You know you're playing a realistic war-based game when it forces you to think about actual life and death scenarios. Such was the case when I had a chance to wrap my hands around an Xbox 360 controller and go several rounds with Activision and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2. As bullets whizzed by my head and the street filled with the bodies of my comrades, the game sort of depressed me but in a good way, one that enabled me to adjust my strategy, find some damn cover, and stop taking bullets to the face.

I'd like to tell you to forget everything you've ever known about WWII shooters because Call of Duty 2 changes the paradigm, but that would only be a half truth. The reality is the handful of missions that I played challenged me to perform tasks that I've done before in other games, and once I got over this title's select graphical delights I came to the realization that it's more like its predecessors than I and probably some of the gaming community would like to believe, but there are several things the developers are getting right, the most important being the thrusting of the player into virtual combat situations he or she has never before experienced.

Shooting Nazis is nothing you or I haven't experienced before. Hell, these days, popping a fascist in the head with a bolt action rifle is practically a right of passage for videogamers, but these guys are a new breed of mean. Chalk that up to Call of Duty 2's ludicrously fast engine that runs at what appears to be a very consistent 60 frames per second. I literally flew down streets, up stairs, and through buildings, but this speedy kick start isn't the only reason why I had to keep both eyes open and tread carefully. These guys are just downright vicious. They took cover, they bum rushed me and bashed my brains in with the butt of their rifles, they converged on me en masse, they continuously ran over to gun turrets, and they tossed grenades like a slob chucks hamburger wrappers from his car window. They bring with them a fresh and exciting intensity that will very likely usher in the next generation of combat. That's not to say they're university scholars. It's not impossible to get the jump on these guys, but they're excellent shots, and when I'm out in the open and five of those bastards are firing at me I'm in a lot of trouble.

You can't always play Call of Duty 2 like you would another FPS. The game certainly has a run-an-gun aspect to it that will pay dividends when such a strategy is employed at the right times, but because the AI can waste you in a matter of seconds it's important to beat it at its own proverbial game. Unfortunately, my success came at the expense of some of my squad mates who were used as human shields, but that's another thing Infinity Ward is doing a nice job of. Like actual war (or at least in all of the movies) there are always scenes of mass death. There are numerous situations and cut scenes where guys will absentmindedly run up and get mowed down, sometimes in gruesome fashion. All you'll see is a puff of blood so the gore isn't realistic at all. Actually, it's the bullet that winds up being the most unnerving part of a soldier's demise. You can actually see it (as a blur, of course) rip into the guy's head and know which Nazi put him down. Plus, the engine is always tossing people onto the screen just for the sake of mass carnage. The men you begin the mission with will most likely get torn to pieces, only to be replaced with a fresh batch that seemingly appears out of nowhere. The same goes for the Germans, who'll regenerate just for the sake of being mowed down by a gun turret.