The “band of brothers” is largely a team of game mechanics and one-liner dispensers who hardly get enough screentime or development to warrant a bond on the part of the player. This is especially evident when it tries to endear us to the Texan good ol’ boy protagonist, Daniels. It comes off as fluffy more often than it should, with the stink of a Lifetime movie tone all over it. However, it lacks a certain confidence, often tripping over itself to make sure it hits the “respect the troops” bulletpoints at the cost of its attempts at “war is bad” imagery, something that past Call of Duty games, not based on real wars, weren’t afraid to lean on a bit harder. It takes real history and tries to inject a Band of Brothers-inspired story into the re-enactment style of old.Ĭall of Duty: WWII takes an admirable approach, with a campaign that defies its short length with plenty of variety throughout. Call of Duty: WWII’s campaign is a little of column A, a little of B. The extent that this has been successful is debatable, but the effectiveness of Modern Warfare 2 in particular is undeniable. The stories would become less about setting and history for obvious reasons, and more about the various teams trying to tell spectacle and character-driven, movie-like stories.
That and Modern Warfare before it were the beginnings of what Call of Duty is now, a mix between a huge, bombastic single-player campaign and a multiplayer mode that is treated as almost a separate game entirely. We haven’t been to World War II in Call of Duty since World at War nearly a decade ago. But it feels right going back to the well when we’re knee-deep in a monumental console generation is a great way to look at that well from a new angle. In reality, these games have three-year dev cycles, so it’s all just how things go: messy coincidence. Sans context, Call of Duty: WWII feels like a reaction to DICE’s successful Battlefield 1 or Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s less than astronomical sales. It was time to try something new, and never can a year be more appropriately labeled with the “everything old is new again” cliché than this. After several years of modern and science fiction trappings, Call of Duty is back to its roots, in a way that feels appropriate. Not long after the alternate-history camp and aggression of Wolfenstein II, I find myself back with boots on the ground in the real history of World War II. When it rains it pours, and in 2017, it’s cloudy with a chance of Nazi scum.
0 kommentar(er)
