It’s that time again, November and we all know what that means, staying in a bonfire night to play “Call of Duty”. This year is Sledgehammer’s turn to release another entry to Activision’s “shooty shooty bang-bang” franchise, this time ditching jump packs and futuristic setting and goes back to the 1940s for some World War action. I’ve spent over a week playing COD: WW2 to see if any day one issues are quickly ironed out and whether the campaign is any good.
However, if you are like many other people out there, then you most likely don’t care about the campaign. So I’m going to start with the multiplayer aspect of the game first, and I have to say that in its current state (several days after launch) “Call of Duty: World War 2” is an abysmal mess. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped the game from making a whopping $500 Million in its first week! Even so, this game was in no way ready for release. You see, players including myself were faced with loading screen crashes, long wait times for games, disconnections, challenges not being tracked and possibly the loneliest multiplayer hub known to man! COD: WWII has had a god-awful launch and don’t get me started on the bloody loot boxes!
Do you love handgun grips, emotes that look exactly the same and banners? Well, Call of Duty’s loot boxes has you covered to shower you with a load of useless tat while the things you really want such as the variant guns and costumes. Not only this you can also open your loot boxes to an audience and other players so they can see what awesome handgun grips you got. New to Call of Duty is the multi-player hub space, here you can take on challenges, prestige your division, and eventually create and share emblems and camos.
However, the main point of the hub is to interact with other players, (just like Destiny’s Tower), here you could watch loot box openings (I still can’t believe this is a thing) compliment them and make new friends. Nevertheless, since launch the hub space has been a ghost town and the fact some of the challenges have been solely for the hub area almost seemed insulting, don’t the devs realize it doesn’t work? Why mock me with challenges that can’t be completed at all? Well, they’re supposedly working on a fix, but the embarrassment isn’t going to vanish overnight.
Gameplay is exactly what you expect, boots on the ground, gun on gun gameplay, it’s a little slower paced than Infinite Warfare and the maps are larger to providing solid arenas for LMGS to Sniper rifles. It’s not just dominated by SMGs. There isn’t much new stuff to be found on the multiplayer front, aside from one new game mode called “WAR”, which is basically Rush from Battlefield with objectives that need to be completed to advance. Standout moment is a full-on beach landing, but with 6 vs 6, it feels more like a fight in a park. Other than that, it’s business as usual with TDM, Domination, kill confirmed etc.
It’s more of a rehash of what we’ve already seen, unfortunately Ground War does not return. After a few hours of play, I started to feel a lot of “been there done that” vibes. There are daily challenges to accomplish. However, and loot boxes tend to drop quite regularly. At the time of writing the microtransactions hasn’t come into play just yet. There is some fun to be had though, in small doses, racking up kills and whacking people with a battle shovel is always entertaining. In the matter of fact, it’s certainly more enjoyable than the futuristic counterparts. Even so, I’m just not too sure how long the community will stay on board for.
COD: WW2’s campaign really wants to be “Band of Brothers”. I’m cool with that, but the problem here is that COD:WWII isn’t interesting or clever enough to accomplish that (as in being a nice mix of COD and “Band of Brothers”). Sure, while actor Josh Duhamel (Transformers) lends his likeness and voice to the game as TSgt. William Pierson and he does a fine job. However, the supporting cast is not on the same level, and this is more due to the writing and story rather than their own personal performances.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, COD: WW2 can’t even decide whether it wants to be serious retelling of the horrors of war or be a WW2 movie directed by Michael Bay. This stands out instantly during the Normandy mission. Control is constantly wrestled away from you as it shows someone being burned alive or looking for their leg (s). You don’t get to experience it for yourself. Your just strung along from point A to point B…So it’s pretty crazy that a game like “Medal of Honor: Frontline” (a game that released 15 years ago) does a better job on that front than COD: WW2 ever did.
Furthermore, I witnessed some absolute nonsense during this campaign. You see, COD: WWII doesn’t do anything new or interesting at all. I would also like to point out that the insane explosions and silly driving sections seem so out-of-place. So rather than doing a serious take on WW2 in the vain of Christopher “Nolan’s Dunkirk” or even something different like Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards”, the game ends up being nothing more than a forgettable “shoot this”, “run here” soulless game. You know, even when COD: WWII tried to cover the Holocaust it does a really poor job. It clocks in around six hours, and I’ll never get them back.
Finally, we come to everyone’s favorite game mode, and that’s Nazi Zombies, which I honestly can’t stand. I’ve been waiting patiently for anything remotely similar to Modern Warfare 3’s Co-Op expansions which I found far more entertaining, but nope. It’s zombies, again! So you do exactly the same as you did in the other bloody games. So I’d do pretty much anything just to have something else, and why is that? Because zombie games and zombie game moddes has been done to death already. The last three games had them. So do something else for crying out loud! Aliens, Dinosaurs, Mole Men, give me anything but bloody zombies! However, David Tenant does one of the voices, so apples and oranges. There’s also another little extra in the game, in the Multiplayer Hub, there’s a game board, here you can play several Activison classics for some sweet nostalgia.
That’s also why I find it to be rather saddening that COD: WW2 was supposed to be a return to greatness for the franchise, because it appears as if Sledgehammer didn’t quite nail it this time. Its campaign is utterly forgettable, and the Multi-player does nothing new. For some that might be great, and for Activision $500 million in just a week is wonderful. For me, it’s just another notch to add to the list of disappointing games of 2017.
Pros:
+ Graphics are nice
+ The M1’s garand sound is quite satisfying
+ Multiplayer is okay
Cons:
– Online is unreliable
– The campaign is awful
– I’m sick of zombies, do something new
Gameplay: 2/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sound/music: 3/5
Controls: 3/5
Replay value: 2/5
Verdict: 2.5/5
“Call of Duty: WWII” fall short in most areas, and even after one week on the market the game still has issues yet to be ironed out. Furthermore, the game’s campaign is one of the largest let downs I’ve come across so far this year. So all in all, COD: WWII is a very mediocre game with no doubt, as the gameplay experience isn’t even close to anything of great value. In other words, if you hope to experience some really awesome WWII FPS moments with COD: WWII . Then look elsewhere, because you won’t find any of that in COD: WWII.
Title: Call of Duty World War 2
Developer: Sledgehammer Studios
Format: PS4, Xbox and PC (version played, PS4 PRO)
Genre: FPS
Resolution: 1080p
Release date: 03/11/2017
Difficulty: Easy to hard
Spent time: 40+ hours
Average grade internationally: 82.79% Gamerankings.com
PEGI age rating: 18
Price: £50
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor
Sharn Daniels
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @SharnOfTheDEAD
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Tags: Call of Duty, Call of Duty: WWII, COD, PS4, PS4 review, Sledgehammer Studios