This is a scene from the video game "Call of Duty: Vanguard." The Catholic News Service classification is L -- limited adult audience, material whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Entertainment Software Rating Board rating is M -- mature.

This is a scene from the video game “Call of Duty: Vanguard.” The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, material whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Entertainment Software Rating Board rating is M — mature. CNS photo/Activision

With “Call of Duty: Vanguard” (Activision), the mayhem-ridden franchise that dates back to 2003 returns to its roots, at least insofar as this iteration is set, as the earliest games in the series were, during World War II.

The body count remains characteristically high, however, while a bland campaign narrative further restricts this first-person shooter’s already narrow appeal.

The story focuses on four of the global conflict’s areas of greatest activity: Germany’s Western and Eastern fronts, the Pacific and North Africa. This allows for an impressive display of varied environments accompanied by a soundtrack designed to inspire excitement.

The main antagonist is fictional SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Hermann Freisinger (voice of Dan Donohue), a high-ranking officer in the Nazi regime’s notorious Gestapo. Based on one of the historical chiefs of that organization, Heinrich Müller, Freisinger seeks to rebuild the Nazi Party after the fall of Berlin and Hitler’s suicide — something Muller, who disappeared in 1945, never, thankfully, got a chance to try.

As with many of its predecessors, the lackluster plot isn’t necessarily the biggest draw in “Vanguard.” Rather, it’s the multiplayer aspect — along with the famously popular “zombie” mode — that rouses attention.

The scenes of combat are harshly graphic. But there is an option allowing for less gory gameplay. There’s no way to avoid the frequent vulgarity with which the dialogue is loaded, though, or the racist insults in which German soldiers indulge.

While the sexual content is, by contrast, fairly restrained, players do get glimpses of scantily clad “pinup girls.” Yet these images are both accurate to the period and relatively tame by today’s standards. So it’s really the glorification of armed struggle that makes “Vanguard,” like many of its precursors, morally unsettling.

Playable on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and Windows.

The game contains constant, intense warfare with bloody effects, numerous gruesome sights, much rough and crude language and narcotics-related images. The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, material whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Entertainment Software Rating Board rating is M — mature.