Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360)

I'm so glad the Call of Duty 2 Xbox 360 demo is in the February issue of The Official Xbox Magazine.

This game shows that no matter how tired the genre (do we need another freaking WWII shooter?), innovation and excellence are still to be had. And the demo is the same thing that's at in-store kiosks.

Call of Duty 2 is not only the best-selling Xbox 360 game (with 70%-plus of the game market share), it's one of the top-selling games of 2005 (and it came out the end of October).

The demo is disappointingly short, but gives a taste of the frenetic play, importance of listening, keeping your head down (and using those smoke grenades), and generally lets you get "as close to war as you'll ever want to be".

So, they can still make WWII games interesting and important.

I'm curious to see what The Outfit does for the genre -- kind of the "anti-Call of Duty 2".