You infiltrate a Nazi garrison, steal necessary supplies for the liberation, and then.quietly exit stage left, as the Americans take over and do the real work. In the best mission in the game, you play as a woman called Rousseau, a leader of the French resistance in Paris. Yet, Call of Duty: WW2 tells a small story, and does so poorly.Īs an example: like in the better games, there are moments here where you move outside of your protagonist's perspective. Big, nasty wars call for big, nasty stories about them, particularly ones that manage to integrate multiple perspectives into them. But the good ones manage to be told at a scale befitting their subject matter.

It's not that these stories are always deeply intelligent, or artfully written-even in the best installments, they often aren't. And the franchises' best games marry that duality to stories that feel broad and carefully considered, giving the player a glimpse into war from a varied perspective. Its pitch-perfect running and shooting mechanics manage to make the player feel both flimsy and powerful, independent and yet constantly relying on AI squadmates. Mortality in the Call of Duty series is a tricky thing. In Call of Duty: WWII, patriotism is a substitute for both scale and pathos, a bandage laid over poor storytelling and predictable mission design. It tried to tell war stories, and it tried to tell them well. In the flood of WWII media ushered in by Spielberg's work on Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, Infinity Ward's games set themselves apart by offering a broader, international perspective on the war. The harrowing setpiece manages a tricky balance: it's thrilling, while still showcasing how horrible it would have been to actually be at the Battle of Stalingrad.īefore the multi-million dollar success, before the multiplayer and the zombie modes and the turn toward contemporary politics, this is what Call of Duty was. All around you, men die-as many men as the game engines of 2003 could push onto the screen. You rush through the cramped battlefield, dodging machine gun fire as you move from cover to cover. Due to a supply shortage, though, you have no gun, and getting one takes longer than is comfortable.

It's set, like all those early installments, during World War II in the sequence, your character is a Russian recruit, sent across the Volga River to attack the Germans during the Battle of Stalingrad. The best moment in any Call of Duty game might be in the franchise's very first title.

Game call of duty ww2