Call of Duty WWII
War. War never changes.
Developer Sledgehammer gameS • P ublisher activiSion • P rice $ 59.99 • A vAilAble At Steam, retail www.callofduty.com WILKS:
Am I the only one that thinks that returning to the WWII roots of the CoD franchise was a step backwards considering that the undisputed best games of the series came after Activision branched out from the tried and true setting? When there are so many wars, both historical and fictional to choose from, choosing instead to revisit what is possible the most well-trodden ground in gaming seems a little dull for me.
I know there has been a lot of love for the game in the press as a whole, and as with all CoD games, WWII is making money hand over fist, but as an experience I find the whole thing rather rote and uninspired, from the singleplayer campaign that hits every mark expected from a WWII game but does little else, to the buggy and laggy multiplayer that is rendered almost unplayable if your connection isn’t superb. I’ll get into some specifics later, but I just had to get the basics off my
chest. I do not like this game. It’s not terrible. It’s just painfully adequate. HOLLINGWORTH:
No, it’s not terrible, and there are moments of supremely polished game-making, if not anything close to artistry. But, at the same time, I must go even one further than you…
The game just flat out makes me angry.
I was genuinely excited for the idea of a return to CoD greatness (as opposed to cod greatness, because that really is a tasty fish), and maybe that’s the problem; perhaps I bought into the hype a bit too far, but for every positive step the game makes, there are at least three great leaps backward.
In campaign terms, I don’t think it can be summed up any better than a passage in the opening Normandy mission. I was genuinely getting into the game’s rhythm, and impressed by the attention to detail of a particular German mortar emplacement, complete with range-finding markings chalked in, only to be completely dragged out of that pace by a particular galling and dumb quick time event. I almost stopped playing there and then.
Holy shit, do we really still need to make games like this? WILKS:
I was nearly in the same boat but I pressed on. I thought they were getting rid of the jump scare QTE early in proceedings, so I was OK with that. Imagine my surprise when this same thing happened multiple times through the single player campaign. I can understand one near stabbing and one reeling from shellshock after an explosion and then having to crawl in slow motion towards a gun to shoot a Nazi setpiece in a WWII game. They’re essentially par for the course, but the fact that versions of those two events happened multiple times over the span of the campaign just felt lazy.
That said, there was one point in the campaign that I genuinely enjoyed. Rather than playing square-jawed farm-boy and ultimate warrior Ronald “Red” Daniels, you step into the shoes of a French Resistance fighter undercover in a Nazi stronghold in Paris, meeting a contact to get some explosives and then having to sneak through a Nazi controlled compound to place explosives on entranceways to allow Allied and Resistance fighters to storm the base. It’s tight, fun and wellpaced, relying more on gameplay and nuance than big explosive setpieces. It feels out of place, like someone slipped a scene from Ingourious Basterds into the middle of Saving Private Ryan, but it works. Of course, after that it’s back to Red and his peerless skills as a sniper, anti-aircraft gunner, driver, grenadier, ninja. HOLLINGWORTH:
Yeah, he really is just best at everything, isn’t he? Previous CoD campaigns relied on much wider use of multiple viewpoints, and I really feel that could have worked very well here, too.
But instead, we just get a cavalcade of well-worn character tropes, narrative beats, and those stupid knock-you-out explosions. I don’t know, maybe that’s what people want, but this game doesn’t so much feel like a “return to its roots”, but more as a game which has had so many rough edges polished off that it’s become this bland, everyman shooter.
Just look at the weapons: with some minor differences in sound, they all feel pretty much identical. There’s no real sense of character to them, which is something that CoD used to be best known for. I’m not sure how the devs have managed it, but they’ve even made the M1 Garand feel boring to use!
And while at least the campaign looks good - and it really does - the same cannot be said for multiplayer. Every bit of visual polish has been stripped away in favour of fast frames, and I think the game really suffers for it. WILKS:
It’s less a return to roots than it is a poor cover band trying to play the hits without bothering with any of the slower, more nuanced tracks. The lack of difference between weapons - I could barely tell the difference between an M1A1, M1 Garand, KAR and Sturmgewehr - is really distracting in singleplayer, but I think it actually kind of helps in multiplayer, as no weapon feels overpowered and a must have, outside of a scoped weapon for sniping of course. Of course, the weapons being balanced in multiplayer only counts when you can get into and remain in a game, and that has not been the easiest thing for me. I have some pretty crap Internet at home but most online games play fine. The lack of dedicated servers and the peer-to- peer nature of the game really makes any connection I get a crapshoot and having a smooth game seems to be about as likely as being disconnected or being unable to do anything because latency is causing everyone to rubberband around the map. The hit detection seems to be a little off as well, but that could just be a factor of my connection. HOLLINGWORTH:
The other thing I kind of… well, no, I actually hate about multiplayer is that no one plays the badguys. I know we all like punching Nazis rather than playing them, but if you’re going to offer World War II multiplayer, I want to be able to feel like I’m fighting badguys - or goodguys - with a totally different
a cavalcade of well-worn character tropes, narrative beats and stupid explosions
weapon set. This is what makes games like Day of Defeat still so satisfying.
Instead, CoD: WWII lets everyone play as the Allies, and then just reskins the other side to look German. On top of that, the various cosmetic unlocks and similar loot-based shenanigans mean your own side ends up looking like they’ve fallen out of a clown car, instead of an LCI. It’s balanced, sure, but I feel that too much has been sacrificed at the altar of that rather fickle concept.
Gotta say - I’ve already uninstalled CoD: WWII to make room for my entertaining things, like Excel spreadsheets and videos of dogs falling over. To be honest, I don’t think I should be allowed to score this game. WILKS:
If I were to sum up my thoughts, which is exactly what I’m doing here, I would have to say that CoD WWII just plays things way too safe to be much fun. The singleplayer campaign is a series of loosely connected vignettes that feature every cliché and trope of WWII action with thoroughly predictable timing. The multiplayer is balanced, but after you’ve seen loot crates falling on Normandy beach you kind of lose hope. Zombies is about as successful as it gets in design, but it’s not much different than what has come before so again feels like a re-tread. If CoD wants to be historical again, Activision and Sledgehammer should choose a different war.