June 19, 2017 by Paul Curtin
Activision’s Call of Duty series has been struggling as of late. While the shooter continues to be the top selling game year after year, sales and player counts have been dropping with each new installment of the game. With the numbers on the decline and hate for the series at an all-time high, Activision and developer Sledgehammer Games have decided to bring the series back to its boots on the ground roots. A move obviously done to please original fans of the series and to try and prevent any more hemorrhaging of players.
The latest installment in the CoD franchise looks and feels like the old games, which should make original players happy. However, that alone probably isn’t enough for players who have Call of Duty fatigue. As someone who has grown tired of the series myself, I quickly started to lose interest when playing through the game’s similar deathmatch modes at E3. But Sledgehammer is trying some new and interesting changes which actually make the WWII multiplayer fun to play again. With tweaks to the health regeneration and killstreaks, the biggest and best of said changes is the new 6 vs. 6 objective-based ‘War’ mode.
War puts the emphasis back on teamwork as one team attacks and the other defends much larger scale maps. Like Battlefield’s Operations and Overwatch’s Payload, the goal is for the attacking team to assault a point on the map in order to conquer it. If the objective is taken over by the attackers, then the defenders are pushed back to another point. After pushing the defense back a couple times, one final objective is activated.
In our hands-on time with the game, combat never got stale or repetitive. Objectives being placed in different phases such as bridge-building, tank-escorting, and blowing up supply depots made each phase feel unique. Each phase puts the players on both sides in different situations that might require a different type of class, so frequent switching is required to best suit the team’s needs at any moment. You might start with class focused on CQC when the objective is placed inside, but then switch once that objective is captured and focus is shifted to a more open space with plenty of vantage points for sniping to prevent a tank from being pushed any further by your foes.
War was the most fun I’ve had playing Call of Duty in years, so it’ll be interesting to see how players react to the new mode when Call of Duty: WWII launches on November 3, 2017 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
