14 DAY TRIAL // 
Call of Duty: WWII marks the return of the franchise to its origins, and it turns out that's probably the best decision Activision and Sledgehammer Games could have made.
There was a time when people were just itching to play yet another WW2 game, and everything was just fine. In fact, I’m sure that not too many people will remember that the reason we are now playing Call of Duty is because of a "lesser-known" game called Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
To be fair, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault wasn’t the first one in the series, but it was the first big hit in the franchise. The memorable D-Day debarking mission on the beaches of Normandy gave us chills as it was very similar with what we already saw in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and because it was a collaboration with the famous director.
Unfortunately for the series, Electronic Arts made some really bad moves towards the Medal of Honor developers, 2015 Inc, and tried to buy them. A few devs, including someone named Vince Zampella, left and formed another studio called Infinity Ward. They went on to create the Call of Duty series, and are pretty much responsible for what we have today.
They have since left Infinity Ward, but the Call of Duty franchise survived, and now the latest iteration is built by a studio named Sledgehammer Games. It’s a great continuation of the series, and returning to World War 2 for inspiration was an excellent idea.
How to judge a game fairly
The problem with reviews for modern games is that most of the time people tend to look at some of the more particular aspects, and less at its heart. It might seem like a cliché, and it probably is, but the truth is that it often happens to look down on a game for some technical reason, even if it offers a great experience.
Gamers should care less about how a game looks or if some particular mechanic is not all that well implemented, and care more about how it makes them feel inside. Make no mistake, Call of Duty: WWII looks simply amazing and feels great. It doesn’t show any particularly annoying gameplay problems, but I’m sure that some people will say that it doesn’t have a great story, for example.
Normally, I would have to agree. The story is not something truly novel, but it has a particular quality in the way the war is described and felt, although I can’t put my find on it. The very least I can do is to explain why Call of Duty: WWII is actually much better than what people expected.
The story is just a vehicle
It’s clear that the story in Call of Duty games is there mostly to provide a backbone for the multiplayer component. Somewhere along the line, the multiplayer in Call of Duty become really attractive to a lot of people and took priority during development. I can’t say for certain that the same happened with the current title in the series, but it does feel that way.
Now, as I said earlier, the story is not something that will blow people away, but it’s not supposed to. In this case, it’s a delivery system for the main characters. We care about their story and not the general direction of the action.
It’s a buddy drama about the friendship between two people at the end of World War 2. The sense of camaraderie between two close friends that go through hell together is complicated to put into a solid action game, but this is exactly what happens.
It’s not all rainbows and sunshine. The only thing that I didn’t like about the story was the constant conflict between Lieutenant Joseph Turner and Sargent William Pierson, and then later between Pierson and the character played by you. It’s too over the top, and it lacks real motivation.
We later learn that Pierson has his reasons for being the way that he is, but it’s still hard to believe his character. He’s basically portrayed as a douchebag that is always in conflict with everyone, and it deters from the entire experience. So, now I’m fighting the Nazis and my own Sargent?
There aren’t any big spoilers to be spilled as the game is pretty predictable, except for the last couple of missions, which I didn’t expect. Suffice to say that the game takes a personal turn, away from the chaos of war.
Solid gameplay and no revolutions
Activision tried to revolutionize the gameplay after they moved it out of WW2, but it never really caught on. It turns out that people are more interested in how people fought in the past, not in exoskeletons and fancy futuristic equipment.
In any case, don’t be surprised if nothing will surprise you in Call of Duty: WWII. You get a gun, you push forward, you conquer a position, and then you have to hold it. Frankly, it happens more often than I would care for it, but it doesn’t subtract from the general feeling that I’m winning.
It’s also ironic to see that the series has returned to the old health packs, moving away from regeneration, especially since one of the older games in the franchise actually made it famous. In any case, it’s a minor inconvenience and the fact that I almost never run out of health packs makes it a little bit annoying.
There were a few moments, usually when I was defending a position, when I was overwhelmed, and not even the health packs were enough. I even cheated a little bit at one point when I ignored the fact that I had to hold my ground and darted through the enemies to get to the mission objective. Let’s just say that I’m glad it wasn’t a realistic war simulation, like ARMA.
Fortunately, the gameplay is not just a dry FPS and has some variation, with a couple of missions that emphasize a stealth element, although it’s not obligatory. You can still blitz through the mission killing everyone in your path, but it’s not as rewarding.
Of course, there a few on-rails segments, even if players have limited control over the vehicle. What caught my eye was a flying mission. Even if the fighter plane had straightforward controls, it felt terrific. The entire sequence looks and feels fantastic, and I would very much love to play a dedicated sim that replicates that experience.
A PC game and graphics to boot
I can honestly say that I wasn’t prepared for the level of detail in Call of Duty: WWII. I saw some gameplay trailers and some screenshots, but I was reasonably sure that they weren’t all that relevant. Unlike previous titles in the franchise that had washed out textures and compromised on quality just to make them run on consoles, in Call of Duty: WWII everything is top notch.
Review copies are usually doled out for consoles because let’s face it, there seem to be more of those at this moment. Activision is making some changes when it comes to the PC platform, and the way they treat it, and they didn’t have a problem in sending us a PC review code.
If I didn’t know better, I would have said that it’s a PC exclusive after just one look at the options menu. Pretty much anything you might want is available for tweaking, and the system requirements are not all that high, at least for 1080p and 60FPS.
Having rather small and linear levels helped the developers put more details in, so the world seems much more alive, dirty, and real. And this takes us to the characters and faces animations. It’s also a good time to compare the game with the latest Battlefield titles.
The main characters animations during the gameplay are not ideal. At most they are OK, and I’m saying that they could have been much better. In comparison, in Battlefield 3 for example, the AI-controlled characters banked when running and taking corners, tripped, and made mistakes.
In contrast, the facial animations in Call of Duty: WWII are out of this world, and at this point, there are probably a handful of games that can rival it. The motion capture worked almost perfectly, and I can recognize the actors behind the masks. All of the in-game movies are using the engine, and switching to gameplay is practically seamless.
Do we care about multiplayer?
The majority has spoken, and the answer is yes. Overwhelmingly, players get any new Call of Duty to play the multiplayer, and the single-player is designed just as a platform. For Call of Duty: WWII, the situation is a little bit more balanced, with the single-player portion being much more powerful.
If all you want is multiplayer, then you’ve come to the right place. There is something for everyone, and then some. I enjoy team deathmatch the most, but pretty much everything else is available as well.
Yes, there are things to buy with credits, powerups for upcoming matches, missions and goals to fulfill for more experience, but the bottom line is that it's fun. It doesn't matter if you're playing like there is no tomorrow, or it's the first time playing an FPS in multiplayer.
Furthermore, there is also the option for local play if you fancy getting together a LAN party and the almighty Zombie mode. This started as a secret part of Call of Duty, a whim. Now, it could easily be its own game. Cooperating to survive an ever-increasing horde of zombies can only be fun.
Interestingly enough, Activision put some serious money into Zombie, and they are using Ving Rhames and a few actors for the story that’s used to justify this particular mode.
The Good
- Characters you care about
- Optimized for the PC
- Numerous multiplayer modes
- Beautiful facial animations
- Zombies and Nazis
The Bad
- Some problems with multiplayer and servers
- The campaign is a little too short
Conclusion
The community was not expecting this kind of quality from the franchise, especially after the declining trend of the previous titles, but it’s definitely a nice surprise and worth checking out, especially if you’re a PC gamer.
