Your story starts at Normandy, because this is a World War II game, and weaves its way through the battles that followed as US forces pushed into France and, eventually, the Rhine.

You've got some friendly faces with you throughout, and the cutscenes more or less have your core group of characters palling around between major conflicts. You largely play as a Texas farm boy with a picture of his best girl in his pocket, just trying to stay sane and alive as the war gets more and more grim. This year's campaign feels bone stock in setting, story, and execution. Call of Duty campaigns vary wildly, but they're usually at their best when they stray from their linear roots. This manifests most plainly in the game's campaign. While there's certainly something to be said for a back-to-basics approach, COD: WWII is plain and straightforward in a way that makes it feel less like the developers were excited and inspired by a return to the 1940s and more like market research determined that it was time for a reset. This year's game rejects all of that and takes things back to the original, pre-MW days by rolling all the way back to where the whole series began: World War II.

Over time, though, those changes have been getting more and more divisive, culminating in last year's game, which let you travel to space, run on walls, and shoot lasers at the opposition. The game's fast action and propulsive sense of progression with interesting new gear and unlocks changed it all, and in the years that followed, developers continued to refine and rework the Call of Duty blueprint, often in surprising new ways that made a great thing even better. It's been a decade, almost to the day, since Call of Duty rewrote the book on multiplayer first-person shooters with the release of Modern Warfare. Despite the change in era, this still feels like a Call of Duty game.

Call of duty world war ii review