missions where you're tasked on killing massive amount of guys, oh and they love to ambush, so having guys come around corners and already shooting at you was all too common. One particular mission that was a pain was a sniping mission where you sit on top of a building and have to shoot soldiers shooting mortars. Thank God there were auto save moments during that because if not, I would have just gave up there. Now the really hard part of the game was the 3rd campaign (The American campaign) in particular a mission where you have to storm a beach and infiltrate and destroy the artillery guns. The lack of auto saves during this mission was such a pain, and had me struggling so much. Definitely died 40 times or so before I was able to finally smoke grenade my way into a bunker and finally get that auto save but yet, there were plenty more moments in this campaign that just seemed impossibly hard for no reason, the other being a mission where you have to infiltrate a bunker that has an infinite bad guy spawn, and have to smoke grenade and aimlessly shoot your way in. Another mission I died more times than I wanna count, but it was rewarding to finally get past it. There were a some other parts that seemed obnoxious, but at this point, I was expecting the worst, so the rest of the campaign didn't phase me. Beating the last mission and seeing those end credits were a relief to say the least.
In all, I think this game was pretty good. If you want a real challenge, definitely play this on veteran and prepare for a relentless beating.
