I am going to go very in depth with this review, but let me preface it with this-- for those of you who are thinking of buying this game, avoid it at all costs. If you are looking for a modern World War 2 game, consider Red Orchestra, Day of Defeat, or even COD: World at War. Do not buy this. Even better yet, go buy an Xbox or PS2 and play the old Call of Duty games, or the old Medal of Honor games. These games covered all the theatres of the war, had some semblance of historical accuracy, and concentrated on gunplay as opposed to plot.

The purpose of this game was to be a "return to roots" for the Call of Duty series as a whole. Why? Because their rivals at Electronic Arts had a smashing success developing a WW1 game. But the folks at Activision did not want to take such a big risk, so they decided returning to the setting of WW2 would be appropriate. The result? A game with an aborted plot, with elements grabbed from old Call of Duty games, elements stolen from Medal of Honor, and even older films.

Your character, Daniels is given a feeble back story, and the whole campaign is centered around facing the fears resulting from this back story. The trope of conflict between comissioned and non-commissioned officers (a la Platoon) is rehashed several times. The conflict results in a certain sergeant lashing out at his men and drinking (all tropes), and you learning about yet another back story in with the sergeant could not save his men. Then everyone is friends, fine and dandy. The writers of the story claimed that the player would deal with racism and other prejudices, and that the story would hinge upon these interactions. You have a German Jewish best friend (who can speak German), and the fact he can speak German is remarked upon perhaps once. You have an African American engineer (a comissioned officer), and your colleague remarks that "he is surprised, [the African American] was allowed to fight with us." That's not a racist statement. That's a statement shunning the policies at the time. Your German Jewish friend proceeds to get kidnapped and sent to a POW camp. The writers try for a shock moment by implying that your colleague was sent to Bergan-Belsen (which was an extermination camp, not a POW/work camp), and you walk through the camp and find your friend in a weak, useless epilogue. Apparently, finding your friend in the woods behind the camp somehow results in you getting over your childhood fears. I don't know what idiotic writers were hired for this game, but they clearly overstated what this game was going to be. They advertised racist conflict, espionage, a human story, a campaign centered around liberating concentration camps and experiencing the horrors of war. These qualities were rendered in the most watered-down, and immature fashion imaginable. To reduce the experiences of POWs and veterans in this sort of manner is dishonorable to say the least.

Let me also talk about how this whole game was "inspired by", and paid "homage" to other games and movies (i.e. tactit plagiarism). There was a lot of content copied from Battlefield 1-- bringing down an armored train, playing as a female character, sneaking around with supressed weapons in a semi-open world setting, the emphasis on bolt guns. The espionage sequence was straight from Wolfenstein. The D-Day sequence, the "heroics" minigames are lifted almost exactly from the Medal of Honor series. Add to that an annoying amount of quick time events taken from COD 3. The bridge detonation sequence and Stuka fight were lifted from the first Call of Duty. The thermite verse Panzer tank sequence was lifted from Wolfenstein and Medal of Honor (they used RDX in MOH instead). Even the cover of the game pays homage to the famous "thousand yard stare" photo which is supposed to illustrate the idea of battle fatigue/combat stress reaction/PTSD. Are you kidding me? This game does barely anything to convey the so-called horrors of war (or does so in such an abortive, watered-down fashion), how can it even justify paying homage to such a historically important image? There was not a single innovative or otherwise original aspect to this game. Almost all the elements (including most of the good ones) were lifted from other sources and shoehorned into this abomination of a game.

Let's get on to the gunplay/gameplay. It sucked. The weapons did not feel right. The rate of fire on almost all the weapons was slowed down considerably compared to the historical counterparts. The writers claimed that there would be some semblance of historical accuracy, but there wasn't. The Germans were using Russian weapons on the Western front, when in reality they were used exclusively in the Eastern front, where things were getting desperate. You could sprint with an MG42. The hitboxes made it so a headshot took 3-4 shots to kill barring aside battle rifles (on the hardest difficulty setting). There was an overuse of anti tank weapons being used against infantry. The focus was on the Western Front, but what of the other fronts? Africa/Middle East? Pacific? China/India/Burma? THIS WAS A WORLD WAR, THE WHOLE WORLD WAS INVOLVED. And what do the writers do? Focus on the most rehashed, most known part of the war. The most gaping issue? Where the hell are the Nazi swastikas? Or right. They were removed to not offend the delicate sensibilities of someone trying to play a rated-M game about WW2. The writers promised us something different, but instead what we got is a quasi-plagriasied, empty piece of ♥♥♥♥.

The game ran fine on Class 1 hardware, despite some lag spikes here and there. This is the only positive aspect of this game. The download of the game was around 70 GB, and it expanded to over 100 GB when fully unpacked. It was not an issue for me-- but it is certainly something to look out for, and is actually one of the major reasons people have been compaining about errors (the game has to decompress files on the fly and fails to load them in time, causing issues).

I have not played multiplayer, and do not plan to, it probably sucks.

In short:
-- We were promised a semblance of realism and historical accuracy. We got nothing.
-- We were promised a human/soldier oriented plot indicating the racial tensions of the time. We got nothing.
-- We were promised a solid competitor to Battlefield 1. We got an inspired piece of ♥♥♥♥.
-- We were promised a "return to roots" for the series. We got a rehashing of old glory, with large chunks lifted from other series'.

I am ashamed to admit having preordered this game.