I was never much into the whole COD series. I had played the second game and decided to pass on the third as it was made by a different developer, Treyarch, and had gotten some pretty poor reviews both from websites and real people.(for the record this is a review by a REAL person that happens to be on a website)

A friend had given me a beta key for the COD4: Modern Warfare multiplayer beta. I decided to try it out and was blown away by one of the most fun and accessible FPS games ever made. Having pumped a good deal of time into COD:MW, I had mixed reactions to hearing that the next COD game would not only be made by Treyarch, but will also feature a return to the World War 2 setting.

I was able to get access to the multiplayer beta for this one also and it was good enough to warrant my purchase of the game when it finally came out. The beta was solid, but the rest of the game.

GRAPHICS 9/10

The graphics are good. There is nothing mind blowing here that you haven’t seen before. The graphics are definitely on par with MW (which makes sense since they use the same game engine) and are probably a little bit better than other WWII shooters out there. Maybe they are a bit limited by the unoriginality of the WWII backdrop, but for all purposes they do a good job of immersing the gamer in that particular setting. I didn’t notice any graphical hiccups or slowdown along the way so the game has also received a good deal of polish, which in my opinion is the intangible factor that makes or breaks most games these days.

GAMEPLAY 8/10

Fans of Modern Warfare should definitely be able to pick this up and play it right away. The controls are pretty much identical. The main difference in gameplay is that here you are using WWII weapons. In other words, you will be relying on your iron sights….a lot! While this is not exactly a bad thing, it does slow the pacing of the game slightly from the last game. Also, it is a bit harder to run and gun in this game due to limited ammo, limited rate of fire, and harder targeting due to the iron sights. While most weapons can be upgraded to use scopes, other weapons can be fitted for aperture sights (think Red dot sight with a black crosshair instead of a dot).

The game is well made and the gameplay is smooth and fluid, however there is one big issue with the difficulty of the game. With most other games, even when playing on the highest difficulty, you have an idea of how you died and what it was that got you killed. You also have a good idea of how many enemies are remaining in an area and you know that if you kill all of them you can advance to the next area. This is what makes COD:WAW’ campaign extremely frustrating. Grenades are constantly spammed your way with the grenade indicator providing little to no help. Often times you get out of the way of one grenade only to throw yourself on top of another one that had been waiting for you there. I’m not saying grenades shouldn’t be thrown my way, I just want a chance to dodge them.

Another major gripe is the number of enemies in a given area. While most games have you eliminate an area then progress to the next, COD:WAW has unlimited spawning enemies in each area until you physically reach a checkpoint in the game. This means that if you are in a room, wave after wave will keep coming at you unless you can get out of the room and sprint to reach the checkpoint out in the hallway. Things usually play out with me capping a group of guys and then hauling ass until I get the checkpoint message, at which point I die immediately . I heard that COD4:MW was set up like this also, but I don’t remember it being anywhere near as obvious and blatant as it is in this game.

Also frustrating is the enemy and friendly AI. Your allies will run out only to get plowed by whatever ambush is waiting for them. This may be cool in actual ambush type situations, but when it’s only one enemy on a turret and five of your guys run right out into his line of fire…well not so much. The enemy AI is a bit unbalanced. Way too often the entire enemy army would be gunning for me and ignoring my squad mates. Add in unlimited grenades thrown your way with Tony Romo’s accuracy and you get the idea.

Another issue I had with the game is the story. While I’m not looking for serious plot, in a nutshell the story bounces back and forth from the viewpoint of a US marine in Okinawa to the viewpoint of a Russian soldier in Europe. While COD4:MW had a similar split story campaign set up, I didn’t feel as compelled by these characters to continue to plow my way through the campaign .

Instead I played it through hoping it would suddenly become insanely good, but sadly not much happened. Not to diss the campaign mode as it has its bright points definitely. There is a sniper level that people will either love or hate. I actually loved it, so it gets a mention. There is also an airplane stage which is unlike any other airplane stage I’ve played. Also many of the Japanese locales are breathtaking and really give you that feeling of being an enemy invading a foreign land.

SOUND 10/10

The sound in this game is excellent. Bullets sound like they’re wizzing by your head, dogs growl like they’re right in your ear, and mortars feel like they’re exploding right next to you. Sometimes the sound just gets downright chaotic, which is perfect for this type of game. The sound is so good that it is almost wasted without a home theater set up. You can really pin point the direction the bullets are coming from and it just ratchets up the intensity.

The voice acting is top notch. Keifer Sutherland voices the lead marine and he does an excellent job. It would have been a bit better if he voiced the main character, but it’s still not too shabby at all. Gary Oldman does the voice for either one of the German or Russian commanders…I forget, but he does a pretty solid job also. This is mostly noticeable in multiplayer as they call out various artillery strikes, losing/gaining the lead, and so on.

MULTIPLAYER 8/10

There are two categories of multiplayer: co-op and competitive. Co-op features your standard campaign mode with up to four players. The AI adjusts for the number of players by throwing more enemies your way. While I didn’t get too deep into this mode, the few levels I played were a blast but still plagued with the same problems found in the single player experience.

New to co-op multiplayer is Zombie mode. This mode symbolizes what looks to be the latest trend in multiplayer games. Similar in theory to Gears of War 2’s Horde mode, Zombie mode pits a team of up to 4 players against wave after wave of undead zombie Nazis. At first it may sound like a cheap ploy to include zombies and co-op multiplayer, but after a few rounds you’ll soon realize these two go hand in hand like kelaguen and tatiyas. As you progress through the waves you can earn more points/money to rebuild barriers and buy stronger weapons….and that’s pretty much it. Not that its simplicity is a bad thing. Zombie mode is arguably one of the best modes in the game.

Now to the multiplayer meat…competitive! You have all your standard modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, search and destroy, etc. this time around, each mode is also available in hardcore mode, which basically removes your HUD and radar and makes players a lot less bulletproof. All of the modes are excellent and fans of COD:MW will be able to get into this immediately. The only gripe I have is with some of the map designs. This time around, some of the maps include tanks. While it may seem to unbalance the gameplay, it doesn’t really. The tanks are actually a welcome addition and they seem to have been implemented correctly.

The only thing I wish they included was a way to jack the driver from the tank ala Halo 3. As it is now, there are only 2 ways to get someone out of a tank: the tank either has to be destroyed or the driver has to exit. The addition of the tanks themselves are not entirely good or bad. In fact I could care less either way. The thing that gets me about the addition of the tanks is that most of the maps are way too large. It is almost like they increased the size of the maps to account for tanks, which also isn’t too bad. The bad part is that they seem to have done this on maps that don’t even have tanks. Sometimes you’ll find yourself sprinting across the length of the map just to get to the action. This also leads to a lot higher learning curve, in terms of learning the maps, compared to COD:MW. In the last game the maps seemed to have a bit of flow to them, in this game they seem a bit more random. One thing is for certain though, there are ALWAYS more than one way to reach a spot, meaning if you plan to camp you better have a good setup.

Another downer is the random spawn points. This is either a hit or miss. Basically one of three things can happen: you respawn in front of the guy that just killed you so he can kill you again, you respawn behind the guy who just killed you and get some well deserved (but a bit cheap) payback, or you spawn way the hell on the other side of the map. It seems that for every “bad” spawn you would get a “good” spawn and the COD:WAW universe seemed to balance itself out like that. However I can see where people can get frustrated…especially if they mostly get “bad” spawns.

Finally, and though not exactly the fault of the developers entirely, is the problem with people glitching beneath or over the map. In roughly half of the maps there are spots where players can glitch to get underneath the floor and from there they can shoot anyone that passes by without getting shot back. There are also similar glitches where you can sky walk, but at least those people can get shot. The bottom line is this is just lack of polish by the developers. While they didn’t put these things in the game intentionally, they did host a multiplayer beta to iron these kinks out, yet it seems that many of the similar problems in the beta made their way into the final build.

OVERALL 8/10

Call of Duty: World at War is an excellent game. While it has quite a few additions from the previous game, it still seems to be missing that intangible quality that the last game had that made it such a classic. No doubt people will be playing this one for some time to come. Many people may even prefer this one over the last. Either way this game definitely holds its own and if you enjoyed Modern Warfare you owe it to yourself to at least try this one out if not pick it up.