’Call of Duty: WWII’ Looks and Plays Like the Series’ Best Games, But Fails to Do Anything Interesting

The best moment in any Call of Duty game might be in the franchise's very first title. 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. Due to a supply shortage, though, you have no gun, and getting one takes longer than is comfortable. Much longer.

You rush through the cramped battlefield, dodging machine gun fire as you move from cover to cover. All around you, men die—as many men as the game engines of 2003 could push onto the screen. 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.

Before 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. 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. It tried to tell war stories, and it tried to tell them well.

Call of Duty: WWII, this year's entry in the now-annualized franchise, is an attempt to return to the well that made the series work in the first place. Developer Sledgehammer Games (one of several who now take turns creating new titles) attempts to sell this new entry as a return to basics, a refocusing on the ideas and the conflict that initially birthed this series. But Call of Duty: WWII doesn't merely miss the mark on what makes a great Call of Duty game—it seems not to know where the mark is.