Call of Duty is well renowned as the largest and most popular first person shooter in the world. For the past six years the opinions of these games have been nothing short of inconsistent, people either love them or despise their very existence. The popular opinion within the community is that the downfall of Call of Duty began after the beloved Black Ops 2, while others believe it was the exo-suit that ruined the gameplay. After many years of wall running and dabbing emotes in winning screens we have returned to good old fashioned boots on ground Call of Duty we’ve been asking for since the release of Black Ops 3. Now we have to ask ourselves if WWII is truly a good game, or are we just enjoying it because of years of exo-suit frustration.
From a content perspective this is the same game we have been playing since the release of World at War, a campaign that is about eight hours long, a multiplayer that supports both casual and competitive play, and a zombies mode. This years Call of Duty doesn’t bring a many new things to the table but it did deliver a few things that I can see being staples in future Call of Duty games. These are the introduction of the multiplayer HQ and the War game mode. The HQ is a multiplayer hub where you can interact with other players, open supply drops, test out guns at the firing range, take on your friends in one on one fights and even play football, it is reminiscent of the tower in Destiny, but is a very welcomed addition to Call of Duty nonetheless
. The new War game mode is an attack defend mode where one team is given objectives they must complete in a given time to win the game, and another team is ordered to prevent these objectives from being completed. The War matches are based off historic battles from World War II and the tasks that must be completed suit the settings very nicely. For example, on the map Operation Neptune, the attacking team is ordered to storm a beach D-day style to take enemy bunkers. In this game mode K/D ratio isn’t recorded, the game encourages players to focus on the objective rather than racking up the kills. While these two additions are great, the game play itself can be a little bit frustrating at times.
The game play in this year Call of Duty seems to not have a true identity, it tries to combine the fast paced multiplayer that the exo-suit game play had with the boots on ground more strategic game play we saw in the Modern Warfare series. Because of this there is a split in the game play styles of players, this can sometimes make the games frustrating and overly difficult. One redeeming factor of the game play is the fact that you can be successful with all the weapons, there doesn’t seem to be many outlying weapons in this game, unlike the previous titles. Though there have been complaints about a few guns, mainly the BAR and STG-44, but these weapons have their own shortcomings that don’t make them too overpowered.
Now is time to answer the big question. Is WWII the savior of Call of Duty? I would have to say yes, it’s a step in the right direction for the franchise. Although it has it’s fair share of server issues and sometimes buggy mechanics, for the first time in a long time it seems the developers have heard our complaints and opinions and created a game that would bring the franchise back to the level we expect the biggest shooter game to be at.
