Call of Duty WWII

Call of Duty WWII has the series returning to its roots but also once more playing too safe to be truly great. Offering a derivative campaign that fails at developing both its characters and themes, and a bunch of multiplayer modes that any series veteran will have already played hundreds of times, the game’s lack of ambition is the only thing that ends up standing out in the package.

The campaign is centered around Ronald Daniels, a farm boy from Texas – who is as interesting as that sounds – who goes to war against the Nazis because he wants to live up to his big brother’s tough attitude. One day, when he was just a kid, a wolf was attacking his brother and Daniels couldn’t take the shot and kill the animal. Now, we follow him and his platoon through Europe, beginning with D-Day and ending with Germany’s occupation, where he’ll make sure to shoot every Nazi in his path now.

WWII’s narrative is rife with clichés. Daniels’ platoon has the usual suspects: there is the one who looks and speaks like a nerd, the one who eventually becomes the protagonist’s best friend, the boss who is very tough on the outside but a bit soft on the inside, and so on. However, with the exception of the latter – Sergeant William Pierson – they have no personality whatsoever. Take Daniels’ best friend, Zussman, as an example: his main traits are speaking German and being a Jew. If he becomes Daniel’s best friend it’s just because the boy saved his life at one point.

The developers are unable to balance the tone of the story, mixing some heavy scenes, dialogue, and subject matter with goofy set pieces, outlandish events, and poor writing. In one scene, the protagonist says he’s going to be okay and then slowly examines his bloody hands with horror, but in another, he’s trying to stop a moving train with a jeep. At one moment, the game will have a character take pictures of a deserted concentration camp, which will show on the screen with a heavy-handed sound effect, but at the next, it will have us believe that the camp’s only survivor is precisely the character Daniels is looking for. The result of this mismatch is that the heavier scenes – there’s even one where a German officer rejoices at murdering someone’s son – become devoid of meaning, being there only for shock value.

Good writing would have gone a long way in remedying this issue but, sadly, the dialogue in the game is rife with cheap one-liners that have been done to death (“You’re are a long way from Texas, farm boy”) when it’s not simply nonsensical. There’s a scene, for example, in which Zussman claims he’s ready to go back into the fray after spending a couple of weeks resting due to a stab wound. Sergeant Pierson, however, doubts if Zussman really is and proceeds to hit the guy’s wound just to prove his point. He says, “The only thing more dangerous than the enemy is pride,” which sounds cool but goes against the platoon’s motto of “No sacrifice too great” and fails to lead anywhere, since the story quickly forgets about the wound and makes nothing happen to Zussman because of it.

Despite his lines, Pierson is the only interesting character in WWII, being immensely helped by Joe Duhamel’s performance: the Sargent is an asshole who seems to be always ready to torment his men, but Duhamel makes him sound awfully tortured while doing that, as if Pierson is aware that what he’s doing is wrong and his act is actually consuming his soul – a decision that makes sense after the obvious twist at the end.

There are some glimpses of greatness in the campaign, such as when the characters begin to understand that, to do what’s right, sometimes they have to disobey orders, or when Pierson’s hostile attitude starts to spiral down and make him sound more and more like a complete madman – which increases tension and the stakes. And, if most missions are the standard fare of the genre – they mix intense shootouts with sniper missions, bland stealth sections, and set-pieces where you drive a vehicle or pilot a plane – there’s one that stands out for its unique premise. It’s called “Liberation” and is set in a Nazi-occupied Paris, where the playable character suddenly shifts from Daniels to a French woman who must infiltrate a hotel: here we must memorize her cover story to answer correctly when questioned by guards. The mission doesn’t quite push the consequences of failing too far – we either get a game-over screen or a character appearing to cover up for us – and feels more like something from a Wolfenstein game, but it still offers a glimpse of what Call of Duty could be if it just dared a bit more.

After all, for most of the time, WWII sticks to the playbook, with its uninspired levels and overused set-pieces. After the fourth building collapses, it starts to become dull – which is a great word to describe most of the campaign, as the characters that tag along during battles are often not even introduced properly before they are shot in the face, giving us little reason to care about their deaths.

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that health generation is finally gone during the campaign, which is another callback to the first games in the series, and serves to increase tension during the firefights, discouraging players from just storming ahead without thinking twice, as this would leave them with low-health during an extended period of time. To heal, we must find and use health packs or request them from Zussman – which is a nice touch since it makes him constantly return the favor of Daniels saving him.

Other characters in the platoon also have a specific ability attached to them – Pierson can mark enemies on the map, for example – which makes the player more aware of their presence during battles. It’s a pity, then, that the cutscenes fail to develop Daniels’ entire platoon, limiting them to easily recognizable characteristics: Lieutenant Turner, for instance, cares about the welfare of his men more than anything else and that’s all there is to him.

WWII multiplayer offerings are not very original either. There are plenty of modes, as usual, like Team Deathmatch and Domination, and Nazi Zombies makes a comeback as well – where you must survive waves of enemies while solving small puzzles in a big interactive map with characters played by famous people, like David Tennant – although if you don’t buy the DLC there’s just one map. Also lacking in variety is the game’s best mode, simply called War, where we are put in a level that expands as objectives are completed, making for long and tense battles. There are only three maps for it, which makes the whole thing get old fast, although there’s one that truly shines.

Set during the Normandy invasion, this level works better than its equivalent mission in the campaign for several reasons. The assault on the beach, for instance, is not scripted anymore, and the enemy fire coming from the bunkers becomes much more overwhelming as it now comes from other players – and most of the soldiers we see getting shot are not paper-thin NPCs, but our teammates. There are two bunkers to take with three main options for tackling them: with Bunker A, we can build a staircase that leads directly into it, which drives the action to non-stop close-quarters firefights, while with Bunker B, we build the staircase in a passage beside it, which will become flooded with enemy snipers going prone and waiting for our head to pop up. Meanwhile, in the middle, there’s a small passage that leads to both bunkers and can be blasted opened – or constantly rebuilt if we’re playing as the Nazis, which is also fascinating, as manning the machine guns in the bunkers really transmits the barbarity of the whole event, as anywhere we shoot, we probably hit someone. And that is just the map’s first stage.

Finally, we have the Headquarters, which serves as a social hub, an area where you meet other players and, open the game’s loot boxes – which are as limiting, infuriating, and greedy as they tend to be.

Call of Duty WWII may be a return to the series’ roots but it’s not a return to form. With an unimaginative campaign and lackluster multiplayer, the game fails to make an impression.

January 22, 2025.