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.