Call of Duty: WWII.
I remember the unforgettable experience I had when I played the first call of duty🇧🇷 I liked it so much that I reset it over and over again. The franchise came, after that, to become one of the most renowned in the genre of first-person shooters, especially after the release of Modern Warfarewhich brought a real revolution with its multiplayer mode.
Although the vast majority of players today buy call of duty for what it provides online, there are those, like me, who also want to play the single player campaign. The franchise, before innovating in online gambling, became famous precisely for telling exciting stories, with strong narratives and memorable characters. When I learned that the new game would be set around the 2nd World War and that it would have gameplay aspects similar to those of older shooters, I was very anxious to be able to play this new chapter of this very important series as soon as possible.
the campaign of Call of Duty: WWII it has its ups and downs, and the best moments occur when it runs away from linearity, which rarely happens. You control a Texan soldier named Daniels who, along with his platoon, invades Europe on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, and needs to advance across the continent, passing through France until arriving at the battle at the Remagen bridge, on the Rhine river. There are also occasions throughout the plot where you step into the shoes of other characters.
Most of the time, unfortunately, everything feels rather generic, especially the characters. They appear to have been heavily inspired by the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, but without adding anything that makes them stand out. If you’ve seen the film, most likely you’ll have that feeling too. In fact, the most interesting character is a French resistance spy, who is not even part of your squad and you only control during a piece of the only truly innovative mission in the game in my opinion, where you even have to memorize some texts to answer correctly the questions of the guards. The rest of the time, it’s about you shooting legions of unknown ___s, whether on foot, in a tank, jeep or plane. They could at least have presented other sides of the war, as was done almost impeccably in Call of Duty: World at Waror created an antagonist to make things more interesting like they did in Modern Warfare and Advanced Warfare🇧🇷
The story with weak narrative, predictable plot and poorly developed characters clearly show that the campaign exists in Call of Duty: WWII just like a stopgap. Its very short duration of about 5 hours also makes that clear. The impression is that Sledgehammer really wasn’t in the mood to develop something around WW2, and only did so because Activision decided, correctly, that the time had come for a change. Without a doubt I loved the fact that we stopped shooting laser weapons, using exoskeletons and walking on walls, and the single player was fun at times, but it is a shame that the 2nd War theme was used so poorly and little inspired by the campaign, by a franchise that has done this far, far better in the past.
It’s important to point out, however, that the campaign brings some welcome changes to the gameplay. No more auto-healing, you really can only get your health back if you have medkits. There’s a life bar on the screen to tell you how much life you have left. You can hold up to four kits and just press Right on the d-pad to use them. These medkits must be found throughout the scenarios or picked up from a squad member who has them. In theory this should assume you play more cautiously, but I almost never run out of medkits as there isn’t much difficulty in getting them.
There’s also a platoon member to give you ammo, another for grenades, another that gives you a flare to mark a spot where mortars will attack, and a last one that lets you know the exact position of each enemy in the scenario for a few seconds. The cool thing about this system is that it enables you to better manage your resources, being able to pick up a weapon with different ammunition, such as a rocket launcher, use it at will and then ask the guy in the platoon who takes care of it for more ammunition. It also encourages you to never leave your companions’ side.
As in the case of medical kits, I almost never ran out of ammo, because in addition to being able to ask your colleague in uniform for more, you can use weapons dropped by enemies and replenish yourself with boxes of infinite ammo that you can find at certain points inside. of the phases. Finally, it is necessary to fill a meter to be able to use this help system from your brothers in arms, which fills up as you kill enemies.
It’s time to stop talking about the campaign and start talking about multiplayer. After all, the vast majority of users currently buy call of duty at launch precisely because of this. At the start, you need to choose one of the five available divisions – Infantry, Aviator, Armored, Mountain and Expeditionary – each with its own weapons and different starting equipment. A different way to select your class. Once that’s done, you’re introduced to the headquarters. It is a place where you control your character in third person, interact with other players and accept missions that must be completed in online matches, such as making 15 kills with a submachine gun, and so on. Completing these quests earns you experience to level up, credits you can use to unlock various cosmetic items in the form of emotes, weapon skins, and more, and also loot boxes, which unlock random rewards. If you want to acquire new weapons, you’ll need to level them up, which will give you tokens that are just for that, and also enable the other four divisions that you didn’t choose, so that they can be used.
The headquarters was a very interesting idea for a lobby. There is even the ability to play classic Activision games like Pitfall 2 or Enduro in a location within it. A great extra, which, although it doesn’t improve the game itself in any way, helps us miss those memorable Atari 2600 titles.
Unfortunately, not everything is rosy. At launch, the headquarters gave players a lot of headaches. The servers just couldn’t handle the amount of people. Sledgehammer Games then shut down the firehouse’s social features to temporarily address the issue, and recently temporarily switched connectivity via dedicated servers to Peer-to-Peer, allowing players to finally get back to playing. All this, in practice, leaves you alone in the barracks and unable to interact with other users in it, which prevents you from obtaining rewards via the evolution of the social experience bar. At least you can play online. It can be seen from this that the barracks, although a very good idea, was poorly implemented.
The problems, however, do not stop there, because in some of the games I played, right after the victory, the message that I had been disconnected appeared. When this happens, the victory is not marked and the additional experience gained from it is not counted. I have no idea when the developer will fix these technical difficulties, which negatively affect a multiplayer experience that’s fun when it works right.
The modes available in multiplayer are familiar to those who are used to playing call of duty, but without that futuristic gameplay that allowed you to fly and walk on walls, which for me is great, since I couldn’t take it anymore. The new War Mode is a very welcome addition. In it, players must work together to defeat the opposing team in iconic World War II battles, whether defending or attacking an objective. The map even changes according to the course of combat, forcing players to change their strategies.
Overall, the competitive multiplayer isn’t bad, and its gameplay works in the way you’d probably expect from a title in the franchise. call of duty🇧🇷 If you didn’t like that crazy mobility of the futuristic games in the series or got bored of it, you’ll probably have fun with the online portion of WWIIat least until you get disconnected from matches.
Changing the subject again, it’s time to comment on the zombie mode. In it you need to choose one of four playable characters interpreted by the famous actors Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction: Time of Violence), David Tennant (Doctor Who), Katheryn Winnick (Vikings) and Élodie Yung (The Defenders). Contrary to the idea seen in previous versions of this mode, where you had to barricade the windows to survive as long as possible, in WWII there are a series of objectives to be completed, with items that you can consume that give some benefit to you and / or the team. You can also level up, which gives you access to upgrades to be placed on the weapons you buy in matches using the currency obtained by killing the undead. Speaking of the zombies, Sledgehammer has gone a long way in designing them, giving them a truly intimidating appearance. There are even times where it helps you get a few jump scares.
the zombie mode WWII it’s clearly aimed at you playing with your friends, as communication helps a lot when it comes to completing objectives and eventually killing the boss. Without this, on many occasions players who don’t know what needs to be done will just wander around the map, killing enemies without any objectivity.
After a few matches, I had the feeling of doing the same things over and over again, which contributed to me getting bored, something that didn’t happen in competitive multiplayer. Disconnection issues are also present here and even worse, since if you disconnect in the middle of the match, everything you achieved in it is lost, including experience to level up, unlocked accessories to use on weapons and loot boxes. My first match, by the way, lasted more than two hours and ended just like this, after the group had managed to withstand 28 waves of enemies. Imagine you reached level 6 in a single match and realized it was all for nothing.
While there have been interesting changes to the zombie game mode, this time around it hasn’t become something you want to focus your time and effort on.
Graphically, it’s easily the most beautiful game in the series. Superb lighting and textures, complemented by jaw-dropping cutscenes. On PS4 Pro I had no issues with regards to performance. The framerate per second felt like it was constantly in the 60fps range, across all game modes. In the case of the PC, where I also had the opportunity to play, the game proved to be quite light on my machine equipped with i7-4790K, 16GB and GTX 970.
A PS4 digital copy of the game was provided by Activision for review.
