DYSTOPIAN said:
The singleplayer is nice until you realise you just have to run forward through most missions to advance the checkpoint or break the enemies morale. You never have to actually fear the Germans, they run around like slapstick cartoons sliding and slipping.
That's basically COD since Modern Warfare, methinks, advance 'till they stop spawing. I remember my main objective while playing World at War on Veteran was to advance to the next checkpoint, THEN start shooting
Anyway, having finished the game, the lack of an historical narrative before each mission is even more regretful.
For example, after the battle of Hurtgen you're just stuck in the Ardennes, but the game never explicitly explains that there have been a german offensive, the situation looked kinda grim etc. etc.
I mean, if you knew this stuff before it's gonna be ok, but if you don't...and again, it's a pity.
The game includes relatively "rare" battles such as the fall of Aachen (which was included and better explained in Finest Hour) and the battle of Huertgen, a costly and relatively forgotten american debacle. I thought the Hurtgen levels were some of the best (although I don't know of any Hill 493); in two levels the show all you should expect in great detail: the opening scene in the U.S. camp, where you can stroll around; the semi-abandoned bunkers of the Siegfried line; then the fog, the rain, the mud, the bad, uneven terrain in which the battle was fought and a series of doomed, bloody assaults sometimes interrupted by artillery shells - the effect of treeburst is shown in detail - sometimes by a counteroffensive. Heck, at a certain point you'll even get lost after one of said assaults and will have to wander in the fog, back to your lines. Although most of the Hurtgen levels are based on 4th and 28th divisions' own ordaly and the germans in the forest weren't SS and didn't have Tiger II tanks, I've rarely seen a COD game - or a game, in general - getting the atmosphere and the reconstrution of an historical battle so perfectly without even bragging too much about it.
It had its flaws, but maybe because I'm a WWII enthusiast, maybe because I don't play COD since BLOPS 2, I confirm this campaign is one the whole saga very best, despite all the hatred it gets.
I think that if you only look at detail like dat soviet weapon in Normandy or dat wrong epaulette in that uniform, without grasping the general context of a level of, for the matter, of the game - AAA arcade shooter, made for general public, etc. - you will miss a lot of good stuff.
People complaining about lack of realism must have never played a WWII shooter back in the days. Or maybe they are all Red Orchestra enthusiasts, that's why there's millions of players online everyday
With World at War, back in 2008, I don't remember hearing complaints about how stereotyped the gung-ho Marine and the crazy Soviet characters were, how easy it was to land on Peleliu, what the hell was that hybrid Thompson you got, why most japanese used SMGs, why everything sounded like toyguns, why Stalingrad and Berlin share similar architecture, how Hitler birthday date is wrong, you can't quickscope with an anti-tank gun, etc.