Call of Duty: World at War

Come on now. Can Treyarch truly claim the COD crown?

	Version 360, (PS3, PC)	Developer Treyarch	Publisher Activision	Genre FPS

Page: 1  2  3 

Page 2

The campaign isn't the only thing you'll be playing in co-op either, with COD4's bewildering post-credits affair replaced with the unlocking of an entire new mode - arguably a whole new mini-game in its own right - Nazi Zombies. Good enough to warrant a Live Arcade or PlayStation Network release all on its own, the game is a survival situation that scales up as you earn points for killing zombies, through a series of 'rounds' that pushes you to see how far you can go. It's really good, really addictive and often really fucking scary, quite frankly. Serious props must go to Treyarch for including this, because after the groansome return to WWII since the thrills of Modern Warfare, it's nice to see that it's not all dusty school books and reminders of detention with the history teacher, but rather that there's a developer sense of humour and commitment to offering extra value and the sort of good fun that puts a smile on your face.

Talking of World War II, let's say a few words about the story. The first thing to note is that Treyarch has come good on its promise: the aspect of WWII explored in World at War really is a side less frequently looked at in past video games, and is both interesting and well converted to video game form. It's split into two distinct sides: you as the Soviets versus the Nazi Reich, and secondly you as the Americans (obviously), versus the Japanese. The stylised, story-furthering cut-sequences of the game in between levels are beautifully presented, and actually make flickery old black and white war footage look eye-catching and slick. Voiced by the in-game actors including Keifer Surtherland, this subtext of the game looks at the American revenge for Pearl Harbour in the unfamiliar setting of the far east, leading to the eventual, poignant and literally explosive conclusion to the war, as well as the determined, death-defying effort of the Russians to bring about the end of Nazi Germany.

There's a genuine sense of hardcore wartime with these ruthless Japanese soldiers charging towards you yelling with murderous, suicidal, honorary intent, and it's true that there is a more aggressive, relentless feel to the game overall (hence the flamethrowers), which chillingly reflects the desperate final stages of the actual war itself.

From the perspective of a traditional video game, the story is very partitioned with its skipping back and forth several years at a time, but it really doesn't matter because its presentation is slick, and the characters you get to know along the way - particularly on the Russian side when you play as Dimitri (more than a slight reminder of certain a Rockstar title with the accents during these bits!) are really well acted and implemented through your first-person view of the world. As an overall work, however disjointed and relatively shallow the story may be, it doesn't matter because both sides of the tale have satisfying conclusions, and we hope it can also nicely round off and mark the conclusion of WWII storytelling as a whole for the Call of Duty franchise. For COD6, COD7 and beyond, let's do modern, future, fantasy, or ancient, please. Enough of WWII, already.

Visuals are actually marginally improved above Modern Warfare. The already-stunning Infinity Ward engine, with its uncompromising mix of detail, architecture, effects, quantity of action, AND 60fps frame rate, still looks the business with its lovely texturing, explosions, particles, dept-of-field, brilliant animation, and some excellent set-piece visual effects. But it's now improved further with gorgeous effects like the fire of the new flamethrower weapon (which has its own strategic uses in the game, incidentally) as well as fixes to some of the glitches we noted in our COD 4 review ("shadow rendering, in places (like on characters' faces) leaves a lot to be desired, looking all glithcy and shaky... somebody needs to find away around this tacky shadowing") - guess what, IW and Treyarch now figured it out because there's none of the shit here - characters' faces look brilliant.

Page: 1  2  3 

NEXT PAGE >>