Call of Duty: WW2 review | An explosive, surprising return to its roots

Never knowingly understated, Call of Duty is not a series renowned for its restraint. Indeed, an introductory reminder that World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history alongside the final death tally is presented with the sober calm of a Sky Sports promo.

The text thunders onto the screen in all caps and a font size more commonly seen at the top of a Snellen chart. So when, towards the end of Call of Duty: WW2's campaign, you realise that Sledgehammer Games is going to approach the Holocaust, it’s hard not to wince in anticipation.

Yet what could have been horribly crass is handled with a scarcely believable delicacy of touch: what it chooses to show doesn’t feel sanitised, neither is it gratuitous.

It’s far removed from the bludgeoning impact of its opening sequence, though this is necessary force. As a recreation of the Normandy landings, it predictably takes its cues from Saving Private Ryan, and establishes the tone for everything to come.

There’s a blockbuster sheen that means you don’t quite feel the dirt under your fingernails, but it’s the first of many battles that are staged with a shuddering intensity - and conducted at deafening volume. There’s a strong sense of disorientation that you’ll experience in later encounters, though it’s not always clear how deliberate that is.

Your first few advances are likely to end with you getting chewed up by machine-gun fire, but eventually you’ll place the bangalore you dragged from beneath the bloodied corpse of some poor unfortunate, breach the sea wall and push up towards the enemy bunkers.

There’s a sweaty desperation to these initial face-offs, as you hurriedly discard empty guns and pick up new ones from your victims, with precious little ammo to spare. Grenades are a pervasive threat: you’ll toss frags back as they land near your feet, and you’ll throw out smokes to confuse your opponents.

Soon it gets more intimate still, as you grapple with a Nazi, jabbing a button frantically to fend him off before knocking him cold with a nearby helmet. Then, before you’ve had time to draw breath, you’re dragging an injured squadmate into the open, holding off Axis soldiers with your pistol.

This is the kind of set-piece Call of Duty has historically done well, though the threat seems greater, and not only since WWII sits a notch higher on the difficulty scale than last year’s Infinite Warfare. You can no longer crouch in a safe place to recover; rather, you need to pick up and use health packs when you’re injured, or call upon your medic to pass you one if you’ve run out.

Another squadmate supplies you with fresh rounds for your currently-equipped gun, and later you’ll be able to use a spotter to outline enemies in areas of low visibility, or call in mortar fire when you’re pinned down. You’ll have to wait awhile to ask for assistance from the same ally, so timing your requests carefully is essential. None of this is revolutionary, but collectively it represents a welcome shift in the traditional combat rhythms.

Call of Duty: WW2 | Details

It’s not the only change of pace. During the middle act, an undercover mission casts you as a French operative infiltrating enemy territory. Here, you’re handed a cover story which you must study in advance to answer questions in order to pass checkpoints.

Sledgehammer takes its sweet time here, ratcheting up the tension before it all boils over, the action shifting to the streets for an explosive shoot-out. A much noisier highlight sees you outmanoeuvring Panzers in a faster but flimsier tank, rumbling over the rubble in a bombed-out square as you attempt to target their vulnerable flanks, using buildings to protect yourself from return fire.

At times, it feels like an interactive version of every war movie you’ve ever seen, though its archetypes are mostly well-played. Josh Duhamel stands out as a crotchety sergeant and Jonathan Tucker is better still as a smart-mouthed squaddie with a heart, compensating for Brett Zimmerman’s rather bland lead.

If the story strives to make you feel like one small cog in a much larger war machine, it almost undoes its good work with a single line that reveals the protagonist’s part in turning the tide of the war. But then comes that epilogue, which resists hollow triumphalism for something more sombre and personal.

There are a few surprises in Sledgehammer’s extensive multiplayer suite, too. In recent times the augmented movement afforded players by futuristic technology has made COD as much a game about fleet-footed parkour as shooting, widening the gap between the top players and the also-rans. By keeping its boots on the ground in a very literal sense, the playing field feels more even this year.

Meanwhile, a new objective-based mode, simply titled War, pits Allies against Axis in a series of three-act scenarios. With other players rather than AI soldiers on the turrets, it really is difficult to get up the beach on Operation Neptune, but once you’ve breached the enemy bunkers, you’ll be tasked with destroying their computer equipment as they fall back to protect them, before finally planting bombs to blow up their artillery while the Germans try to defuse them.

While this particular mission is a tough one for the Allies to win, rounds frequently go down to the wire. It’s not a bad starting point for newcomers, either: if you’re not a crack aim, you can sneak past distracted enemies to steal fuel to fill up your tanks, which you can then cower behind to escort over a bridge.

It’s the ideal place from which to shift up to the gunner’s seat, though an opposing sniper will usually have their sights trained on such an obviously popular spot.

Accessibility is the name of the game for WWII’s new multiplayer hub. Set at the Allies’ staging area at Normandy shortly after D-day, it’s a place for your online avatar to stretch their legs.

You can wander around between matches, accepting objectives to net experience boosts once completed, or challenge other players to a shootout on the firing range – where you’ll find a variety of Easter eggs for hitting sequences of targets.

Since playing COD online can mean subjecting yourself to 13-year-olds screeching profanities into your headset, it’s refreshing to discover you’re rewarded here for being nice. Commending fellow players, watching them open supply drops (containing three cards that unlock weapon skins, emotes and the like) and engaging in some friendly competition in the 1-v-1 pit all raise your social rank, giving you access to exclusive kit.

And if you’re the type of player who’s usually killed just before accumulating enough points to unlock more explosive hardware, scorestreak training lets you rain down mortar fire on rows of AI grunts, or gun them down from a bomber’s ball turret.

If an incendiary shotgun is the only weapon that really stands out – though the default sub-machine gun is a solid choice for newcomers – the maps are enjoyably diverse. They range from a snowy forest in Ardennes to a London dockyard and a US carrier, though arguably the pick of the bunch is French village that offers long sightlines for mid-ranged firefights in the streets with abandoned houses to sprint through for close-quarters skirmishes.

Among the many modes, the frantic Gridiron seems likely to become a firm favourite: it’s basically American football with guns, as you attempt to carry or throw a leather ball into your enemy’s endzone. With the ball carried in both hands, you’re unable to fire while holding it, but you can hand it off to a facing opponent to effectively disarm them before gunning them down and retrieving possession.

Call of Duty WWII Where to buy

Finally, there’s the schlocky horror show of Nazi Zombies, the now traditional co-operative mode that pits four characters against waves of the undead. As before, it escalates from prising the heads off shambling cadavers with a shovel to sprinting in terror from faster, tougher pursuers.

In tight spots, you can cash in single-use abilities to temporarily gain a flamethrower, say, or deploy a special skill to clear some space. Kills are your currency to unlock better weapons, trigger environmental traps and open up new areas en route towards one of two possible finales, though most will be overrun by the increasingly aggressive mobs before they get that far.

You’ll recognise the faces if not the names of those you’re playing: Katheryn Winnick and Elodie Yung are joined by Ving Rhames, while plenty of Brits will relish the chance to play as David Tennant, who is evidently having a ball as the panicky, profanity-spouting Drostan. It’s purportedly darker and scarier than Zombies modes past, but all that means in practice is the inclusion of cattle-prod scares, with sudden arrivals accompanied by loud orchestral stabs.

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.