Call of Duty 2/Rommel's Last Stand

Armored Car Escape

 * Toujane
 * 10 March 1943
 * Difficulty: 5 out of 10

This mission starts rather abruptly. You, Captain Price, and Private MacGregor is in a building holding off Germans, and you are ordered to get your arse on the MG-42 sitting on the window. Do so, and mow down the incoming Germans. Notice that not only are there numerous fuel barrels for you to blow up, but the railing things on the roof right below you can be knocked off by shooting at it. Also, the crates down there can be shredded. After you've had a little fun, an armored car will approach... not good. Get off the gun and immediately hit the floor away from the window. The darn Germans will start blowing holes in the walls with their sweet armored car's cannon.



After a desperate-sounding radio call, a German will kick the door open. Shoot him and everyone else in the building as you go downstairs. Once you get out of the building, immediately take a right into the alley and go into the building in front of you. From here pick off Germans, and most importantly, the guy inside the armored car. Captain Price will pull the body out. Stand near the car until the game tells you to press the Use key to get inside, and do so.

You're now in control of the big cannon on the car. Press the Use key again to switch back to your normal weapon, but there's really no need to do that unless the gun is overheated.

Now starts perhaps the only funny bit of the game. Price will start scolding MacGregor about his inability to drive the thing, while the latter returns witty remarks. Anyway, once you're in the car enemies will run toward you, but since the car (like a tank) is completely invulnerable to small arms fire, you can ignore them if you want (shooting them is of course more fun).

This starts a wild ride down the streets of Toujane. Some things to remember:
 * 1) You'll come across a halftrack full of Germans three times during the ride. Ignore the soldiers and just fire at the truck itself a few times, and it will explode, taking everyone in it with it.
 * 2) Small arms fire may not hurt you, but Panzerschreck rockets will. One of the two guys in the car will yell out the positions of soldiers wielding these, and if you don't find and kill them quickly, you will die. In most cases, they're on roofs.
 * 3) The hardest part of this mission is when you flank a tank and three or four Panzerschreck soldiers try to fire at you. It may not seem so in the easier modes, but in Veteran you can be stuck here for a while because they'll all run at you at the same time. In this case, shoot the two guys on the roof first, and take out the others on the ground. Shooting the tank comes last.
 * 4) Always try to face the car's direction of travel. This can be a little disorienting at first, but you'll get used to it.



Don't panic when, after a while, the car runs over a mine and you fall on the ground as if dead. Your character will recover. Kill all the Germans that come to this area, then go through the alleyway to regroup with the rest of the division. Now that you're out of the heart of town, you still have to fight your way to the troop carrier to take you out of here. It's a bit linear, as you're going through a street. One thing to note: if you take too long to get through this street, enemy forces chasing you from behind will catch up and you'll be trapped in a bottleneck. Try to go past this area as fast as possible. Once you reach the truck, Captain Price says "We'll be back for this town...". Remember that.

Retaking Toujane

 * Toujane
 * 11 March 1943
 * Difficulty: 6 out of 10

This is one of the most open missions of the game, meaning that there are several routes you can take to complete it and enemies will react accordingly. When the tank in front of the convoy explodes, you'll be given the objective of taking out the Flak Gun. There are four routes to take (but they eventually converge into two): a direct approach along the wide street (smoke grenades are essential to survive against MG-42 fire), a bit subtler approach from the street going left from the main street, and two small alleyways that you can fight through to flank the gun's position. There are quite a few Germans in the area, but you can take as much time as you need to take out the position, so just fight your way through.



Then you're given the order to secure the vantage point. From the Flak Gun's position either go straight for that point or go around the building in the middle to attack it from the right. Be careful before moving in, though--there are numerous Jerries on the roof of the building. After everyone up there is dead, another soldier will put up a ladder for you to climb. Go up the roof and back down to the other side, and remember to land on the haystacks when you jump down. This next area should be very familiar to you--it's where the wild car ride in the previous mission ended. Fight through the area again, and turn left to face another Flak Gun crew to eliminate. Be prepared for enemies trying to flank you.



When the crew is gone, immediately go up the ramp and occupy the MG-42. The Germans will send a truckful of reinforcements (granted, it's not very many), and this is an easy way of dealing with them. When you're done, continue in the direction of that ramp. A tank awaits you here with machine guns, so throw a smoke grenade to be on the safe side and advance. When you get near the corner, two friendly tanks will come through the wall and blow up that enemy tank. Now, do not stay near the first tank. Two Panzerschreck-wielding Germans will blow it up, and you don't want to die with it (this is a scripted event, so you can't kill them before they fire the rockets).



Go through the alley next to where the tank got blown up. The resistance in this alley isn't very much. Then go around the left side of the building in front of you, and just advance straight from here on, taking out all resistance and a Flak Gun on the way. When you can't go straight any more, turn right, go up those stairs, and land on the roof. From here you can finish off the rest of the Germans and the last Flak Gun. When you're done, you have to secure the Mosque. Fortunately, you don't have to lead this attack. Just play support as your comrades secure it. When the Mosque is yours, go upstairs and don't get freaked out by the large counterattack--friendly reinforcements will arrive just in time to drive them back.

Assault On Matmata

 * Matmata
 * 30 March 1943
 * Difficulty: 7 out of 10



This one starts with the line "Are we there yet?", which adds a bit of humor to the mission... but the mission itself is unforgiving. Your comfortable ride will come to an abrupt stop when a truck bumps into the car and Germans start ambushing you. This is the most difficult part of the mission (near impossible on Veteran). The computer will automatically get you out of the car, and you should immediately circle around so that you're on the left side of the car. From here watch the roof immediately across from you and shoot all the Germans that come there. Beware of grenades and Germans from other positions shooting at you. Feel free to try being in other locations during this ambush, but this seems to be the easiest method to surviving. After a while, the gate on the opposite wall will blow, and you should run through there as fast as possible.



Alas, there's no time to catch your breath. There are lots of Germans in this next area, and if you don't take cover behind the low wall you'll get shredded in seconds. While MacGregor makes the radio call, pick off everyone you see one by one until you're pretty sure there's no one lurking behind those crates. Then, jump over the wall and go into the alley on the left side.

Remember when you were "pretty sure" there was no one left? You were wrong. More Germans than in the previous two paragraphs combined will rush you from the far side of the alley, from the other alley, rooftops of the buildings lining the street, and from behind a low wall far ahead. There's no easy way out of this. You'll have to grind your way through the street inch by inch, using grenades and dodging them when thrown at you. To add insult to injury, an enemy plane will fly in and attempt a strafing run. If you don't hide behind something as soon as you hear the warning, you're a goner.



Once you're done here, get to the end of the alley. MG-42 fire will heat the air around you immediately, and if you try to shoot the gunner with a rifle in Hardened or Veteran, one of two things will happen: 1) The gunner will finish you before you can even aim at him, or 2) Some other Germans will kill you with focused fire. Before you do anything, kill the Germans on the roof of the building on the right side of the alley (if any). Smoke grenades are absolutely critical, and you might even want to consider throwing two--one near you, and another one a bit closer to the MG-42. The gunner is on the second floor of a building, and to kill him you have to deal with all the enemies outside the building. Fortunately there aren't very many. Kill the gunner, man the machine gun yourself, and wait until a lot of Jerries start coming from the left side. Shoot them down while they wonder what the heck is going on.

When you're done, get back down and turn right to go into a side alley. Fight your way through this, and when you see an armored car backing away from you, don't follow it. Instead, wait until it sounds far away and then follow the trail until you start getting shot at. At this time, a friendly tank will appear; let it do all the dirty work while you sit still, not exposing yourself to enemy fire. Go ahead once the tank gets to the far end of the street. But realize that the tank won't kill ALL the enemies, just a good number of them, and that you'll still have to deal with them as you fight your way across this broad street.



After another strafing run, you'll eventually make your way to the end of the street where you can see an AA gun firing in a courtyard. Again, kill everyone in this courtyard. Now Germans will start springing up from various sides of the roof around the area. Make sure you kill everyone on a wall before you move onto the next. If you don't, the survivors will be a huge headache when you get on the AA gun later.



Get on the Anti-Aircraft gun when the captain tells you to. Believe it or not (after all, this is Call of Duty 2), this part is a bit unrealistic. What are the chances that 30 expensive German planes will just come to you in the same fashion into their fiery deaths? The key to this arcade-style shoot-down fest is to fire at the planes when they start lowering altitude. They are much easier to kill that way. Endure this for a little while and you can finally catch your breath. The North Africa campaign is done, but you're not finished with Sergeant Davis and his 7th Armoured just yet--you have to fight for Caen after the Normandy landing.