●●●○○
You can’t teach old dogs new tricks and, after three years of trying to get this particular dog to fly around on jetpacks, Call of Duty finds its boots firmly on the ground for the 5th WWII game in the series.
The campaign sees you play as Private First-Class Ronald Daniels. Along with your plucky squad of “definitely memorable” characters, you take the fight to the Nazis, led by the slight chaotic Sergeant Pierson, played by Josh Duhamel, the soldier from all those Transformers movies, continuing the new tradition of shoehorning famous actors into the single player campaigns, which started with Kevin Spacey two years ago.
It’s a standard Call of Duty campaign complete with quick-time events and set pieces. You’ll operate anti-aircraft guns, drive tanks and blow up an armored train between a lot of shooting, however, the best mission of the campaign has you taking the role of a French Resistance fighter going undercover in a German garrison. You have to remember parts of your cover story while talking to German officers to find your contact. It is a very welcome and temporary change of pace. Overall the campaign is nothing special, but kept me playing for 5-6 hours.
The multiplayer feels like a return to form for the series. All the weapons feel powerful and have their own unique situations where they come in handy. The maps tend to be small and the gameplay is fast paced so submachine guns are always a solid choice. The game launched with 9 maps, disappointing compared to the 16 that came with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare at launch more than a decade ago. The maps themselves are hit and miss. London Docks and Flak Tower are the best small maps favouring fast play and constant rotations, the kind of chaos I enjoy. On the other hand, USS Texas and Gustav Cannon are terrible, far too open, making objective game types almost unplayable. Thankfully with the map voting system you’ll rarely play them. Ultimately the multiplayer is fun. You will find yourself rage quitting the occasional lobby, but that’s to be expected. There’s a lot of forced social and loot box centered mechanics in this game too, but you can avoid them if you want.
Call of Duty: WWII is a good effort by Sledgehammer Games to win back some of the audience who have been alienated by the last few games. They have played it safe, but that’s exactly what I expect from Call of Duty.
