Reviews - Hard Core Tactical Mod for Call of Duty 2

This mod is probably the biggest mods for Call Of Duty 2 to date. My expectatives were high, and I have utter respect for the amount of work and time put to archieve such a scale.

While I know this is the first public release, it's far from perfect and I think criticsism is good for the future of this mod.
This mod is lacking some key things, specially the inmersion factor, while the gameplay becomes more realistic than ever it fails at being complemented by the inmersion. It needs music, dialogue/cut-scenes (which I read had been cut to reduce size), best possible looking models, more sound effects, map images in menu (maybe new UI too), and some more work on skybox/lighting/texture choose in most maps (some SCW maps still have spanish propaganda posters btw).

I also think that some missions were not necessary, and some led to nearly identical map re-utilization or odd settings (like the americans in Leningrad?), and that's something I see as more leave off-worthy.

There obviously are some odd bugs too, like enemies respawning in a small room you have just finished clearing, lack of guidance with objectives, and AI not doing what it should in some cases (like in that italian landing mission where your fellow soldiers don't move, and the enemies are only deep into the empty town, or short distance bazooka firing), and also needs some imrovement on ally cooperation. Plus atleast for me, I wasn't able to play any of the Axis campaigns or the last american one.
And since size was a big factor in reducing content, why not separate it into sub-mods? Maybe soviet and german campaigns in one, and then american and british into other.
This mod can be much better! I still have high expectatives and hope for it, and I wish it the best.

Take my 7 as a 7-.
This mod show us the huge modding potential that CoD2 has. Sadly, it promises more than it's able to deliver.
I'll go straight to the point: the amount of copy-pasting missions is too big. They don't feel as "different missions" just because the player and AI skins are different.
I'd rather have WAY less, actually different sp maps than re-playing 5+ times the same one over and over again.
Then, there's the knife. The knife in this mod is just down-right broken, but well...at least the author gave us a way do disable this feature completely.
There are some problems with weapon models as well: for example, the Carcano and the Kar98k bolts are misplaced.
Now, let's get to positives: even with the above issues,the firefights are, well.."hardcore". They feel brutal and punchy, thanks to the unexpectedly good sound design and the new AI animations. The sprint mechanic works even better than the one introduced in B2F.
This mod needs several more months worth of work and it will OUTSHINE every other CoD mod out there.
I wish the Author good luck and all the best. My knowledge on CoD2 modding might not be gynormous, but I'll gladly help however I can.

P.S.: I have two request/suggestions:
-Please fix antonio's omaha beach landing map...if it's possible, try to include a proper landing sequence and a whole bunch of scripted events
-try to use better weapon models whenever possible.

I really struggled in giving it a rating, but I was damn sure it is somewhere around 5-7.

In short, Hard Core Tactical Mod is some sort of Brutal Call of Duty 2, like Brutal Doom for Doom. It is a full-conversion mod, with changes in gameplay and stuff. This includes removal of HUDs, smarter enemies, enemy types, and more weapons and chapters.

Let’s start off with what probably makes you want to pick up this mod in the first place, the expanded campaigns. This includes fighting as a German and an Italian. I don’t want you to expect a lot from this mod, since the creator (who I presume work entirely by himself) kind of reskin maps from the community and the original games added as chapters. I really don’t mind that since it gives me new experience, because of different enemies, the weapons I can obtain, different voice lines. Also, there’s randomized weather now which I like.

On the other hand, some maps are reused in a way that I really don’t get it why would he do this. Such as Angloville: Day Two, Rangers Under Attack, or The Ludendorff Bridge. They are basically same missions with only two changes, time of day and the division badges. That’s it. Should you choose to play missions in the way they are arranged (top to bottom) you would get exhausted from playing the American campaign. It is full of map reuses, on some occasion, the same map twice. In a row. While you can skip these missions, they also make me question “Do CoD2 community really wants to play a map that already exists but at night instead?”

I also think the creator himself should have considered the quality of the maps he picked from the community. This is due to the maps I’ve seen varies a lot in quality. Some are damn good and memorable, some maps have bugged AI which requires restart, some have houses full of infinitely respawning enemies.And because some maps are tied into a single mission, it sucks that you can't choose them right away.

The sounds were tweaked and gore was added to give you a sense of being in a real war, and it is solid. The guns sound punchy and the bullets whizzing by did add some good immersion. However, what threw me away was the death sounds. Some are perfect as they are from Red Orchestra, but then there are ones from Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead. I think they should be removed if he wants to give an impression of war is Hell, since the majority sound effects has been used in countless silly GMod and SFM videos. TF2 Scout or L4D Nick doesn’t become an Afrika Korps soldier/an American storming beaches just because their voices are used.

The removal of HUDs adds immersion, but it comes with drawbacks. The objective prompt is removed along with the HUDs, and there are a lot of custom maps in this mod, on some maps you won’t know to progress because you don’t know an object can be interacted. The grenade indicator’s removal would be good and all if it’s not the fact that CoD NPCs will throw them all over the place. Sometimes you will blow up randomly, because you couldn’t see a grenade lying in a pile of bodies. Also, because this mod introduces rifle grenades and it shares same slot as smoke grenades, sometimes when you try to throw a smoke to advance, you blow yourself up instead because the HUD is gone. For the impact grenades…I’ll just leave you to decide if it’s fair or not.

This mod also introduces radiomen and medics. Radiomen can call an airstrike/artillery on you if you don’t kill them first, and the medics…..they are just there. Free kills, to be precise, they can’t attack or anything. It is sometimes jarring to see them charging into battle too. (I still find launcher-wielding NPCs unfun to fight against, like in Back2Fronts.)

The new weapons are always welcomed for me, but I hope that the heavy MGs, M1 Thompson and Nagant Revolver get remodeled in the future since they are reskins, technically. Also, the flamethrower is the worst new weapon, don’t use it.

The way almost every new actions are binded to the “Use” key makes it very clunky. You can’t shoot immediately after sprinting because (I think) the sprinting animation is actually a weapon that doesn’t have ammo. The knife is also a pointless addition, imo, I can’t see myself using it at all. (except for 2 maps that forces me to use it.)

All in all, I think the mod would come out better if the creator takes a bit more time to polish. I think he released it too early. I hope this mod becomes better, wish it luck.

This mod (and also Spanish Civil War mod) are probably the most extensive total conversions of any Call of Duty game.
The amount of stuff in the mod is incredible. And, best of all, the gameplay is pretty intense.

Sometimes i am confused about my sexuality

I finally got arond to playing this mod, so here are my thoughts about it.

I'm not gonna go too hard on it because it's been developped for like 10 years and it's definitely the work of Slikk's life.

Let's start with the positives: the mod is good. It's like an expansion pack for the original Call of Duty 2. It offers new missions, weapons, basically every single thing from the original game has been expanded. I played it on normal difficulty and I gotta admit that I had a lot of fun.

And now for the negatives. Oh boy, where do I even start... Remember those new missions that I mentioned? Yeah, they actually suck quite a lot. If you came here expecting to play some amazing French, Italian or German missions - I'm sorry. Most of them are really bad. 80% of the time you have no idea what the hell you're supposed to do. The objectives are usually unclear and since there's no HUD - you can't see what you can interact with. The only missions that are somewhat enjoyable are basically just missions from the original game but with changed soldiers. "Oh, so you just finished that mission as the British? Congrats! Now you're gonna play the exact same mission but as the Germans! How cool is that?"... Oh yeah, I mentioned the HUD - It's completely gone now. There's no crosshair, no friendly soldier names - no nothing. The only thing you can bring back is the ammo counter. I myself don't really understand the need to remove it.

The author claims that he replayed the mod a million ******* times, yet he still somehow missed that the Polish soldiers are mute. And all of those typos...

You can kill as many friendly soldiers as you can without taking any consequence. And the knife is just ******* broken. Another thing I noticed during the mod's development is how the author called everybody who offered him a fair criticism a "snowflake" or a "racist troll". Well, who's the real snowflake here?

If you're downloading this mod right now and expect to get some quality gameplay - don't get your hopes out. It's fun, but you're still gonna get disapointed. That being said, it's still way better than the first version of the mod.

A lot of content, but very roughly put together. This mod is very extensive, but maps are repeated time and time again, the A.I. is very clunky (sometimes downright not working), some missions can bug out at weird points, the controls aren't working sometimes, etc. etc. No matter how big you make this mod, it doesn't matter if it's terribly implemented. Plus you have the anachronisms (PPS-43 in 1938 Poland?!) and things that make little sense (Soviet tankers speaking English, Poles speaking Russian and fighting with Soviet weapons).

The balancing on this mod is scaled towards hardcore players. This is not a bad thing. However, some truly ridiculous situations can emerge. Like a guy with a bolt-action ducking behind cover, popping up, and in exactly 0,025 seconds taking aim at you and shooting you in the face, to then duck ASAP. Or the fact that the NPCs all seem to be pro baseball players and are able to toss grenades across half a map.

That being said, the mod has a lot of ambition and work put into it. IMO Back2Fronts is still better, but only because it is way more polished.

Probably the most intense mod I have ever played, combat wise. A crazy combination of Back2Fronts, Merciless Matador and WCP all rolled into one. Several cons include script errors and random crashes as already listed in the manual, but other then that, its perfect, and brings the CoD2 singleplayer experience into its fullest potential.

Simply an amazing mod, sure, the death animations sometimes don't blend in because of mixing and matching but this mod is still amazing. Lots of singleplayer missions and new content, weapons, effects, sounds, AI features, it's great!

Melhor Mod do COD2