Call of Duty: World at War
When it comes to the Call of Duty franchise, you pretty much know what to expect by now. A constant onslaught of enemies that keep popping out of nowhere in a shooting gallery style. Tons of explosions and bullets whizzing over your head while your fellow soldiers keep pressing on one battle after the next.
The previous installment was a re-invented look at the classic WWI, WWII Call of Duty games. CoD 4 Modern Warfare pumped new life into the franchise by allowing the developers to create an original story with modern weaponry and enemy threats while staying true to the action elements that made it the success it is today.
The latest installment was developed by Treyarch, the same team that brought you Call of Duty 3. They're bringing the series back to the WWII front and picking up where CoD3 left off in regards to the overall look and feel. This story line mainly focuses on the American campaign against the Japanese after the bombing of pearl harbor along with the Russians trying to defend their homeland against the Nazi invasion. You transition back and forth between the US and Russian campaign like the previous offerings.
This is a great game. It's a call of Duty game, therefor it's great. If the formula stays true, there really isn't any room to go wrong. You'll always enjoy swapping out guns and other weapons on the fly and picking off enemies as soon as they pop their juicy heads above their cover. This game however doesn't exactly advance the series in the way that CoD4 did. They still have to follow the real life script of WWII so you pretty much know the outcome. There really aren't any twists to look forward to other then the odd surprise here and there. The weapons are the practically the same aside from the new flame thrower which is a lot of fun to use.
Another small additions I noticed is that enemies will run or charge at you far more often then in the previous games. This allows you to kill an enemy while using your knife or bayanette which spices things up a little bit. There are also a lot of pop ups with enemy soldiers where very convincing camouflage and there are now tree snipers that get caught up in the trees when they fall down.
The graphics are clean without any frame rate issues that I've noticed. There can be many explosions with over 20 enemies and soldiers battling it out and the game keeps moving along at a very smooth rate. The explosions are huge and the sounds are incredible. This is a very polished game that does not disappoint in the graphics category.
Speaking of 'gory' this game takes the cake. After cleaning out an area you'll be able to see what kind of damage you laid down as you walk past the vast amount of bodies all around you. Limbs are blown off and can be found close to the enemy corpses and there is blood eveywhere. This give you a real sense of being in a war rather then just going for the "ew gross" factor. When you stab an enemy in the neck it's because you had to or you'd be the one bleeding to death. You feel no remorse and you are definitely absorbed into the whole experience. When you shoot someone with a high caliber bullet, they spray dark red blood that is clearly visible and there's no way you can't notice. An awesome way to take out a bad guy.
The online aspect has been revamped and has new modes such as the 'Nacht der Untoten' also known as 'Zombie Nazi' where you take on waves of Zombies while holding down a building. They keep coming back in bigger waves and the difficulty increases. Co-op is great and is well executed. They've taken all the goods from modern warfare and made improvements where necessary.
This isn't the best Call of Duty game ever made but like I say, it's a Call of Duty game so it's worth your time. Go check it out at least for the online aspect as it doesn't let you down. The campaign is about as long as the previous installments but is action packed and is full of entertaining content to keep you pushing through the onslaught of enemies.
