It rings out from the rooftops, across vast swaths of the Net - Call of Duty is in trouble. Yes, after rocketing past the drone-choked skies of its "near-future" into the same bleak vacuum of military-fetishist sci-fi occupied by its rival, Titanfall 2, COD finds itself desperately jamming on the eject button as it falls back down to Earth.

Set upon by the encroaching tide of so-called "hero shooters" brimming with colour and vibrancy, steward Sledgehammer Games has retreated to the closest thing the megaseries ever had to a coherent identity - the beaches of Normandy, set in sepia like an insect in amber, where soldiers were soldiers, Nazis were Nazis and those heavy boots stayed planted firmly in the sand.

But even as the ludicrously-named Call of Duty: WW2When reached for comment, the response was surprisingly consistent, with a few outliers: though few were convinced by the five days of carnage, most felt Call of Duty: WW2 represents a firm step forward for the franchise. Even with the vast unpopularity of the sci-fi nonsense employed by the last few entries well in mind, the universal usage of the phrase "boots on the ground" - sometimes abbreviated to BotG - surprised even me.

"I played with a bunch of my friends and the classic boots on the ground feel, the overall game design itself and playing with all my friends together really brought me back to the days when we were young and we used to just play COD all the time," redditor xZombieMike said.

JP_76 echoed this sentiment,