Activision on CoD2 Xbox 360 bug

By Tom Bramwell Published 15 December, 2005

Avoid corrupting save data.

Activision has advised gamers of a small bug in the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 2 which can corrupt saved data. The company's working on a fix, but in the meantime has issued some guidance on how to get round it.

IGN reports that there's an issue that usually occurs after the African tank level of the British campaign, and that the best way to avoid having save data corrupted there is to sign into the player profile prior to starting up the game.

That's not a catch-all though, so in order to save people from having to retrace their steps for several hours, Activision's also revealed a cheat code that unlocks all the single-player levels, which - while obviously not ideal - is certainly better than having to redo all the previous bits.

To activate that code, hold both shoulder buttons and press (d-pad) left, left, right, right, Y, Y. Why indeed. And if the save data corrupts after that, you can always input the code again.

Call of Duty 2 is pretty much the most popular Xbox 360 game in the world at the moment - topping the US 360 sales chart with more than a quarter of a million sales, and second only to Perfect Dark Zero here in the UK.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (27) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • onyxbox #1 7 years ago

    ah well at least they can download a patch to their hard disk... oh... wait a minute... what about all those Core users. Hm... expensive patch it is then ;-)

  • Roamer #2 7 years ago

    Activision should be on their knees, begging for mercy for releasing a bugged game!!

    Behold, gamers, this is the HD era, where patches are plentiful, and the last level of a game will be bought separately.

  • therev #3 7 years ago

    Would have been nice if they'd told me this last week before my save got corrupted.

    Grumble, whine, etc.

  • OfficerSlade #4 7 years ago

    Can't believe they aren't going to patch the shoddy Live features while they are at it. This game is fantastic as a single-player experience but on Live is made unplayable by the fact that you can't host a room with your mates, forcing you to enter random rooms with some idiot with no bandwith hosting. Lag and frustration follows. And Activision say this is the best that MS showed the new Xbox Live could do...even CoD on the original Xbox had better Live play.
    Edited by OfficerSlade at 15/12/05 @ 08:49

  • trevd72 #5 7 years ago

    love the single player game but hate the support for it and activitions support. There are threads on the xbox forum in which activision support say that the (lack of) lobby system in the live! part of the game is up to the job and any problems should be aimed at M$. They have totally shafted us on this game and charged us more than normal for the pleasure. Its bugged to shit (getting stuck on scenery and the save game thing) and the Live! part is shockingly bad to the point no-one wants to play it. 1/3 of the game is missing. This was the new dawn of onlne play......i am still left playing the mighty Halo 2 for my online kills n thrills.

  • jellyhead #6 7 years ago

    I mentioned this in the forum yesterday, console games were usually rock solid. Some bugs crept in obviously but there just seemed to be fewer than their computer based counterparts. Now with the advent of hard drives on consoles and internet connections i worry that developers are going to get less diligent about crushing bugs on the next-gen consoles.
    "Oh well we can fix it later" is not an attitude i want console dev's to have, the option is there but it doesn't mean you have to use it.
    Mind you this game has had it's fair share of problems hasn't it, maybe it was rushed?

  • zErOb_cOOl #7 7 years ago

    I can see it only being a matter of time before console games become as buggy and unreliable as PC games because, lets face it, the next gen consoles practically are high end PCs.

    Whats worse though, is that I think this sort of crap will become more acceptable, and it will become common place that Microsoft or Sony will release patch upon patch to repair their games, at the expense of the end user of course, such as becoming a member of their online service to download the patch, and the time cost it takes to fix your game you've already paid for, which could be a lot of time if you aren't technology-literate in the slightest....and not being technology-literate is what console gaming is bloody all about FFS!

  • zErOb_cOOl #8 7 years ago

    "Mind you this game has had it's fair share of problems hasn't it, maybe it was rushed?"

    But haven't most 360 games had problems?

  • spidermanalf #9 7 years ago

    I am loving the old school cheat code!

    Thats when games were games! Anyone remember the SF2 cheat to get 2 players the same character?

  • tengu #10 7 years ago

    This is happening a lot with games lately. It was Soul Calibur III and Pokemon DS as well not long ago.

    Are people just letting quality control slide on some games lately?

  • Furbs #11 7 years ago

    ZeroB, stop trolling you tool. What do you mean by "most"? Are you refering to the King Kong non-issue? Or maybe that PGR has crashed for *a few* people?

    Wow, two minor issues. Guess thats most games then.

  • Cronan #12 7 years ago

    It's not a small bug it's a major one. The COD2 forum on XBox.com is full of people with this problem. I've hd it three times now, in all campaigns.

    The other posters are also correct about the Live features - Activision have done the absolute "bare-bones" they had to do to make this a Live title; no lobby, no room hosting, first in gets host, regardless of their poor connection, etc etc etc

    I'm going to be returning this to Game and getting my money back, as the game is broken.

  • Furbs #13 7 years ago

    Personally I'd class it as major if there was no easy workaround like signing in to your profile first.

  • optimusprym8 #14 7 years ago

    Two games with untested bugs surfacing in two days. FFS sort it out devs! Hire some decent testers...

  • darkmistx #15 7 years ago

    Pfff, once again EG shows it's appaling anti-xbox 360 bias, with this negative article.
    Edited by darkmistx at 15/12/05 @ 11:14

  • optimusprym8 #16 7 years ago

    Yay for patches! Patches are the way forward! Nothing like having to download the game again to be able to play the day after you were able to play fine... :p

    Patches = sloppy coding

  • AgentCooper #17 7 years ago

    Oh how the tune has changed, 'thank goodness for patches' , 'I'm glad we have patched to sort this kind of thing'

    Yet, when the XB was first released we had legions of people quoting MS as saying their wouldn't be 'patches' and that patches would never be an issue with console gaming etc and that patches where a bad thing and had no place in console gaming........In the space of 3 years our shit tolerance levels seem to have escalated to the point where we now make excuses for it.

    Bravo.

  • kangarootoo #18 7 years ago

    " Activision should be on their knees, begging for mercy for releasing a bugged game!! "

    LOLOL, oh for a pair of rose tinted spectacles.


    "Patches = sloppy coding"

    Patches = reality. I am guessing you aren't a coder right?

  • 3william56 #19 7 years ago

    Patches? We don' need no steeenking patches!

    Kanga - patches have never been a part of console gaming before. Never. Mostly because, well, it was sort of impossible on an offline system.

    But there's no need to panic yet - with the vast majority of consoles and console gamers still offline, this can't become an issue - yet...

  • trevd72 #20 7 years ago

    on a PC i can understand that different config of PC's lead to problems. However the problems with COD2 are fundimental problems not niggles. The game was made to run on one rig with one set of specs. Patches should not be needed.......the game should have been released when finished.

  • Kafeen #21 7 years ago

    However the problems with COD2 are fundimental problems not niggles. The game was made to run on one rig with one set of specs.

    No, its the XBox 360 version.

  • kangarootoo #22 7 years ago

    OK, good points well made. I wasn't really making the distinction between console and PC and I realise that when it comes to post release patching the type of hardware is a key factor.

    Perhaps I should have phrased it more like,

    patches = sloppy coding
    or
    patches = poor QA
    or
    patches = release date pressure from publisher
    or
    patches = elephants peddling past on tandems, making distracting noises whilst coders try to work

    My point being that presuming that "sloppy code" is to blame here is tantamount to the far too common use on these pages of comments like "lazy developers", which also irks me as regulars probably tire of reading. Declaring that the code was produced sloppily in this case is to assume to much IMO.

    EDIT: It probably was just sloppy code, but you take my point I hope (specifically my use of the word "probably";) ;)
    Edited by kangarootoo at 15/12/05 @ 16:47

  • trevd72 #23 7 years ago

    Kafeen - eh! this thread is called Activision on CoD2 Xbox 360 bug. i am talking about the 360 version and it cant be caused by the console. Its the programmers.

  • speedstars13 #24 7 years ago

    Console game needs patches?Isn't that what computers are for? Wait, wait, don't tell me, Xbox 2 is becoming a computer! LOL. I guess that's why they have "Live." And a harddrive. Bummer.
    Edited by speedstars13 at 15/12/05 @ 17:20

  • kangarootoo #25 7 years ago

    I think Kafeen is suggesting the XB360 is not a system with one set of specs. I guess because of the HD options.

    I would doubt that is relevant here, but given the issue is to do with data corruption, it might just be...

  • Luigi #26 7 years ago

    Let's hope that in a near future I won't need to install 10 or 15 patches and updates to correct bugs like an ordinary PC. Even so, as someone mentioned, what happens to the ones that bought the "core" version of the 360? Bad start for MS... About the DVD capacity, 9 Gb could be short in a couple of years. FMV, better textures and HD definition demands more extra space. It kinda reminds me the old cartdrige based(but great) N64. It suffered from the short space availabe of the cartdriges. Resident Evil went to the PS1 because of this. It's a tricky and unkown question if 9 Gb will be enough. I have serious doubts. Let's wait and see what the PS3 and the somehow "misterious" Revolution has to say about it. Cheers from PT.

  • Lex #27 6 years ago

    I've carried out the cheat code sequence with no results. What am I doing wrong?
    Any advice folks?