Call of Duty: Big Red One

Call of Duty: Big Red One from 2005 differs from the series' previous entries mainly in that instead of jumping between fronts and nationalities, it follows a single American unit – the legendary 1st Infantry Division, nicknamed the Big Red One after its patch with a red numeral one. With this unit, the player goes step by step through the North African campaign, the invasion of Sicily, the landing in Normandy, and the fighting on German territory, which gives the game a more cohesive and personal narrative than the fragmented campaigns of previous entries, where the player switched between completely different armies from mission to mission.

The game was developed by Treyarch, for whom this was their very first entry into the Call of Duty series, before it became the main developer of console and later the main-line titles of the franchise. The developers focused primarily on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube consoles, so compared to the concurrent PC titles from Infinity Ward, the level design is simpler and more straightforward, adapted to a controller and the lower performance of that generation's consoles. A distinctive feature of this version is short documentary clips with real veterans of the 1st Infantry Division, which unlock between missions and supplement the fictional story with authentic memories of those who lived through it – an element that appeared in no other entry of the series in this form. Compared to later entries in the series, the campaign is shorter and more linear, but it offers a more elaborate emotional arc thanks to the player going through the war with essentially the same group of soldiers from North Africa all the way to the end of the war in Europe. The combination of a fictional squad and real veteran testimonies gives the game a documentary-like touch that blends into the purely action-driven framework of the battles unobtrusively, more like a pause between missions than a separate layer of storytelling.

Why play it: Big Red One is a good choice for players who want a tighter, more narrative-driven war shooter about a single unit, supplemented with real veteran memories, and who don't mind PlayStation 2 console controls.