Back2Fronts is an extensive mod that will overhaul your Call of Duty 2 game to a next level. This mod brings more variety, intensity, realism and battle-like experience. Try new weapons, fight new enemies, fulfil new missions and explore new options. Mod is SP and MP friendly (although primary part is SP).
It is an excellent work that these guys are doing. With more models and new animations for COD2. The new sprint is fantastic.
All in all, it's a decent mod, but it's got some issues that are very apparent. Here are the pros and cons I've come across while playing:
+ New weapons look great and most of the new levels are fairly well put together. The new animations look amazing as well.
- Enemy AI has been tweaked and as a result, is far more aggressive and accurate than in the regular game. It gets ridiculous and absurd at times. They have no issues even hitting you 100+ meters away where you can hardly even see them. Honestly, this is one of the mod's biggest downers. The enemies are too OP and in several missions will have no issues cutting you and your allies to ribbons (the Leningrad one is a good example). It also doesn't help that too many enemy soldiers have machine guns instead of rifles.
- Enemies also now spam grenades (frag and smoke) to the point of insanity. They'll be throwing them everywhere, even inside where it makes no sense. Sometimes they'll spam them so heavily that they'll literally kill themselves in the process.
- Too many allies and enemies now packing bazookas on the battlefield. This gets extremely annoying fast as they'll always do massive damage to you and there are so many around that it gets tough to avoid them. Including these in the way that they did is one of the stupider things about the mod.
- The shellshock you get from all explosions and grenades is really annoying. It also greatly slows your movement when you are having it, which usually means you're toast to the "improved" enemy AI and aiming. Supposedly you can turn it off, but the game constantly resets your preferences on things like this.
- The new weapons look and feel great but most of them aren't really good enough to offset the more aggressive and aimbotty enemies you'll be facing. It doesn't help that the mod changes the stats for most of the existing weapons as well, which results in a number of them being effectively nerfed (e.g. the M1 Garand). This creates a more unbalanced experience.
- Not as much new content here as some other mods out there (like the United Fronts mod from the original CoD/CoD:UO). I'm not going to complain too much about this considering that the mod is free.
- The new sprinting feature is cool, but it is poorly implemented and buggy. Because it relies on you double-pressing F, you'll often wind up picking up weapons off the ground that you don't want to pick up or switching your weapon's fire mode along the way. A lot of the time it has a hard time even working. They really should've just taken a page from the sprinting system in CoD:UO instead of doing what they did here.
- Significantly more head-bobbing when you get hit. This becomes an issue because you'll be getting hit a lot more than in the vanilla version now that the enemies suddenly have superhuman aiming and recoil absorption.
- Every time you restart the game, it resets most of your preferences. So if you have a fine-tuned set of preferences, you'd better remember them or you'll lose most of them once you exit the game or level.
- Ammo for many weapons is more limited than in the vanilla version.
- Some bugs and glitches from time to time that need fixing.
- Poor support and updating. I've heard that Patch 1.1 has been underway for awhile now to fix a lot of these issues, but it hasn't yet been released as far as I know and there's been no word ever since. It's been almost 2 years now...
So, it's not a bad mod by any stretch, but it's got some significant issues and it clearly shows. The tweaked enemy AI and the poorer weapon balancing results in a significantly more difficult experience than you see in the vanilla version. It's not the fun kind of difficult either, but instead the cheesy kind that just leads to frustration. I'd recommend if you're a real fan of CoD2 and really want more content than what the vanilla game offered. Otherwise, I'd recommend treading with caution until the mod's biggest issues get fixed (if they ever do).
this Mod will be a extravaganza in all of Call of Duty 2 realism mods and i would advice if you could recruit some Call of Duty 2 Single Player Campaign mappers ... its like create a campaign with maps from real battles from 1939-1945 ... anyway its just my advice ...... Keep up the good work !!!
+Essentially Gun porn. The amount of smooth looking and realistic weapons is amazing the first time you feast your eyes on each of the weapons. Many new weapons/grenades are very nice right down to the smallest detail. As is some of the new effects/sounds I keep noticing.
+The variations of enemies is also a nice addition. Some of the new vehicles play a small role but I appreciate them alot. Alot of love to the people that made them.
-+B2Fronts options and combat options are a nice addition because we get to fine tune our Hud/hints but it keeps resetting upon restarting the game, and it keeps resetting Scope Exit on Damage to No and Enable Health Bar to No during the game which is annoying.
-+Sprinting and changing fire rates is a nice addition although awkward to use, you have to hold the use key for fire rates and double tapping the use key to sprint (so I end up not sprinting but instead picking weapons up or many times it doesn't even work, ie bugs out before you can sprint or taking to long to change fire rates).
-New weapons are great, as our their 'variants' with different scopes... but there are many instances when I'm carrying a scoped weapon and can't pick up more ammo even though I'm starring at the same unscoped weapon on the ground. Its a nice addition but its a very unrealistic limitation that you need to have the EXACT same weapon name regardless of whether that weapon shares the same ammo.
-Germans seem to be alot more accurate than I remember, so much so its hard to recommend this mod. Its most noticeable in one of the new missions; the Leningrad mission. I end up getting mowed down regardless of what I do when rushing the enemy, for some reason the enemy mostly shoots at me and not my friends. I managed to get past the first rush forward by popping in and out from behind the wooden cart while my friends take care of the enemy. But the 2nd rush forward after I clear all the trenches is impossible, with only a few thin trees that don't do a good job at all at blocking bullets, I die in a few seconds. I even tried hiding behind my team mates which only gets them either killed or knocked to the ground. This is probably a consequence of more accurate German weapons which does not go well with this map. The enhanced accuracy of enemies is generally not a good thing since I end up getting hit so often that it kinda takes me out of the mission 'immersion' wise, makes Veteran difficulty really hard & makes friendly AI look more weak than usual.
-I think perhaps it would have been best to leave out the Leningrad mission out and polish it A.I wise and perhaps make it look less barren/empty of detail.
-Doesn't really have anything else going for it. No gore improvements, no new gametypes for multiplayer, no new campaign (except for 2 German missions that I've already played in a different mod) just 9 new missions dispersed throughout the existing campaigns which didn't really add anything spectacular to the experience that would make me want to recommend the mod based on them IMO.
great work with animations, skins, realism!!! i hope this mod will be finished strong!
Mate, this is amazing :D
I must say that i feel dumb for being so toxic before. Good to see this mod to be released :)
Edit: added my thoughts after playing the mod. I might edit review again sometime.
Things that should be improved:
Some sounds are bad.
Make weapon selection better (before starting a mission you can choose the weapons and grenades you want, like in BO2)<--how weapon selection should be.
Germans have too god damn many anti tank weapons (imagine cqb in ww2 with rocket noobs)
Weapons in semi auto don't share ammo with weapons in full auto (lets say mp40 is in semi auto but you can't pickup mp40 ammo)
This mod is most likely the best thing ever. but like all other mods, it has downsides.
*AI*
The AI here is good, but kinda ridiculous. sometimes, they throw smoke grenades indoors for no reason. like, in the mission Angoville, when the American soldier kicks the door open, he tosses a smoke grenade instead of an actual grenade. and the germans do that too. Machine guns in this mod are weird. they all target the player and if you're in a open field, you're screwed. the can spot you even if they're not facing your direction. i think in this mod, you'll mostly die by the MG's.
*Animations*
so far, i only found one glitch here. with the BAR. keep in mind that Taylor pulls the bolt on the left side all the way back then pulls out the magazine. when he does that...the bolt somehow goes back to the position it was when there was no ammo. and the De Lisle carbine, when you pull the bolt, the animation repeats twice.
*Maps*
you see some new, great maps in here. however, it would be fun if more maps with fun features we're added. like, in the Angoville map, the fact that you could call the navy was nice. it would be good if new maps we're added. and one of the suggestions i have is Sicily together with an Italian Army addon. it would be the best.
*Weapon Usage and Models*
The Models are accurate. but, there is one german model that stands out. you see a model of a german soldier with a spanish flag on the side of his helmet. assuming he is a spanish volunteer, it's unrealistic because Franco did send volunteers, but to fight in the EASTERN FRONT against the Soviets, not against the Americans and British. the weapon usage is okay. but the female soldier always has a shotgun. you never see a female model with a mosin or a ppsh. and apart from that, the PPS-42 is never seen in the Russian Campaign.
*Campaign* (Keep in mind, i played this on singleplayer)
The Mission "Sniper's War" is hard and fun. however, there is one part that gets in your nerves. when you charge in the field, the chances of you getting gunned down by a MG-42 is likely. apart from that, German soldiers come out of the buildings and go in the middle of the field. and no matter how many of them die, they keep spawning until you get to the trenches. it would be better if the german soldiers stayed in the trenches with the machine guns instead of running out in the field.
The Mission "Leningrad" in incredibly hard. when you charge, there is almost no cover and the only way to make it to the trenches is spam smoke grenades and take cover behind your friendlies. because really, all the 2-3 Machine Guns in the trench will target you first, then your friendlies second. it would be better if there was more cover, or at least some T-34's so the player could take cover behind them.
In The Mission "88 Ridge", the Tiger tanks are incredibly hard to destroy, even if you try to attack them from behind. not only that, but i Saw a M4 Sherman take 7 Tiger hits and he was still up.
In "The Tiger" Mission, after the Tiger tank destroys the M4 Sherman near the town hall, it reverses. after it reverses, you can simply go in front of the tank and it won't do anything. the tank won't try to kill you or anything. it'll just sit there. even if you hit it with a rocket, it'll still sit there.
In "The Silo" Mission, after clearing the town, you have to climb the ladder up the Silo. you can't do that because the silo is...you know, not blown up. and the way up is blocked by a tiny door thing. after some investigation, i realized that the reason why this happened was because the Flak gun at the start of the mission was destroyed and the soldier coundn't get in it and destroy the Silo.
In the St. Lamaire mission, when you have to secure the areas (which is impossible because there is a truck with 5 germans and they try to kill you, there is two MG-42's forward and in the right there are three germans), after you secure one area, it should give you a checkpoint, right? well, guess what, it doesn't. so if you forget to save after clearing the area and you die, you'll have to start all over again and that is frustrating.
In The Mission "Bergstein" when you have to take out the halftrack, you can interact with it, but nothing happens.
so far, this mod is great. it's realistic in every way possible and you should totally check it. it's a 9/10.
Best Call of Duty Overhaul I've ever seen. Tons of new weapons, grenades, uniforms, maps...
Everyone knows every mod, game, etc... have bugs. This mod has some too, but doesn't really affect the gameplay. It's still an awesome mod. It gave me a new Call of Duty 2. I fell in love with the Italian weapons and the sounds from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault are real nostalgic. I can't wait for the Italian Army. I hope it will be added soon, but I know, it's a hard work making those animations, skins and sounds, so keep up the amazing, great work guys.
All that graphics, Wow! Realism, WOW! Even the tryouts,WOOOAAAAHHHH
Looks great!