ZPage Entertainment 

Since the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare back in 2007, I have bought and played every single game in the franchise. For me personally, campaigns have always been hit or miss, while additional game modes such as zombies and multiplayer are what keep me coming back. The last few years have pushed me away from this with the additions of jetpacks, double jumping, and all around making the game into something it wasn’t. Call of Duty: WWII however brought the game back to its boots on the ground roots in the World War II setting. To say this had me excited is an understatement. I was honestly ready to give up on the franchise, and then this one brought me back. While I did have issues with the campaign and do have some gripes with the multiplayer, I can say that I won’t be giving up on Call of Duty any time soon.

 

To start let’s look at the campaign. Like I mentioned before, this isn’t what keeps my interest in the franchise and wasn’t what I was excited for going into this game. The amount of buzz and praise surrounding this year’s campaign did make me intrigued enough to play through it though, so I might as well give you my two cents about it. The campaign takes you through a Band of Brothers/Saving Private Ryan type journey as you take on the character of “Red” Daniels, a member of the 1st infantry division. This is a front line division who are honestly not expected to make it back home alive, but watching the characters interact and progress was in fact something special. Here lies my main problem with the campaign, however, in that it was far more interesting to watch than it was to play. Cutscenes were far more entertaining to me than the gameplay, and so it almost felt like I was working through missions just to get to the next story point and the next cutscene. This has nothing to do with the fantastic gunplay mechanics of the game or the acting or dialogue during the gameplay, but instead I think there wasn’t anything fun about the objectives and quests. To be clear, though, this wasn’t something that made me want to stop playing, but I simply wish I could have watched the story unfold in a movie so that the story could have progressed quicker and given more insight, rather than play through it. As for the praise it has been getting critically, I would suggest that you temper your expectations because in my opinion it wasn’t as amazing as I had hoped for, but once again the campaign wasn’t my purpose for buying the game.

 

This brings us to the meat and potatoes of Call of Duty: WWII, the online multiplayer. To start let me make it clear that I am no MLG level player, but I am no slouch when it comes to online shooters. This is important to note because I feel like almost every game I can be in matches that feel competitive while remaining near the top of the leaderboard – helping me to feel accomplished – and I could easily understand not feeling any sort of accomplishment if every game I was coming last with 1 kill and 20 deaths, or the opposite of destroying everyone that I come across.

 

With this being said, one thing that I feel made Call of Duty: WWII one of the best in years is the addition of War mode. This is not a new idea all together, in that it is very similar to Rush mode in Battlefield, and I’m sure similar to other game modes in games that I just don’t play, but to Call of Duty this was refreshing and I must say excellent. The game mode involves one team attacking and one team defending with multiple stages of objectives. Games can last as little as 4 minutes if the defending team can halt the enemies right away, and last as long as 16 minutes if the attackers can make their way to the end taking as long as they can to defeat each objective. Both attacking and defending is extremely fun, and requires a great deal of communication and team work. The only problem I have with this mode is that there simply isn’t enough maps and content for it. Team deathmatch and other modes have 8 maps to play on, while War only has 3.

 

Speaking of the other modes and maps, there are few changes to the norm, in that there are the typical game modes you would see in Call of Duty and the maps are nothing to cough at but nothing extraordinary nonetheless. A few small adjustments such as the final killcam of a game showing the “play of the game” not just the last kill actually makes me far more interested instead of using that time to go get a drink, or use the washroom. Since I haven’t played much of the more recent Call of Duty games I couldn’t tell you for certain what is in fact new or not, but things such as the different divisions you can choose giving you special abilities that are subtle yet helpful, or different challenges to get camouflages for your guns rather than simply headshots made for a nice change but nothing game changing. On the other side having all of the character skins, emblems and calling cards come from loot boxes kind of defeats the purpose to me. I used to see someone with a cool calling card and go to look how I can unlock it, and feel proud once I completed that challenge, whereas now it comes down to pure luck (or in some cases, money, since you can purchase loot boxes with actual money).

 

I can’t speak too much on the zombies mode since I honestly haven’t played a lot of it. And maybe that’s all you need to know, in that I played it a couple times and that was enough for me. When zombies mode first came out in Call of Duty World at War it was something that I spent hours upon hours, days upon days trying to get as far as I could, whereas now it’s something that I spent a few hours playing, got far enough, and am done with now. I get where they are trying to take the mode, having challenges and progression guiding you through the waves of zombies, but to me this isn’t what I want out of Call of Duty Zombies. I want to simply try to find the best strategies and best guns to last as long as I can. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

In conclusion, Call of Duty: WWII did what I hoped for, in that it got and kept me excited for Call of Duty as a franchise. The campaign did intrigue me and I played through start to finish – which is more than I can say for many Call of Duty campaigns in the past – and the multiplayer has given me days’ worth of entertainment. The game isn’t perfect, but it shows that the developers are listening to what the consumer wants, and that alone excites me to see where the franchise goes next.