Single player is quite immersive. From the beginning, storming the beaches of Normandy, all the way through until Berlin, the action is frantic and constant, and you are not alone. British, American, and Russian soldiers fight along side of you, and there are massive amounts of Axis to steamroll. Graphically the game impresses. Crisp and clean, with very detailed character models, the game is a treat to look at. The sound is possibly this games best technical area. Gunshots are loud, clear, and satisfying. Bullets whistle by your ears regularly, grenades rattle around, and your comrades (along with the Axis) will yell commands to each other during the battles. It?s all very nice and neighborly.

Now that we have established that the game is well put together well technically, we come to the most important point ? Multiplayer.

Multiplayer over Lan does not require a Battle.net server, and is very quick and easy to set up. Standard deathmatch and team deathmatch are included, along with three new types.

- Behind Enemy Lines pits a severely outnumbered Allied contingent against a horde of Axis. Every time an Axis kills an Ally, he switches teams. The idea is to stay alive as long as possible as an Ally.
- Search and Destroy requires you to find a target where bombs are to be placed, and place them. It?s very similar to Counter-strike.
- Retrieval is all about finding an item in the map, and transporting it to an exit point.

The game is rock solid on Lan, with no problems with lag, cpu drain, or server crashes. The gameplay is quite fast paced on the smaller levels, with some people bashing each other over the head with grenades. In the more spaced-out levels, sniper rifles come to effect, and the blood can boil after repeated headshots. A new addition for those of us who get frustrated by repeatedly getting killed by that sniper we can never see is the ?KillCam?. Once you are killed, instead of your screen just showing your dead body until you respawn, you will immediately be shown the last 5 seconds of your life from your killer?s perspective. Basically you will see through the eyes of that camping bastard up in his perch waiting for you, seeing your feet coming around a corner, then the aimer goes up slightly, until your helmeted cranium rounds the corner at which point it?s game over. This addition alone is worth the price of admission.

Overall Call of Duty, and its expansion are a solid addition to our Lan-Library. Every time we load them up, we know it?s going to be fast-paced, reliable, and something we?ll talk about for at least half an hour after the game is finished with war stories of our own.