World War, As Well

I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up Call of Duty 4’s endlessly addicting multiplayer just yet, but nevertheless, the Activision annualized release machine will trundle on later this year with Call of Duty: World at War. To their credit, they’ve at least favored a unique subtitle this time over the same tired sequel numbering, which was getting a little excessive year after year. They’ve also given the hardworking developers at Treyarch a chance to sleep occasionally, since the team has had a full two-year development cycle to crank out World at War. That’s positively languid after the sprint that apparently was Call of Duty 3’s ludicrous eight-month production schedule. Happier developers make better games, right?

The best thing World at War has going for it is a broad connection to Call of Duty 4, the excellence of which I don’t think anyone is brave enough to impugn. On the tech side, Treyarch’s new game is using the COD4 engine, so you know it’s going to look really good and run really smoothly. Activision reps at the Microsoft Games for Windows event where I saw the game also stressed that it will share control and design conventions with COD4, too. That sort of instant jump-in-and-play accessibility is good news for anyone (like me) who’s been playing COD4 online obsessively for the last eight months.

Not surprisingly, everything about COD4’s multiplayer that made it so good is going to show up in World at War’s online mode. Except the modern guns, that is. But you’ll get the persistent experience level, unlockable skills, interchangeable abilities–all that carrot-on-a-stick stuff that made it hard to put COD4’s multiplayer down. Treyarch is also borrowing a page from Halo 3’s playbook with a four-player cooperative online mode, and it’s nice to know your experience gained in that mode will roll back into the competitive multiplayer too.

As for the single-player campaign, the jury’s still out. The demo Activision was showing off featured a nighttime escape from a Japanese prison camp followed by a few brief cinematic battles in the jungle. Nothing you haven’t come to expect from Call of Duty, but considering the series’ action has always been well-paced and exciting at the right moments, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The opening cinematic vilified your Japanese captors in a manner that seemed surprisingly un-PC; one of them puts a cigarette out on a fellow P.O.W.’s eye before savagely slashing his throat open. But hey, man, war is hell.

It was news to me that World at War actually does take place around the world, since you’ll play as a U.S. Marine fighting the Japanese in the Pacific Theater only part of the time. The other part, you’ll head back to good old Europe, where you’ll play as a Russian soldier fighting the Germans on the brutally cold Eastern Front. It’s not a stretch to think that the two campaigns will alternate missions back and forth, the same way the Marine and SAS storylines in Modern Warfare played out concurrently. No disrespect to the developers intended, but the more cues World at War takes from COD4, the better.