Call of Duty: WWII is out, but… Er, there aren’t many reviews online at the time of typing. That’s sure to change as servers populate and critics start to beat the campaign, and we hope to bring you our verdict as soon as possible. In the meantime, here are some early impressions from gaming media’s biggest guns – and a review from an Indian outlet, apparently.
Updated with more reviews: 3rd November
Hardcore Gamer - 4.5/5
Call of Duty: WWII is a return to form for the series and it’s clear that Sledgehammer didn’t cut corners conceiving it. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s about as tight as a shooter can get and offers up several notable new features while remaining an admirable tribute to the greatest generation.
Game Informer - 8.8/10
While the campaign fails to provide a compelling tale and is often bogged down in uninteresting large-scale slaughter, Call of Duty: WWII nails its multiplayer, new social hub, and zombie modes to provide the back to boot-on-the-ground experience fans have clamored for since the first foray into space.
The Telegraph - 4/5
It’s a Neapolitan ice cream of shooters, essentially, with three very different flavours squashed together in a single serving. They’re not always complementary: it’s hard to reconcile the fact that you’ve got a former Doctor Who shouting “twat!” at Nazi zombies in the same game as a haunting glimpse of history’s worst genocide. Still, between its moments of good taste and a mode that’s more Bad Taste, it hits a consistently high standard – and though it’s mostly riffing on ideas we’ve seen before, it manages to make several of them its own. The series’ dwindling popularity has proved a tough nut to crack for its publisher in recent years; COD: WWII proves that maybe a Sledgehammer really is the right tool for the job.
Gadgets 360 - 7/10
All in all, Call of Duty: World War 2 plays like the series’ early hits. By no means is this a bad thing, though the overall formula and package is wearing thin. There are some bright moments in single-player campaign marred by arbitrary stutter and Zombies is always a blast (provided you have friends along for the ride). But the price tag and a mandatory ~10GB patch before you can even play it are deal-breakers for a game as mainstream as this. If you’re looking as a longtime fan, you’re probably going to buy it anyway. Everyone else is better off waiting for a price drop.
Polygon - Review in Progress
Call of Duty: WWII’s campaign has to serve many different masters, and that tension often feels like it may overwhelm the story’s goals. The campaign’s tone shifts around a bit too much, but the entire experience provides a surprisingly varied and enjoyable look at a war that has been pored over by every aspect of pop culture. Historians may flinch at the overblown nature of some of these missions, but the single-player campaign exceeded my expectations for a Call of Duty experience.
Will you be suiting up and trudging through the trenches of Call of Duty: WWII? Have you managed to play any of the game yet, and what are your first impressions? Sharpen up, soldier, in the comments section below.
Comments 46
My review copy is arriving tomorrow - I was very late to request it haha! Not played a COD for a while - own them all, just not played them. Looking forward to trying it out though.
I preordered it cause I won a bet! I'll let you guys know how I like it tomorrow
@AFCC
That sounds like a dodgy bet. I'll take stability over zeitgeist every time. Fingers crossed, but still going to wait a while for this one to settle out.
I haven't bought a COD game since MW3 so if the campaign is good I may buy or rent it
Judging by the trailers,the characters are interesting
Not gonna bother. World War II has been done to death, and IMO, if you've played one COD, you've played them all.
@KirbyTheVampire solid point.
@fontainelefunk it was a football bet xD
Well anyway played the first 2 missions and it was ok! Nothing I've never played in other WW2 games...was expecting more tbh!
But boy I can't play MP they need to fix this fast or everyone is gonna lose their minds! Error 5 on ps4...and from what I read it's been happening since beta lmao
Update: can't even play Zombies I keep getting the same error 5! F**K YOU ACTIVISION! Last time I spend 70 euros on COD...I preload the game and now I can only play campaign lel
I bought the game basically cause of Zombies mode! But ok, whatever...
Been trying for 15 minutes and no luck! Funny thing ...this happened for last year's game! If my copy was physical I would sell it tomorrow, trust me
I have my Limited Edition arriving tomorrow - at least I expect it to as Game have dispatched it. I can honestly say that I am not
excited or generally keen to jump in to the MP but I have bough every CoD since CoD4 (sometimes twice - once for PS3/PS4 and once for XB360/XB1). I have also bought every limited edition since MW3 (went to the Midnight launch for that too) so its more of tradition as well as ALL the DLC map packs or Season passes too - all apart from CoD:W@W DLC Maps.
I know people complained about the Advanced Movement but I think it added more to CoD and its MP than ANY other innovation since CoD4's Killstreak and create-a-class. So far, my impression of the MP is not that positive. The return to Boots on the ground also makes the game see very dated to me. The same issues that really irritated by the time Ghosts arrive (I think Ghosts is superior to this) with campers, head glitchers, quick/no scopers, grenade spam etc etc. The Create a class is a big step backwards too and scorestreaks are not great at least they weren't. Hearing te game only has 9 (10 if you have the season pass) is ridiculous. I know it has a few other maps for 'War' mode but then other CoDs had extra content other than MP, Zombies, Campaign and the 3 DLC maps were in the PC beta game code.
Having watched some Zombie game-play, I really can't wait! It looks really dark and horrific in the right way. This is what I wanted most of all from WW2 as I really expected the MP to be 'dated' compared to other FPS games. You can tell the MP is Advanced Warfare with a WW2 skin and no exo-suits but Zombies is so much more scary and interesting than IW's and SH's attempts. It could even be better than Treyarchs...
The campaign could be OK but then I enjoyed AW's and IW's campaign. BO3's just didn't grab me at all. Anyway, I will get to try it out myself and experience it myself after the 7th November as I haven't watched any video's on that yet.
Overall I am not expecting too much. An average, if somewhat dated MP, great Zombies and decent campaign If the game lives up to this expectation, good, anything better is a bonus.
@AFCC I think I saw an article that it won't work until release date on psn. Maybe that's why.
Gadgets 360 "Everyone else is better off waiting for a price drop."
More like everyone else is better off taking a step back and buying/playing titanfall2!
It still disgusts me how poor it did. Best fps since timesplitters 2.
@KirbyTheVampire I would disagree with you on that. I could always feel the difference between Treyarch and IW multiplayer. Obviously the campaign and co-op are very different too with Treyarch often going for the more experimental - especially with the Black-ops series. I do agree to a certain point that the MP was very similar from CoD4 to Ghosts with little innovation. Pick 10 and the 'specialist' score streak were stand-out changes - not that they were retained in all games after. I think part of the reason that Ghosts was criticised by the majority of CoD gamers was the fact that CoD hadn't innovated in a big way for years and the SSDD feeling had reached it breaking point. It wasn't helped by having the user base split - not just by platform but by generation. Those that upgraded to PS4/XB1 had small numbers online which also affected the quality of the experience/matchmaking. Its 'innovation' of 'dynamic maps' was also underwhelming and the best maps were in DLC (Fog is still my favourite map in CoD history). It also gave us Aliens (Extinction) which was great too and different.
However, Advanced Warfare followed that and there was no other CoD MP game like it. Unfortunately, because of the way Advanced Movement was implemented, it ruined the flow and feel of CoD. They took the 'boost' jump too literal and too far. Because of this, I also believe that ruined any chance that movement would be accepted. BO3 though nailed it, added Swimming too. The specialists also added something new and very different too. Infinite Warfare kept a similar movement - although bit more refined but the Rigs lacked any character that the specialists added. The 'space setting' also upset the community and wrote the game off before even playing it but that dis allow for much more creative map designs and colours too. I guess its similar to BO3 but still quite different too.
If you look at the 5 CoD games to release on 'next' gen hardware, they are all very different. Ghosts -> Advanced Warfare -> Black Ops 3 -> Infinite Warfare -> WW2. The only two that are closest to each other are BO3 and infinite Warfare as Advanced Warfare, whilst it does have Advanced Movement, that ruins the flow and feel of a traditional CoD. IW and BO3 though still keep that flow with IW being 'faster'' (at least it feels faster) and more fluid but all 5 of these are 'different'. Its like saying 'If you've played Titanfall, you've played every Battlefield and Battlefront games.
@BAMozzy That's probably true. Maybe I'm just bored with first person shooters in general, lol.
I'm sure for people who enjoy the genre, they'll really notice the changes, but for me it just feels kind of same-y.
I don't really bother with the campaigns at all either, and I stopped playing the new CODs right around Ghosts, so that probably didn't help change my opinion that the series wasn't changing in many significant ways.
I want it if the single player is good but I'm little tired of first person shooter, and assassin creed this years look more interesting.
It will really disappoint me when COD outsells the fantastic Wolfenstein II by a huge margin, what a shame.
My son enjoys COD and has picked it up so I will get to try the single player without having to cough up, so I will give it a whirl.
@KirbyTheVampire By the time Ghosts had released, there was a certain similarity and an element of SSDD. The two dev teams did have a different feel to their games but they also had a familiarity to them. You could pick up one and pretty much know what to expect, how they would play, know pretty much what the 'flow', the create-a-class etc would all enable.The score streaks, perks etc had a lot of commonality to them and any innovation was minor - a new game mode or two, dynamic maps, Field Orders, Pick 10, etc but they also had similar game-play even if they did feel slightly different too. I think that's why many felt that Ghosts didn't really push the envelope.
We have seen more innovation in the next 3 as they were built more this generation where as Ghosts was built for the last gen first. think Advanced Warfare took it too far though and as I said, that affected the flow of the game. Uplink though was popular - especially as an eSport mode.
I like the campaigns myself and usually complete them on veteran with all the intel collected too. Treyarch's are more experimental and as a result can be a bit difficult to get into. BO2 had multiple endings with some 'tower defence' type missions (optional) and BO3's is kind of weird.
Keeping to just this gen CoDs, Ghosts had a decent campaign, so did Advanced Warfare - Kevin Spacey was good in it too. BO3 was weird and I couldn't get into it. Infinite Warfare, despite the 'Space' criticism, had a good campaign. Quite a few felt it would have been a good Star Wars: Battlefront campaign with some 'space' combat in your jackal. The only one of the 5 that 'disappointed', mainly because I struggled to connect with it, was BO3.
All 5 of these also had co-op modes and I really like Extinction in Ghosts. AW's Exo-Zombies wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. The 'Exo' system though did ruin it for me. Black Ops Zombies though is fantastic. I also had to buy the Zombies 'origins' map pack. The Zombies in Spaceland wasn't bad but I really felt it lost something that Treyarchs had. Its more 'B-Movie/cheesy' zombies where as Treyarchs are more horror. WW2's Zombies is looking great - what little I have seen - much more horror. I think Zombies is criminally overlooked by the majority who only seem to think CoD is about its MP. I often spend more hours in Zombies than I do in the majority of games...
First cod ive bought since Black Ops 1. Played the beta and it was refreshing as feck, no over the top perks/streaks. So im looking forward to it
I just redboxed the game. The campaign is nothing special albeit more grounded. Zombies is pretty interesting and the pvp is well as you'd expect. 10gb patch just to even play the game is absurd like the reviewer mentioned above. For that reason alone this is the first COD ill skip on buying since 2005. I was a big fan of the series and thats just a deal breaker for me.
I didn't pre order and thought I would miss out on the beta but then looking through the hong kong PS store I noticed the beta was there to simply download and play...and I'm so glad I did get to try it out as the mp beta was truly awful, bland boring map design, shooting mechanics we're terrible and felt wrong I know its only a beta but I doubt anything will have be changed for the full release...definitely giving it a miss.
@Lovespuds I haven't yet played W2 (don't tell me anything about it, I have it still in its cellophane wrapper and really looking forward to playing it). I loved the first and the stand-alone DLC - the Old Blood.
That being said, I can totally understand why these games don't sell as much as CoD. The Wolfenstein campaigns are superb. Totally OTT and old school with a very modern coat of paint. The weapons feel weighty and its an absolute joy to play. However, their is little to keep your interest once you have completed your second playthrough to see how the two timelines differ. In the first, it just meant a different route through the levels. I enjoyed the stealth and when you had no choice but to go loud. If anyone is looking for a decent FPS SP game, I would always recommend them.
As I said though, there is little to keep your interest - no 'co-op' mode like Call of Duty's Zombies and no Multi-player either. As the 'best' twitch shooter on the market (not necessarily the best FPS MP), its history (I know Wolfenstein has been around longer but Cod over the past 10yrs has been a constant) presence on twitch, youtube, eSports etc its built up a massive community. Friends will buy it because their friends bought it and they all enjoyed getting together and playing online. It has more marketing too which leads to more awareness and like I said its been ever present at the top for 10yrs now. Most of the gamers weren't around when Wolfenstein first appeared. I think I had Castle Wolfenstein or at least played it before Wolfenstein 3D. I have Return to Castle Wolfenstein too but I don't think many did. Wolfenstein games haven't exactly been common place over the years so its not surprising that many gamers are not familiar with or looking to buy.
As much as I love the game, if I was strapped for cash and wasn't sure when I would be able to buy a game again, I would buy CoD. At least the MP and Zombies add much more potential game time, keep me occupied. Also MP games are generally better to play at/around launch and as they are more time sensitive, I would prefer to wait for the opportunity to buy/play wolfenstein. I wouldn't want to be jumping in to CoD MP 6months after release when all the 'hardcore' CoD are left playing, knowing the best guns, the maps etc and getting smashed whilst trying to figure out the layout. A year later and its not too bad as the hardcore have moved on but ten the lobbies can be a bit empty - that's why I would buy CoD first but Wolfenstein has definitely a better campaign and a lot of fun - can't wait to play mine
Sounds like Sledgehammer did a bad job. I'm a little surprised because Advanced Warfare was probably better than BO3 and IW.
I'll play it in like five years once it's been discounted enough. I only just played the Kevin Spacey one.
Last game was MW2 and any other cod hasn't interested me and this looks the same. In have to agree with a comment above about Titan fall 2 its seriously well worth it over this rinse and repeat stuff. Shame TF2 again was released at the wrong time thanks to EA but its worth buying people and its always on sale. And it's a great game.
Sigh,very predictable sounding..The recent futuristic cods added those extra mechanics to keep the formula somewhat interesting,with mixed results..i might just re-grab AW on psn sale.. @Gmork___ @Nakatomi_Uk Right on,criminally overlooked game - The best PVP MP on PS4 hands down..It would be best to just make it F2P at this point..
@Lovespuds Maybe if Machine Games had left out the pro communist/sjw garbage it might sell more,apparently their social justice heroics is more important than sales to them anyway..
I enjoyed the beta a lot, looking forward to the campaign and maybe for once ill enjoy zombies mode
Updated with a few more select reviews.
I won't be playing it. If it had a compelling campaign mode maybe, but I feel COD is all about multiplayer, and I'm not really into that aspect of these FPS games.
I have no interest in exploring Sledgehammer Games' interpretation of World War II.
Nope too many other games to worry about , I always come up could come back to this when it drops in price! Back to Wolfenstein 2!
@RoyalGuard Really? The patch is a deal breaker? Nearly every game that comes out these days have patches straightaway. What games do you play that don't?
@lixei32 I preloaded mine from ps store! So it is release day! And btw I still get the same error as before so Online modes don't work for me! Hurray!
People bash AC for having bugs and stuff but at least it is functional
A game that doesn't work at launch is simply MINDBLOWING...
@AFCC A game with the budget of call of duty may I say is even more unforgivable.
Can anyone confirm that you need internet access to play campaign??
@lixei32 true!
Imagine the frustration for me! I'm not enjoying the campaign that much and I bought the game for some mp rounds but what I really wanted to play was Zombies...unforgivable! An error that happened in Beta and last year's COD! Last COD I buy for more than 20 euros, that's for sure
@johncalmc Okay I'll say it. Did it rub you up the wrong way?
@Throb Its not that the game has a patch its that the game doesnt even "work" without the patch. Everygame has patches but this game is internet reliant. What happens in a few years when you cant download that patch? I sometimes like to play my older games yrs down the line. Its just a rental imo.
@RoyalGuard But the internet will probably be around in the future and will also be better no?
I diden't play COD since Ghosts , it could be a good come back for me.
I really care about story line because i don't play MP. but at this case i think i want to try WW thing
But i don't pay 60$ for it so i'll wait for offers
@Throb sure it will. Updates/patches wont. ✌
@RoyalGuard When I've put old games in, they always download the required patches and updates. How far in the future are you thinking of playing COD WW2, 2057??
@Throb kmsl
@special_donky
Since when has taking a zero tolerance stance on Nazism made anyone a "SJW"? There is nothing in that game that comes across as pandering in my opinion, if people out there are able to draw comparisons with the content of Wolfenstein with what is currently going on with Trump and the extreme right then that says something about the sorry state of society, not the game or it's developers.
I am not going to get into a discussion about this here, as it will only lead to arguments which is not why I come to PushSquare, this community is generally respectful of each other so I think it's best to leave politics out of it.
Anyone find a fix for update error code 5? So freaking bad this launch day is a disaster
@Lovespuds Well look you asked me a question but say you do not want a discussion.Where did i say W2 is SJW because its anti nazi? First,the ad campaign implied all conservatives are nazis - (imagine a game about taking out the mugabe regime who have invaded the U.S,with an ad slogan "no you cant!" in 2008) second, the the game is full of anti white language..The good guys are communists (i.e liberals) who are cucks spouting marxist garbage all over the place.Etc etc..
plyed all weekend yes its nice to see a return to ww2 and the early days of cod but its not a patch on wolfenstein 2
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