Such a fun game to play. It has a brilliant comic book vibe and lurking around as Batman was really fun. I really liked the combat mechanics. There have been many "Arkham Style" games out there but this still holds up - it feels solid, the controller vibrations are on point and it's just fun. I loved finding all the tapes and character information. Overall there was so much detail and love put into small things which made the experience extremely enjoyable.

There aren't many things I felt were weaker and even those aren't really huge issues but I think the backtracking was one. The game does do its best to keep things interesting as you retread similar locations but some of them start feeling a bit dull with some time (esp the outdoor sections that do not change that much). In addition I felt like the game could have used a "mark enemies" mechanic or a general detective mode overhaul. The detective mode was useful but it took away from the atmosphere because it changes the environment so much.

Slightly better version of Risen 2 due to just including more narrative elements from the first game. I still like the Pyranha Bytes formula and you can have a lot of fun questing, but these last two games have just lost a bit of that charm. I feel like the two biggest contributors here are the visual design and the combat. I dislike the cartoony look the series decided to pivot to and I absolutely hate the combat. PB combat up to R1 was nothing to really praise but I didn't active hate it. It was nice and something I was used to. This new style is just awful.

Ended up liking the Campaign side of things a bit less than I was expecting to from my childhood. Nice story, great gunplay. Sadly somehow the visuals look like a downgrade compared to MW2 (not strictly talking about fidelity) and Treyarch continues to be poor at creating a game that is difficult but not unfair. I feel like Infinity Ward cracked that code with MW2 but sadly it did not make it to this game.

Now all that being said - the multiplayer is/was glorious and Treyarch deserves a big pat on the back for that. Great job on that front and enough for me to raise the score by a point. Also this is where most of my Zombie mode memories come from which is another +.

With the engine from the last game this return to WW2 looks and feels amazing to play. I loved the brutal approach and it is probably one of the darkest Call of Duty games in my opinion. Sadly it starts falling short soon after. The first misstep came after you realized that instead of a proper narrative we once again get a mish-mash of different battles which immediately feels like a regression in terms of story. Now this was fine for about half the game because some of the missions were definitely cool but after a while this lack of narrative made other negatives pop up way more. Namely I felt like this game was even more unfair towards the player than CoD 4 leading to a lot of frustration during gameplay. The worst offender is likely the crazy granade spam every time you are stationary for more than 5 seconds. Other than that I think the multiplayer was still fun although again a tiny downgrade from the previous game.