As irreverent as it is to those who fought and died during World War 2, it's hard not to be sick of the whole conflict. Decade's worth of movies- some good, others bad- and dozens of videogames with less of the good and more of the bad, and it's starting to get a little tiresome. Of course there's always the occasional classic that rejuvenates a flabby, insipid genre, and the original Call of Duty on PC was such a game, one that inspired countless pretenders, and earned many accolades in the process. Now, Call of Duty 2: Big Red One storms the beaches of the Xbox, but is it a battle worth fighting?

Big Red One is the console-only version of Call of Duty 2, in much the same way as Finest Hour was the designed-for-consoles version of the original Call of Duty. However unlike that particular rushed piece of garbage, Big Red One is actually a damn fine game. It follows the story of the American army's Fighting First infantry division, the longest serving division in the US Army, whose proud history stretches right back to the American Revolution. For those of you historically-challenged, that makes it almost as old as colonised Australia! At any rate, you'll take on the role of a green Private thrown in at the deep-end, slowly becoming a seasoned veteran of this most legendary American infantry division.

The introduction to Big Red One is ripped straight from Brothers in Arms; you begin in Maubeuge, France, in 1944, come to grips with the controls until you are badly injured in a scripted sequence, at which time you will flash back to the real beginning of the story, a year or so earlier in Africa. Going head-to-head with Rommel's feared 'Afrika Korps' accounts for the first few missions of the game, and Big Red One does a fantastic job of making you feel like winning the level is not a foregone conclusion. When a surprise offensive of Panzer tanks thunders into view in a blitzkrieg typical of the Desert Fox, you honestly have no idea if you're going to make it through unscathed.

Operation Torch and the many other African campaigns are rarely seen in the predominantly Euro/Pacific-centric WW2 games, so it makes for an interesting change in scenery. You'll also slog your way through another lesser-known theatre in the form of Sicily, the island just south of Italy. The game follows the real-life path of the Fighting First chronologically (except for the intro bit obviously- no chronotanks in this WW2 game!), and virtually every mission is based on a historical engagements in which the 1st Infantry Division participated in.

It's not just the battlegrounds that are varied: during your campaign you'll storm the beaches of Normandy on foot, drive tanks against Rommel in Africa, take to the skies as a gunner and a bomber, and control a variety of weapon emplacements, as well as act as a spotter for artillery and naval bombardments. It's a smart move on Treyarch's part too, because mixing the gameplay up a bit will prevent you from noticing just how linear the game is, and that you're doing the same thing over and over again for the duration of the 8-10 hour single player campaign.

Linearity isn't necessarily a dirty word, and in the case of Big Red One, it is used to create a tight, action-packed narrative that directs your every movement. Sometimes it's a little too heavy handed, and you will run into the odd invisible barrier or impassable 1ft obstacle, but it's always in the name of giving you a more blockbuster experience. Where it does become problematic is if you want to backtrack for ammo or health, because often sections you just finished will no longer be available to you.

Big Red One features a pretty good checkpoint system that saves your game after most large battles or met objective, which is just as well, because even on the normal difficulty you'll find yourself dying quite a bit. The later missions increase dramatically in length and difficulty, the latter thanks to these checkpoints being spaced out farther apart. By the final few levels, you should anticipate spending 20-30 minutes to complete the mission, and in a war-crime worthy of The Hague, your checkpoint status isn't saved if you switch off the Xbox.

Normally this wouldn't be a huge problem, but Big Red One has a few nasty bugs, the sort that crop up only very rarely, but can make you want to surrender altogether. During our campaign we experienced an A.I. squadmate break and refuse to move to the end-of-level debriefing area, and on another occasion the debriefing simply froze and required a reset. Trust us when we say that having the game crash on you after slogging your way through Crucifix Hill and losing an hour of your life is not fun! Still, the amount of glitches can be counted on one hand in our experience, so it's not game-breaking or anything.

When not glitching or breaking the game, the A.I. is pretty average, but nothing awful. Both sides of the conflict are pretty lousy shots on normal difficulty, though they have an unerring ability to know when a grenade has been lobbed in their direction and jump out of the way. As a general rule, it will be up to you to break the Mexican stand-off between the two sides, since the two can plug away at each other forever without winning a battle. On the one hand it's great because it encourages you to get right into the thick of things, but on the other it means you can't take a breather while you're low on health.

Treyarch have done a great job of brining characters to life in the game, and in a nice touch they do it using many of the actors from the brilliant TV series Band of Brothers. The talent also get involved in the motion-capture of their on-screen counterparts, which gives the game (well, the cutscenes) a very natural, realistic feel. There's a good amount of banter and dialogue to draw you into the game, but sadly there's not a whole lot of storyline to back it up. Sure, they're following a historic narrative, but putting you in the army-boots of a nameless private who never speaks hardly lends itself to telling a good yarn.

Nevertheless, Big Red One handles well and looks good, especially given the cross-platform nature of the title. Some of the textures are a bit muddy, particularly in the night/low-light missions, but given that a lot of the battles are, well, muddy it's not even an issue. The levels and locations look absolutely amazing, and it always feels like you're part of something bigger than just your given mission. Planes will soar past overhead dogfighting, in the distance you'll see tanks rolling past and infantry running by- it just makes you wish you were a little freer to explore the action! There's some minor slowdown during larger battles, but for the most part the game holds its own.

Big Red One also contains System Link and Xbox Live multiplayer support, though sadly there's no co-op or splitscreen action to be had. Multiplayer is a fairly standard affair, which the usual game modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag and domination- the latter requiring you to control key areas of the battlefield for a certain amount of time to win. The game supports up to 16 players, and even on a 512/128kbps connection it was a pretty lag-free experience in a full game.

Many of the games you'll join are truly epic in duration, such as playing for 45+ minutes or requiring 400 kills for a team to win. This is done mainly to take advantage of the battlefield promotion system that allows skillful players to increase their rank and gain new abilities. These range from the mundane, like carrying more ammo, to the pretty cool, such as calling in airstrikes or being able to create health-packs. Sadly, it isn't persistent and there isn't even an online scoreboard to keep track of your skills. A game like Call of Duty really needs a good career mode to really encourage people to pick it up for Xbox Live and stick with it...maybe next time.

Big Red One also contains a wealth of extras, particularly for the Collector's Edition of the game. These goodies range from concept artwork to interviews with actual members of the Fighting First talking about their experiences during the Second World War. As always, these interviews are at once fascinating and insightful, while also a little humbling and inspirational. It always seems odd to include such things with videogames as it makes the game pale in comparison to the reality and almost cheapens their sacrifice, but by including it Treyarch have at least paid tribute to the real heroes who answered their nation's call of duty.