With Call of Duty: WWII, the franchise returns to historical warfare under the watchful eye of Sledgehammer Games. The transition is certainly a jarring one, as many CoD players, including myself, have become accustomed to the futuristic setting and gameplay style of the most recent titles. This weekend, the closed beta for CoD:WWII became available on PS4, and the results are, well, a bit disappointing.
On the positive side, Sledgehammer offers a much needed respite from the increasingly repetitive post-modern theme that the CoD franchise seemed to be entrenched in, if you’ll pardon the pun. The class system, represented by different divisions like Infantry or Airborne, seems to return to a simplistic, pared-down approach circa . In my opinion, it sacrifices the flexibility and creativity that the standard CoD class system brought to the most recent titles. The Division system instead restricts the player based on what class they choose to play, like limiting the perks they can choose. This channels the entire CoD player base into preset playstyles, and takes out the creativity of mix-and-matching seemingly disparate elements to create an unexpectedly amazing class. In sum, they’ve sacrificed innovation and creativity in an effort to balance different weapon classes.
However, the actual handling of the different weapons feels solid. Sprinting, ADS, muzzle flash, and recoil, standard elements in any FPS, are developed well, and factor more prominently in weapon reliability. This is to be expected from Sledgehammer, after they did a great job with this in Advanced Warfare. Plus, given map design that forces the player into close quarters combat encounters, these elements become absolutely critical in winning individual skirmishes. That said, there are serious inconsistencies within the weapons, which completely ruined the experience for me. First, submachine guns are ridiculously nerfed. Historically speaking, SMGs rose to prominence during the World Wars and were lethal tools of combat. Here, they seem to be nothing but fancy BB guns. Of course, historical accuracy was never really a reliable aspect of the CoD franchise, but it still feels weird to have SMGs be so underpowered. Add in the ridiculous incendiary shotguns, and you have a very different type of gameplay from previous titles.
Again with a nod to the historical setting, Sledgehammer has stripped away the enhanced movement (e.g. sliding, jetpacks, etc.) that has become a mainstay of modern era FPS. However, they don’t really put anything in its place except an aggressive bayonet charge and a dive to facilitate dropshotting. I’m all in favor of removing jetpacks, but you have to replace it with some kind of movement tactic or else the movement feels heavy, stilted, and slow, as it does in CoD:WWII. Sidestepping, peeking around corners but only partially exposed while ADS, and increased cover to utilize all could improve the movement aspect of this game. There are plenty of titles (Gears of War and The Division come to mind) that don’t have jetpacks but instead utilize terrain, peeking around corners, sliding to cover, and other options to create fluid movement mechanics. Dropshotting and bayonet charges are simply not enough to replace the agility of the movement in previous titles. To be honest, as it stands currently, the beta is a step back in terms of gameplay, and I found myself repeatedly questioning if this game was for modern platforms as it feels as if it was made for XBox 360 or PS3. The visuals don’t help, as the muted, bland colors and lack of detail and contrast make for rather dated graphics.
Despite Sledgehammer’s commitment to a “boots on the ground” title with even, balanced competition, this beta is riddled with balance issues. Health and damage are about as unbalanced as I’ve ever seen in a CoD title, and the map design feels sloppy. The frequent elevation changes seem to be a replacement for the advantages that jetpacking through the air gave in previous games, but it defeats the purpose of keeping boots on the ground to even each player’s ability to win respective gunfights. There are balance issues within individual classes as well. For example, the sniper class is extremely off balance. Snipers have the ability to quickscope from stationary, but cannot hold aiming down the sight steadily while strafing. Although you can certainly quickscope for kills, it’s a frustrating and unrewarding experience.
There are interesting additions to the game that I’m interested to see developed further. The theme of trench warfare, if certain classes are tweaked, could be extremely fun. I enjoyed the maze-like structure of the map, and the deviation from the traditional “enemies in front, friendlies behind” design of previous maps. At any time, you could be surprised by unexpected enemies should you take a wrong turn. Once the damage, health, and SMG issues are sorted out, trench warfare could be the greatest selling point of this title. They’ve also done away with the final killcam, instead replacing it with a “play of the game”, Overwatch-style killcam. That said, I rarely saw a single non-sniper PoTG during my rather lengthy playthrough, so I wonder if there are more balance problems hidden within that as well.
All in all, Sledgehammer seems to have really good ideas about where the changes need to happen, but they’re struggling to actually implement the right alterations. It’s clear that historical accuracy isn’t a priority, and I’m okay with that! I appreciated the inclusion of women and Black soliders as options for play, though it seemed a bit weird to leave diversity there. This was a World war, and why go all in to reflect that? It seems Sledgehammer hasn’t quite committed fully to making a modern game, to be honest. You can return to the historical past without dragging the development into the past as well. Hopefully, Sledgehammer will be able to bring the modern take on World War II in future updates.
Jess contributed 16 articles to ICXM in 2017, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @Enceladosaurus.