On October 10th, 2008 the multiplayer beta for the much anticipated Call Of Duty: WaW. It was instantly dismissed by many as another WWII generic FPS. While I feel this assumption is wrong let us see what Cod: WaW has to offer this terribly crowded and tired out genre. Well for starters the single player campaign is set in Japan and Russia, two relatively new and unused scenarios. As mentioned before the story takes place in WWII and the story is entirely fictional, but during real events. From the word go, you notice that the game is more brutal and 'gorey'. The best example I see is when I have a double barrel shotgun and I am in front of an enemy and 'BAM!' I look down to see his upper body seperated from his legs. This is very satisfying and these moments are very frequent. You assume the role of Private Miller, a US Marine and Private Dimitri Petrenko of the Soviet Red Army. The production values are pretty high and the feeling of chaos is solemnly missing. I wont dip into the story as in my opinion it aint too great, but the action in the single player is pretty good and in particular the Russian missions are really fun.
The game's developer Treyarch hasn't strayed far from the previous CoD game and it is running on the same engine and therefore runs pretty well and smoothly. The graphics are nice and environments are colourful and varied.
The multiplayer is as usual the highpoint of the game. When you finish the single player you unlock the 'Nazi Zombie' game mode. This can be played in single player and online/offline co-op. This mode is one of the only fresh things in the game, but lets be honest - its awesome. One could question what relevance this has with a serious 'mature' WWII FPS, but I'm not complaining that they included it. The basic objective of the mode is to kill the zombies while reviving any downed teammates, you are being scored the whole way through and obviously you want to be getting a higher score than your friend. It can be played with up to 4 people and the fun is really dependant on the number of people playing. If you are on your own you may get some enjoymenty out of the game. However if you are playing along with three other people the game is much funner and less difficult(which in this case is a good thing). Then we have the traditional multiplayer game modes. Most of the games modes return from CoD 4. The only real differences between the structure of this and CoD 4 are that when you get a kill streak of 7 you can call in 'the dogs'. The dogs are a vicous pack of killer dogs that go after the opponents. There are 65 levels once you reach 65 you can choose to prestige. You can prestige 10 times. There are more perks and obviously different weapons. The maps are decent but I wasn't impressed with some of them, mainly due to the size of them. The inclusion of tanks in the multiplayer was a mistake, in my opinion because it upsets the flow of play and is extremely frustrating if you are against a team that only uses tanks.
You may notice that in my review I had trouble not comparing it to Call Of Duty 4. This is because the games are so similar and with a year in between them you'd think that Treyarch could have made a few more improvements. Having said that I feel Treyarch have made improvements, just not enough. Call Of Duty: World At War is a great game, its just unfortunate that because of the success of its predecessor, it cannot live up to the expectations of many and as a result is forced to live in its shadow.
-Feralig3r
The game's developer Treyarch hasn't strayed far from the previous CoD game and it is running on the same engine and therefore runs pretty well and smoothly. The graphics are nice and environments are colourful and varied.
The multiplayer is as usual the highpoint of the game. When you finish the single player you unlock the 'Nazi Zombie' game mode. This can be played in single player and online/offline co-op. This mode is one of the only fresh things in the game, but lets be honest - its awesome. One could question what relevance this has with a serious 'mature' WWII FPS, but I'm not complaining that they included it. The basic objective of the mode is to kill the zombies while reviving any downed teammates, you are being scored the whole way through and obviously you want to be getting a higher score than your friend. It can be played with up to 4 people and the fun is really dependant on the number of people playing. If you are on your own you may get some enjoymenty out of the game. However if you are playing along with three other people the game is much funner and less difficult(which in this case is a good thing). Then we have the traditional multiplayer game modes. Most of the games modes return from CoD 4. The only real differences between the structure of this and CoD 4 are that when you get a kill streak of 7 you can call in 'the dogs'. The dogs are a vicous pack of killer dogs that go after the opponents. There are 65 levels once you reach 65 you can choose to prestige. You can prestige 10 times. There are more perks and obviously different weapons. The maps are decent but I wasn't impressed with some of them, mainly due to the size of them. The inclusion of tanks in the multiplayer was a mistake, in my opinion because it upsets the flow of play and is extremely frustrating if you are against a team that only uses tanks.
You may notice that in my review I had trouble not comparing it to Call Of Duty 4. This is because the games are so similar and with a year in between them you'd think that Treyarch could have made a few more improvements. Having said that I feel Treyarch have made improvements, just not enough. Call Of Duty: World At War is a great game, its just unfortunate that because of the success of its predecessor, it cannot live up to the expectations of many and as a result is forced to live in its shadow.
-Feralig3r