Call of Duty: World at War

"Stay with Modern Warfare, or just wait until Modern Warfare 2."

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was a fantastic game that was a massive step up for the Call of Duty franchise. Developer Infinity Ward had managed to create a game with a great campaign mode, and excellent online multiplayer. For the next Call of Duty, Treyarch took over and returned the series to it's roots. Call of Duty 5 World at War takes place in World War II once again, and it runs on the same engine as Call of Duty 4. Being in a Call of Duty craving, and wanting a new experience I tried World at War. Unfortunately, I was met with disappointment and this is one of the few times where I should have listened to most people's other opinions regarding this game being worse compared to Modern Warfare. Still though, it's a decent game. Let's get onto the review for World at War.

Graphics:10/10:Absolutely incredible to the say least. When I began the game I was immersed and simply amazed by the game's graphics. All the guns look how they should, explosion effects are nice and the textures are too good to be true. There's not much else to say. So, overall the Graphics receive a 10/10. Easily the most outstanding aspect of World at War. Next is the Gameplay, the most important aspect of a game by far.

Gameplay:8.6/10:Call of Duty 5 if you did not know, is a first person shooter. To begin with, the controls in the game work perfectly. You can press B to crouch, or go into a prone position. Click in the left stick to sprint, and RT to fire your gun. LT to focus the aim so you can aim slower, but far more accurately. RB is to throw your grenade and that's about it for the controls. Now, for the actual Gameplay.

I'll be honest, this game isn't too different from a standard first person shooter game. The shooting and everything is quite generically done. Cover is done in the most basic and cliche way, by simply getting behind a form of cover. Such as a wall, door, fence etc. So, you won't be impressed by any innovations like Gears of War's cover system or Fear 2's slo-mo. However, the game does this perfectly, and it works really well. Levels are designed well, and is filled with a lot of spots to take cover. Areas where your skirmishes take place, are decently sized and allow for a plethora of strategies to go about taking out your enemies. The game's difficulty is pretty hard depending on which mode you choose.

On Veteran the game will give you a insane amount of trouble. Only around four bullets is all it takes to kill you on Veteran difficulty. Hardened despite being a little easier, is still quite unforgiving. On both of those difficulties, you must have a solid strategy and a lot of skill to beat the levels. On Normal difficulty, and the easiest though, the game is moderately hard at best. You'll die a few times on those difficulties, but not many. If you do die once though, usually a different slight calculation to your strategy will allow you get by that portion of the level. So, the campaign is quite good. However, I still found Modern Warfare to have better level design. With campaign covered and out of the way, how's the online multiplayer?

Well, not quite as good as Call of Duty 4's once again. Map design just isn't too good. The maps are massive and just way too over sized. One map is packed with several vacant houses waiting to be filled with people, but there's just too many. Not to mention, the map is gigantic. It'll take forever for someone to find you without a Radar Plane. People who've played Modern Warfare may also be wondering what about the U.A.V.'s etc?

In Call of Duty 5, the U.A.V. was replaced with a radar plane. As for the airstrikes, their basically the same. Last, the helicopter was replaced with a far less deadly force. Dogs. If your confused what I am talking about, upon being awarded 3, 5 or 7 kills in COD4/5 your awarded with various features. At 3 kills without dieing, you can call in a radar plane which shows where everyone on the other team is on your mini-radar. Once you acquire 5 kills without dieing you can summon a airstrike onto any position of the map. Finally, once you gain 7 kills without dieing, you can summon dogs. The dogs run around and bite opponents to death instantly. However, they are vastly underpowered. For many reasons. When the dogs are summoned, everyone is notified. So, the enemy team will be on alert cautiously anticipating the dogs arrival. Upon a dog being spotted, a enemy can simply shoot and kill a dog. Rendering the dogs useless. Sure there's about three, but honestly their not gonna get many kills for you. In Modern Warfare, you had the helicopter. Which took many shots to destroy, and, could kill anyone outside of a building it shot at just about instantly. It was a perfectly suitable reward for the challenging task of reaching 7 kills without dieing. However, the dogs are just too underpowered to be worthwhile for acquiring 7 kills without dieing. Now, while I've mostly said negative things about COD5, there is a few positives.

Perks return from Modern Warfare. They still add a lot of customization and are fun to use. Gun stats are back, and challenges return too. One problem with Call of Duty 4 was that the guns were unbalanced. Take for example, the infamous M16. Which I admittedly am extremely guilty of using. It was a gun that was supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades, but excelled at just about every area. With Stopping Power, the gun could just about one shot anyone if you managed to get a decent shot on them. The only drawback was it's burstfire and not automatic. However, in 5 you won't find any really overpowered setups. Now, I know this has been the only positive and you won't want to hear me rant more about the online, but there's one more negative I must cover.

Vehicles. I just did not like the tank being in online. In my opinion, it was overpowered, but not for the wrong reasons necessarily. A major problem was the only weapon really capable of taking out the tank, is a rocket launcher. Don't have it yet, and your pretty much doomed. Usually your teammates will ignore any recommendations to try and rocket down a tank, so your pretty much on your own. To wrap this section up, I'd give the Gameplay a 8.5/10. Campaign is great, but not amazing like Modern Warfare's. Online is decent, but needs a lot of improvement. Next is the storyline. A rather poor aspect of COD5.

Storyline:6/10:There's one problem immediately. The game takes place in the good old cliched setting of World War II. Now, I realize some fans of the series will say that the Call of Duty series is supposed to take place in World War II, but it's just a terribly overused setting. Modern Warfare was a refreshing breath of fresh air because we had a first person shooter established in a modern setting. However, now we're back in boring World War II AGAIN. Well, now onto the actual storyline.

Personally, I thought Modern Warfare excelled here too. The game did a far better job then World at War of immersing you into the role of the protagonist, and it had far more epic events. World at War's climax wasn't exciting at all. I remember going "Wow, this is absolutely epic" during Modern Warfare's climax. World at War though? Just a incredibly lame climax that doesn't compare at all. Many of the parts just don't feel as intense as Modern Warfare did too. All-together the storyline doesn't compare. It scores a 6/10. Last, is the Music in the game.

Music:9/10:I didn't care much for the background music, but the sound effects were absolutely top-notch. So, was the voice acting too. Not too much else to say. This category receives a 9/10. So, is World at War worth a purchase?

Overall:8/10:World at War is a good game, but not worth buying over Modern Warfare. It's just about inferior to Modern Warfare in every category aside from Graphics. If your looking for which of the two to buy, get Modern Warfare or just wait until Modern Warfare 2 which will most likely be better comes out.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/28/09

Game Release: Call of Duty: World at War (US, 11/10/08)