On Friday, November 3, Sledgehammer Games released Call of Duty: WW2, the14th installment in the Call of Duty series. The game revolves around the Army’s 1st Infantry Division’s campaign in the second world war from storming the beaches of Normandy to liberating concentration camps in Germany. Sledgehammer went slightly off the rails in the past handful of games. The series became unrecognizable, producing games with ridiculous futuristic settings and using guns and jetpacks that were totally unrealistic. The call to move back in time, using settings and weapons that are actually plausible in real life, was the perfect decision for the Call of Duty (COD) series.
The campaign starts with D-Day, where the player gets a first person perspective of what it was like to be riding a shaky boat to the beaches, with artillery and all hell breaking loose all around. As the ship unloads, all but three soldiers get immediately mowed down by German machine guns. As the campaign moves on, the player fights in some of the major battles of the war in Europe such as the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge and the advance over the Rhine into Germany. This is by far the best campaign the COD series has ever put out. The graphics feel almost like scenes from a movie, and the relationships the developers build with the characters get players emotionally invested throughout the campaign.
The online multiplayer isn’t anywhere near as good as the campaign. The modern warfares have the best online maps and weapons, such as Modern Warfare 2. WW2 has some good maps, but the main problem is that it’s ridiculously easy to kill someone or get killed. This can make the game more fun because at times in former COD games you’d sit and shoot someone for 4four seconds and somehow they still kill you. In this game, whoever gets the first shot off will kill the other person in almost under a second. This format goes one of two ways. Either you ball out and go 25-2 or you go 2-25, so sometimes great, sometimes makes you want to throw your controller through the TV.
I’d highly recommend getting this game if you love some of the more original Call of Dutys or other first person shooter games.
