If you've been living in Antarctica the past year and haven't heard, then yes, World at War returns back to the series' World War II roots. This has caused no end of grumbling from fans of Modern Warfare's contemporary setting, as well as the fact that this installment was done by Treyarch, a sister-studio to Call of Duty-creator Infinity Ward. Treyarch did the somewhat-maligned Call of Duty 3, but the studio looks to atone for that by delivering a game with an impressive amount of content. There's a solid single-player campaign, co-op play, a huge multiplayer suite, and even a fun, silly mode featuring zombies.
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It certainly helps that World at War focuses on the less popularized theaters of World War II. Instead of serving up Normandy and D-Day for what would have been the umpteenth time for World War II shooters, the game covers the island hopping campaign in the Pacific as well as the Red Army's reversal of the tide at Stalingrad all the way to the Fall of Berlin. This provides some interesting new battlefields set on sun-bleached coral atolls in the Pacific. You will see some more familiar spots with the bombed-out cities and farmlands ofthe Eastern Front missions, but it's still well done.
War tends to be a savage affair, but the Pacific and the Eastern Front were especially so. In the game, Japanese soldiers swarm out of the brush, erupting out of spider holes to charge straight at you in an attempt to run you through with their bayonets. They'll play dead and wait for you to walk into the middle of a trap. Though set outdoors, it feels like close-quarters combat much of the time. Meanwhile, the Russian Front is full of merciless moments; there's plenty of gunning down of wounded and unarmed soldiers by both sides, and sometimes you're asked to pull the trigger yourself.
There are plenty of deafening, large-scale set-piece battles, but there's also variation to change things up. Case in point is the PBY mission, where you man the guns on a Navy aircraft. At first glance, this seems to be a mirror to the Spectre Gunship mission in Modern Warfare; in both missions you rain fire down from above. But the Spectre Gunship mission has a cold detachment to it; those tiny blips on the screen that are human beings die from a foe that they cannot see and fight back against. In World at War's PBY mission, you're in the midst of a raging air and sea battle, taking damage and fighting for your life. Or there's a sniper mission to whack a German general that doesn't quite have the cat-and-mouse feeling of Modern Warfare's sniper level.
Multiplayer is definitely an area where World at War shines. Modern Warfare had arguably one of the greatest multiplayer suites in recent history, and World at War builds on it. There remains the create-a-class and rank system that lets you unlock perks, weapons, and upgrades that you can then mix-and-match to create different load outs. Many of Modern Warfare's perks are here, adjusted for the earlier age. For instance, what used to be the UAV Jammer is now Camouflage to keep you from being spotted by any spotting planes the enemy calls in.
The reward mechanic in World at War is also similar, but it does have a nice twist. Three kills in a row gets you a spotting plane rather than a UAV, five kills gives you an artillery strike instead of an air strike, and seven kills without dying lets you call in my favorite new feature: dogs. Yes, you unleash the hounds of war, a pack of killer dogs that will make a beeline to the enemy (helpful in spotting where they're hiding) as well as tear their throats out if they can. The dogs are difficult to take down, because they'll swarm you, and if you're busy shooting at the dogs you're often not paying attention to the fact that an opponent is lining you up in his sights.
And then there's the icing on the cake, a silly-yet-fun bonus co-op mode called Nacht der Untoten, or Night of the Undead. It's also referred to as Nazi Zombies, and it's a last stand against waves of oncoming zombies. You and up to three others are holed up inside a bunker; the zombies try to break down the barricades at the doors and windows and you have to kill them. Each wave becomes harder by throwing more zombies at you or making the zombies faster or both. You gain points for killing the zombies and for rebuilding the barricades, and these points can be used to purchase weapons, ammo, and access to other parts of the bunker. There's even a mystery box that can serve up a ray gun straight out of 1940s pulp fiction. Still, eventually the zombies will kill you, and the goal is to survive as long as possible to compare your performance on the leaderboard.
Given that it uses the Modern Warfare engine, World at War looks every bit as good on both the PC and the Xbox 360. The PlayStation 3 version suffers a bit more from aliasing, but that's mainly it. I've always been impressed with the level of detail on everything; walk up to a fellow soldier and you can see the seams in their clothing. The most memorable visual in the game for me has to be the arterial blood spray that happens when a human body gets torn apart by explosions and gunfire. The dark red of the blood is in stark contrast to the dust and smoke in the air. And the frame rate is Call of Duty-smooth on both platforms from that I saw. (For comparison purposes, the PC I used had a Core 2 Quad processor with an 8800GTX and 2GB of RAM. All detail settings were set to maximum at 1920x1200 resolution.)
Closing Comments
It's easy to be jaded about World War II shooters, but Treyarch makes a convincing argument to stay excited with World at War. The game is packed with a deep amount of gameplay to appeal to every type of player, from those who want to experience a gritty single-player campaign to those who like to play with their friends to those who just like to play multiplayer. This is a solid, confident shooter with plenty to offer the casual and hardcore alike.
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