Troublingly, the Second World War is cast as little more than a good time. There’s nothing at stake but a sense of satisfaction and some experience points. In one match, the Allies complete their objectives in a loose simulation of the real D-Day landings. This crucial point in the War is turned into a playground-a recreation of history where only the look and sound of the event is communicated. There’s something upsetting to it, though, that rears its heads in fits and starts.Ī multiplayer map that allows the opposing teams to face off as either the soldiers struggling up a Normandy beach or the Nazis shooting them down from pillbox gun positions stirs something bilous deep in the stomach.

Playing its online matches, giving in to the idea that the international fight to reclaim Europe from Nazi Germany is little more than a throwback to old games and movies, feels agreeable in a slouchy, resigned way. WWII strains in these scenes as if it’s uncomfortable with engaging a historic moment on a level beyond familiar reference. Few and far between as its moments of true originality may be, it does try to turn the experience of revisiting the final year of the War into more than just an empty evocation of our collective pop culture memory.

There’s a sense, in the single-player’s story, that Call of Duty: WWII’s creators want to square the circle of both honoring the historic horrors of World War II while somehow making of it a fun and thrilling setting, too.

Perhaps the purest distillation of the game’s tendencies, multiplayer entirely discards any pretext toward historical recreation, gleefully offering a Sisyphean gladiatorial arena in which the Allies and Axis are forever fighting, returning to the same war-torn European city blocks and shell-burned patches of forest for eternity. Players customize the face, uniform, and weaponry of their soldiers and then, upon entering a match, groups of competitors bash them together amidst gorgeous historic tableaus that will never change, no matter how many times they return to it. In these, devoid of the narrative context afforded by the single-player’s melodrama, WWII boils down to a sort of toy-set version of the Second World War. It’s these last parts that most players are likely to remember, too, because WWII, regardless of its story’s successes and failures, is also a game whose various multiplayer modes draw in the bulk of its audience.

Game call of duty ww2