This year’s Call Of Duty game is here, Activi­sion put a lot of empha­sis on this being a return to the clas­sic, boots on the ground Call Of Duty game­play. That is pret­ty much true, well the boots on the ground part. The mul­ti­play­er side of things has seen some changes that I think are pret­ty cool. Lets start with the sin­gle play­er campaign.

We had three Playsta­tion 4s play­ing WWII, Two OG Playsta­tion 4s and one Playsta­tion 4 Pro on in 4K HDR so this review will cov­er all modes and the PS4 Pro version.

Campaign

The cam­paign is a decent­ly long (5–7 hours) expe­ri­ence on the default dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. I am try­ing to avoid any spoil­ers so I am pur­pose­ly avoid­ing the sto­ry line. I know how World War II end­ed, but Sledge­ham­mer put a lot off effort in to bring­ing your squad to life and I don’t want to spoil that.

The cam­paign tells a great sto­ry and is actu­al­ly a bit more dif­fi­cult than pre­vi­ous CoD cam­paigns. In CoD WWI­I’s cam­paign mode you do not regen­er­ate health. You have to use med kits that you find around the bat­tle­field or giv­en to you by your squads medic. That alone changes the whole way you approach bat­tles. One of us was brave and took WWII on in Vet­er­an and oh man, it was unfor­giv­ing and pun­ish­ing. Graph­i­cal­ly it is awe­some, the envi­ron­ment looks amaz­ing, the sound is awe­some and immer­sive. On the Playsta­tion 4 Pro bat­tles in cam­paign were absolute­ly stun­ning. The sol­diers faces are great, real­is­tic and live­ly. The voice act­ing was also great. If you want and authen­tic, immer­sive and very chal­leng­ing WWII expe­ri­ence you should def­i­nite­ly play the cam­paign trough on Vet­er­an. The tech­ni­cal pre­for­mance of the cam­paign can get very frus­trat­ing. There are plen­ty of frame drops and moments that feel lag­gy. It is a mess some­times hope­ful­ly they fix these prob­lems soon.

Multiplayer

We were ready to jump in to mul­ti­play­er right at launch, but as soon as mid­night EST rolled around.….

As of the time of this writ­ing the servers are still not 100%. Head­quar­ters is a social space between match­es where play­ers pick up con­tracts, open sup­ply drops, prac­tice on the fir­ing range and even 1v1 each oth­er. Since short­ly after launch, play­ers have been placed in pri­vate Head­quar­ters by them­selves. Sledge­ham­mer has said this will be fixed  “short­ly” so as of right now I can not review the social space or its activ­i­ties. I will say that it is annoy­ing because it takes a pret­ty good chunk of time to load after every match.

The mul­ti­play­er returns to boots on the ground (Final­ly). There are some changes to the cre­ate a class sys­tem, Perks have been replaced with new Basic Train­ing.  Basic Train­ing gives you abil­i­ties like a perk except you can only equip one basic train­ing at a time. This adds a new strat­e­gy to the game that makes play­ers rely more on their own play­ing abil­i­ty rather than rely­ing on abil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by perks.

Spe­cial­ist have been replaced with Divi­sions. Each Divi­sion has 4 spe­cial abil­i­ties that you unlock as you lev­el up that divi­sion. For exam­ple, The Air­borne divi­sion lets you equip a sup­pres­sor to any SMG on the fly, but only on an SMG while using air­borne. The Infantry divi­sion does­n’t allow you to use a sup­pres­sor, but using an Assault Rifle while using Infantry grants you a bay­o­net that allows you is shot melee kill your foes. Each divi­sion has it’s pros and cons and each cater to a dif­fer­ent play style.

Game play seems pret­ty bal­anced with the excep­tion of Quick Scop­ing being too easy and annoy­ing. The Bar assault rifle also needs to be re-bal­anced. Those are my only two bal­ance com­plaints. Now the servers, they have been bad since launch and while they have improved I still find myself in too many lob­bies with 2 and 1 barred play­ers. If the lag and match­mak­ing were addressed I would find the mul­ti­play­er much more con­sis­tent and enjoyable.

Nazi Zombies

Sledge­ham­mer brought Zom­bies to Call Of Duty WWII, but not quite the mode you might expect. Nazi Zom­bies fea­tures 2 modes, Casu­al and Hard­core. Each fea­tures their own East­er Egg or quest. Casu­al mode gives you a quest line and updates the objec­tives on screen as you and your part­ners com­plete the steps, while hard­core mode is much hard­er and fea­tures and entire­ly dif­fer­ent quest that you must com­plete with­out any instruction.

Nazi Zom­bies also fea­tures class­es and their unique ulti­mate abil­i­ties. and mods that act as per­ma­nent perks, each con­tain­ing a spe­cif­ic bonus. As play­ers lev­el through play­ing you unlock research tokens to research new mods and even new start­ing weapons, like a shot gun to start instead of a pistol.

Nazi zom­bies also fea­tures an all new sto­ry line set in WWII with 10 new playable char­ac­ters. With the new addi­tions and the awe­some, dark scary tone, not every­thing is new in zom­bies mode. The perk sys­tem is still there, albeit re skinned and Pack A Punch is avail­able with all its great­ness, the wave based for­mat is also present along side the new mis­sion struc­ture. Nazi Zom­bies is a blast to play with your friends.

The Bottom Line

Call Of Duty WWII is a real­ly sol­id shoot­er with the clas­sic boots on the ground action of Call Of Duty of yes­ter­year, with some real­ly good new changes. If you are a fan of clas­sic Call Of Duty mul­ti­play­er or you’re just sick of the futur­is­tic set­ting and moment mechan­ics Call Of Duty WII is for you. If you love play­ing first per­son shoot­ers, WWII would be a great edi­tion to your library. It will be even bet­ter if the online ser­vices were fixed quick­ly. All 3 modes offer a good expe­ri­ence for those who play them. I will be play­ing a lot more of this game.