For as long as I can remember, there's been a Call of Duty game available for me to play. From Big Red One to World at War to Black Ops, I've dipped my toes into nearly every Call of Duty game that has been released. Call of Duty games are as usual as a peanut butter sandwich. Whenever I'm in the mood to browse through games at my local video game store, I run into dozens of Call of Duty games. They're in the pre-owned section, the discounted section, and (since they're always coming out with one every year) the new games section.

Over the years, I'll admit to having gotten some Call of Duty fatigue. The multiplayer always seems to remain the same with slight variations. And once you've played one iteration of a Call of Duty campaign, you've played them all. As the series got more into the future with Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare, my interest in ever picking it up again got smaller and smaller. However, when World War II was announced, my interest was piqued. A return to its roots might invigorate the series and my waning desire to play it.

After playing Call of Duty: World War II, my final verdict is that while the game may have brought a bit of a spark back to Call of Duty, it was not enough to cement it in stone as a great game. In fact, there are disturbing aspects to the game that ruin it as a gaming experience in general. Read on to see if you agree with some of these hard truths about Call of Duty: World War II. 

20 Setting Up Camp At The Spawn

You know that brisk feeling you get when you leave your house in the morning to go to work only to realize that it is absolutely pouring and there's nothing you can do about it? That's kind of how I feel when I start a new match of Call of Duty: World War II only to be immediately shot as soon as I spawn. Maybe I just have the worst of luck, but I always seem to find myself fighting against teams that continually camp my team's spawn.

It's not an easy issue to resolve.

I have no idea how Activision could fix this. The only thing I do know is that it is a problem that plagues me every time I play some CoD: WW2. (To be fair, this happens in a lot of other multiplayer games.) Players get a significant advantage over the other team when they spawn-camp. Without a clear incentive not to do it, I'm afraid it's something that is going to keep on happening.

19 The Big Short

No one buys a Call of Duty game for the campaign (at least not anymore). Some of the campaigns have been phenomenal (I'm looking at you, Black Ops). Other have been, well...less inspired. But all of them feel like the shortest war story you've ever sat through. World War II is no exception. The story, while a typical story of heroism during the titular World War II, is actually not bad (there have been worse). But, alas, it is still a short campaign to run through. It took me no more than about six hours to finish the campaign. But as I said before, no one buys Call of Duty for its campaign. The quality of the story is an added perk. The real meat of the game comes from the multiplayer.

18 I Could Use A Hand With This

I'm a fan of doses of realism in my video games. I like when attempts are made to make the unlikely action unfolding on my screen seem connected to real-life maneuvers. I'm not a fan of tying said realism to occasionally glitchy AI. For the most part, your squad in WW2's campaign functions the way it's supposed to. Each person is responsible for supplying you with certain things during a battle with a cool-down attached. Zussman, the soldier who tosses your character medical kits, is especially handy... when he's around. Your squad can only supply you with items if they are within a certain distance of you, but if you're charging ahead, they don't necessarily keep up with you. Likewise, if you're holding back, trying to eliminate some problems to your rear, sometimes your squad decides to bum-rush the enemy ahead like maniacs.

17 The Deep, Piercing Secrets Of Pierson

The gruff sergeant character who makes tough and morally dubious calls is no stranger to the Call of Duty series. Sergeant William Pierson follows that mold to a T. Played by actor Josh Duhamel, Pierson immediately rubbed my nose the wrong way. He was cold to our character, Daniels, and he seemed like one cruel leader to his men. No one seemed to like him at all, and it was understandable why. Later on, we find out the reason why Pierson became so embittered. He had lost a large amount of men during the Battle of Kasserine Pass. He had been ordered to retreat, but he had ignored the order so that he could help out some of his men who were trapped. This event caused him to be the dark man that Daniels meets during our campaign with him.

16 Friendly Shell Shocks

One of the most awkward moments (for me at least) when playing a multiplayer game is when you accidentally fire upon a friendly and wind up causing their demise. This is especially awkward if your microphone is broken so you can't apologize voice-to-voice. (Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.) Call of Duty: World War II makes these kinds of situations worse with having friendly grenades cause shell shock.

You suffer from this unless you decide to follow a specific Division.

If an explosion goes off near you, your screen begins to shake, simulating the effects a person undergoes when artillery fires nearby and making you a ripe target for enemies. This is annoying, as you can probably imagine. If you're not immune to Shell Shock, prepare to have a blurry screen and rising irritation levels.

15 Memorization Skills

An expert player of a First-Person Shooter (FPS) isn't always the one with the quickest trigger finger (though that helps). The best players of many FPS games are at the top because they have a thorough understanding of all the maps. If you know a map well enough, you know the best spots to camp, the worst choke-points to be at, and the best walls to bounce grenades off of.

This puts newcomers to a game at a disadvantage if they don't know the maps well.

Call of Duty: World War II has several maps available without extra purchase (and several maps that are available only as exorbitantly-priced DLC), and each of them lends themselves well to memorization, perhaps a little too well. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is entirely subjective.

14 Run Away!

When I was younger, I had a bad habit of running away from enemies in video games. I had not learned yet that the best defense is a good offense when playing an FPS. If you turn around and sprint away, all you're doing is presenting a target that is not firing back. Nowadays, the only time I sprint is if I'm sprinting forward. Moving to cover quickly is an important element of the Call of Duty series. Unfortunately, in their efforts to make World War II more of a callback to their original games, I suppose, the sprint time has been severely shortened. I understand not wishing to include an unrealistic, unlimited sprint time, but WW2 jumped too far to the other side of the spectrum. I feel like an asthmatic could run for longer than my character.

13 Fair Game

Every game has its share of cheaters. Publishers do what they can to provide support and establish guidelines for gaming communities, but cheating still runs rampant. Call of Duty: World War II is no exception. It's a shame to see such polished games fall prey to those who subvert rules in order to win. Is it really a victory if it was achieved through cheats? Aiming hacks are prevalent, which assist players in locking on to targets. And wall hacks also run amok; these hacks can allow players to see the outlines of their opponents even if they are behind cover. There are even hacks that increase your character's defenses. I know that weak and whiny players have a tendency to cry wolf about hacks, but seriously, these are real issues.

12 Home, Sweet Home

Games within the same genre take inspiration from one another. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Games can improve upon each other, and this spirit of competition should, in theory, benefit gamers. A facet of Call of Duty that we can recognize from other video games is the new Headquarters. Headquarters is a place where players can go to open their supply drops, pick up Contracts, and basically interact with each other in a community setting. This is starkly reminiscent of Destiny's Tower, the edifice where all the Guardians gather if they're not off fighting aliens. I'm of two minds about Headquarters. On the one hand, it is nice to see players grouped together as if they were meeting in real life. On the other hand, no one really goes there with the express purpose of being friendly. It's just a stop to make on your way to another match.  

11 No Such Thing As A Quick Draw

Your weapons mean nothing to you if you can't bring them up in time. Of all the things that have been responsible for my failures in Call of Duty: World War II, long sprint-out times are probably the main culprit. Sprint-out time is the amount of time it takes for your character to raise his/her gun after coming off of a sprint. The shorter that time is, the easier it is to make a move on an approaching enemy after, let's say, sprinting around a corner. The longer that time is, the more likely it is that you will get mowed down while your character slowly raises his/her weapon. It's gotten to be so common for me to get shot while raising my gun that I've taken to just walking everywhere I go.

10 The DLC Issue

Downloadable content (DLC) has become a divisive topic within the gaming community. We appreciate the added content that developers give us after a release, but when most of a game is given to us in DLC only after we've paid for a full-priced game and we have to pay even more for said DLC, that's when we have problems. As with most current multiplayer games, it's almost expected that we receive DLC a few weeks later. But we should expect that anything offered as DLC is a valuable add-on, not a missing piece of the original game. "The Resistance" DLC from World War II was not bad, but the inclusion of maps that should have been included in the original game still irks us.

9 In the Heat Of The Moment

Developers claim that the use of quick-time events is to keep gamers' interest piqued during cinematic scenes. If it's possible that your character might pass away during a cinematic, you're much more likely to pay attention to what's going on.

Apparently, developers think that we like to doze off during a cinematic. 

Call of Duty: World War II included quick-time events during several cinematic setpiece moments. Look, I don't have anything particular against button-pressing under pressure, but I really don't like it when, if I miss a single button press, I might have to restart an entire section because of a checkpoint I reached ages ago. I think we can all agree that this is not a fun experience.

8 Climbing That Level Ladder

Promotion is the idea that you earn yourself a better title as time passes and you do better work. Level progression in gaming works in much the same way. The more time you spend playing a game in addition to accomplishing in-game objectives, the faster you will reach higher levels. This usually means that you will gain access to better equipment and cooler perks. Unfortunately, level progression in WW2 is insanely slow. Is it just me, or is level progression getting slower and slower per Call of Duty game? You would think that level progression would get sped up as time goes on because it seems not a year goes by without a Call of Duty game getting released. CoD players won't have enough time to level up in one game before they begin playing the next one.

7 Tanking In The Tank

Vehicle missions are a staple in Call of Duty games. Part of the campaign usually includes one mission (at least) that showcases a large vehicle. This vehicle is typically a tank. The entertainment value that you draw from vehicle missions depends largely on the mission. Some vehicle missions are done extremely well, highlighting an important plot point of the story, providing high-quality diversion to the player, and not taking an exorbitantly long amount of time. In my opinion, the tank mission in World War II... tanked. The controls did not handle well for me; I felt the turret was overly sensitive. The turret also seemed to dictate where the tank went more than I did. And as any adequate gamer knows, bad tank controls equal a bad tank mission.

6 Variety Is The Space

The maps are one of the most important aspects of multiplayer gaming. If you don't have good maps, you don't have a good game. Quality matters, but you also want quantity to count for something too. In Call of Duty: World War II, there did not seem to be nearly as many maps as there should be. In addition to not feeling there were enough maps, map rotation during matchmaking was also an issue. I revisited the same map (three guesses as to which) more than six times in one sitting before managing to land on one that was different. The plus side of getting the same map so many times is that you learn that it really well. Unfortunately, your knowledge of one map does not translate to others.

5 New, But Still Old

Call of Duty fatigue happens, in part, because the same plots are rolled out over and over again. Call of Duty: World War II was hailed as both new and old because it was a change from recent Call of Duty games that have been set in the future and was instead set in World War II like the original games. Despite being different from the latest iterations, Call of Duty: World War II still felt too similar.

If you're any fan of the series, you must have felt the similarities.

The fact that several other first-person shooters have been set in World War II does not help matters. What these games must do in order to stand out is to address the topic in a manner that is unique. Call of Duty: World War II fails to do this.

4 Impossible Deals

Difficulty in games is a controversial issue. Some believe that games should be easy enough to be accessible for everyone. Others believe that a game is not a game unless it hurts you in every way possible before you manage to scrape by and pass it. I'm somewhere in the middle on this issue. But I do believe that some of the Contracts offered in Call of Duty: World War II are insane. And by insane, I mean insanely difficult. And by insanely difficult, I mean impossible.

How is someone supposed to get 35 kills in 10 minutes?

I'm not the best player of Call of Duty; I'll be the first person to admit that. I have asked people who are better than me what their opinions are about some of the offered Contracts though, and only one person believed he could do it. And when he tried, he failed.

3 The Eternal Spectator

I like watching people play games more than most people. It's diverting when you're watching your friends play, and professional Let's Players know how to make a game seem even more entertaining than it already is. But you know what's not fun? Becoming stuck on Spectator when all you really want to do is dive into a match. This Spectating Glitch plagues Call of Duty: World War II. The longest I have been stuck in spectating was three minutes, which doesn't seem too long, but when you compare that time to how long a match takes, you will find that it is a sizable portion. And I've heard tell of people who have spent half a match stuck in spectating before finally getting into a match when it's almost over.

2 The Prototypical Protagonist

The setting is not the only part of Call of Duty: World War II that we've seen before. We've seen the main character time and time again. He joined the U.S. Army with a head full of naive idealism, but he remained honorable and brave throughout his time with his squad. Does this sound familiar? If it does, that's because it's the basic description of nearly every protagonist in a Call of Duty game who recently joined the fight. I actually don't mean to be too hard on this trope. It's a trope for a reason. The idealistic youth who heads off to war is one of the enduring legacies of World War II. While it may be stereotypical and boring to see this kind of protagonist in a game, it's also touching. I don't know about you, but I do like it when heroes are heroic.

1 Grass Is Greener

Another one of the strange additions to the Call of Duty series is the ability to stare at people as they open their Supply Drops. It is the weirdest and most unnecessary thing I've ever seen. You earn these Supply Drops by playing the game, and they contain various items of varying degrees of use. These Supply Drops are basically glorified loot boxes. I do have to admit that it is pretty hilarious watching other players open these boxes only to reveal they got nothing of value. What you receive is basically a bunch of cosmetic junk. That is, unless you spend a bunch of actual currency to unlock these special supply drops which will then give you better weapons. I still don't understand why people need to stand around and witness that.