Call of Duty: WWII

Call of Duty: World War II has received much praise for finally answering the calls of players and returning to “core CoD” mechanics. But, as a veteran of the series, I can’t say I’m all that impressed.

Absurdly short TTK makes you want to play like a tactical shooter, but before that thought settles in the spawns have flipped and your enemies are happily shooting you from behind.

The game further pushes “realism” too far. The graphics are nice, but watching someone’s helmet fill with blood or listening to them scream for a full minute while on fire is just a bit… much. The game is trying to be Saving Private Ryan, Game of Thrones, AND an arcade shooter at the same time.

The only redeeming factor of Modern Warfare 3 has made an appearance here - the “Specialist” scorestreak, allowing you to slowly build up your rewards through deaths. Love it.

Map design gives the illusion of being good, but really just sucks. Everything feels claustrophobic and cramped, further pushing the SMG-first gameplay, which just does not feel right for a WWII shooter. Some verticality is involved, without the bullet penetration to really utilize it well. Positioning can be important, but so is having the faster gun.

“Classes” are replaced with “Divisions,” somewhat limiting the combinations you can make with your equipment. Again, this provides the illusion of a situation where you could form a more balanced team to counter your opponent like the good ol’ ProMod days, but generally which weapon you use just depends on the map. Gibraltar has everyone going full-Sonic with shotguns and SMGs whereas the beach of Normandy starts to look quite different from war stories with everyone hiding in the water and sniping poorly.

The “War” game mode is the game’s strongest suit. A mixed-objective game mode, where you really feel like playing the objective is important. Whether you’re capturing objectives in a specific, imbalanced setup, or pushing a payload - this mode is Call of Duty at its best, as long as you don’t obsess over your K/D ratio. And I mean, come on… it’s 2017. Put your Dazzle away and play with your team a little.

The “Headquarters” instance seems like a innovative idea - until it became the cause of server crashes and multi-player instances got disabled. Which was fine, as the one time I used it before the disable, it was WAY too crowded. But that means I can’t really “commend another player” and get these pointless objectives off my screen. And again, while the instance FEELS cool and seems like a MMO-esque feature, all it does is slow you down. This isn’t Destiny, it takes way longer to do this than flipping through menus. And you still have to hit Start to go into matches, anyway!

Boots on the ground is how Call of Duty should be, and this is a good return to form. But really, if I’m being totally honest, it really just makes me miss World at War all that much more.