Big Red One refers to the Army's 1st Infantry Division. This group was the first American military to see action in World War 2 and it follows their missions from North Africa, to Sicily, to France, and then finally on to Germany. You play the role of a soldier in this division as you make your way through the ranks starting off as a private will eventually being promoted up to a sergeant. For the first time ever in the series, you will be the same person throughout the game and follow the story and lives of the soldiers around you to the very end. This change to how the game progresses actually is a nice change as there is a continuous flow in the game as you get to know some of the soldiers around you and see how they develop and change over time.

Missions are primarily on foot, but they do mix in just the right amount of vehicle and gun turret action. One of my favorite levels is where you actually are on board a plane for a bombing run mission. These bombers are the type where you have rear, belly, top, side, and front gunners defending the plane. As a soldier on board, you actually get to move around the plane and can take on several of the stations including the eventual bombing station. As your plane takes on damage from attacking planes that you fail to shoot down, you will see the damage done to your plane as it gets shot up when you run between stations.

The A.I. in the game is a bit of a mixed bag. On the plus side, I really like how they call stuff out and talk throughout the mission. It not only adds to the atmosphere, but it is actually useful in gameplay to help find enemy soldiers or tasks that you need to do. On the other hand, a lot of it looks more like scripting than A.I.. You'll see a lot of enemy soldiers just stand there and shoot at you rather than trying to take cover or reposition themselves. Then there are soldiers that are behind objects that pop up, take their shot, duck, and then repeat. Often you can take out a guy based on their predictability of when they will pop up again. The A.I. in the end feels either scripted when it is doing something or just non-existent when they don't do very much. Even though Treyarch has gone back to the original Call of Duty as a base for their A.I., it might have better to have not pointing that out to begin with.

Multiplayer is available on the Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions which takes several locations and levels from the story mode and lets gamers play within them. Game modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Domination. While playing multiplayer, you'll have access to additional weapons and tanks. While tanks are powerful, they can be slow and not easy to maneuver through some of the war torn city levels. Rocket launchers are also placed throughout levels with tanks so that tanks are balanced out. In one match, I found myself hiding within buildings and running up behind the tank's blind spots in order to avoid it until I could find something to do damage to it.

When it comes to graphics, the game is quite impressive looking in the war torn areas. Some buildings and objects will be destructible either by you, or when things collide into them. What really sells the graphics is the explosion and smoke particles that are raining down on you throughout the game. It really adds to the atmosphere and look since they are so well done. One downfall in the graphics is the overall look is a bit dark even during the daytime sequences. With the combination of a lot of smoke particles and a dark look, it can sometimes be hard to see things, especially on one level when you're invading at night.

On top of the good graphics, the audio is extremely well done with the explosions and background effects that immerse you into the game. Explosions have enough bass to rock the room on a good sound setup. The surround sound is even well done so that you can point out the direction of where shots came from and the chatter of your squad. Speaking of squad chatter, many of the voice actors who play as soldiers in the game also worked on the HBO series Band of Brothers, which helps sell the atmosphere in the game.

Where the game falls a bit short, no pun intended, is the length of the game. With a prologue and thirteen chapters, you can play through the game in just under eight hours on Normal difficulty. On top of that, the last level, while good, feels a bit anti-climatic. Adding in just another chapter or two could have helped the game length and maybe even given a more satisfying feeling when the game ended. Something else that would have been beneficial would have been the addition of the grenade indicator like the one found in Call of Duty 2 which points out where the live grenade is once its been tossed. Many times you'll hear the grenade being tossed but have no idea where you should run to avoid it. Fortunately as long as you move enough, you shouldn't have too much of a problem avoiding damage.

Call of Duty: Big Red One turns out to be a better outing than Finest Hour and is comparable to the original Call of Duty in many ways, but it never quite reaches the peak intensity level of the PC versions. Aside from my mixed feelings on A.I., which was never one of the series' strengths to begin with, and the length, the game has a lot of great action, well done atmosphere, and multiplayer (except on GameCube) to keep you coming back for more. It's a shame that the GameCube doesn't offer any type of multiplayer which in turn just makes it an even shorter game with little reason to come back. Big Red One is a solid and atmospheric World War 2 first person shooter that's a great ride all the way through.