There are a lot of people out there who dismissed Call of ' Duty: World at War almost from the moment it was announced. First of all, there was the return (unwelcome for some) to World War II, a scenario that raised eyebrows and elicited sighs of disappointment from people fed up of fighting Nazis in the fields of central Europe. This turned out to not be so much of an issue, with the setting being a return to the Eastern Front, specifically the Soviet fightback from Stalingrad, that most incredible of military encounters.
World at War also marks the introduction of a new theatre into the Call of Duty recipe book, the exotic dish that is the fight for the Pacific. Most of the discussion has been on how different this new scenario would be - essentially, would it be as refreshing as the modem setting that proved so popular in Call of Duty 4?The answer to that is a positive no, unfortunately. While Treyarch tries very hard to make the Pacific missions as distinct and individual as possible, they don't succeed. Although Japanese adversaries change the combat dynamic slightly - popping out of camouflaged foxholes, sniping from trees, charging with bayonets - in the end you're doing the same thing you've done to the Nazis hundreds of times. Having said that it's surprising to note that it's the Soviet campaign which provides the game's outstanding moments, but we'll come back to this...
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The other thing people will have been talking/worrying about is the developer itself. Treyarch, after Call of Duty 3, has a notoriously bad image in the gaming community - you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who has been resolutely positiye about WAWs prospects since the game was announced. Certainly, WAWhas a lot to do to convince the doubters, who could easily opt for one of the many other big-name titles coming out in the run up to Christmas (a lot of which will already have drained the bank balances of potential customers).
You start off captured by the Japanese, watching an American GI being tortured and brutalised by a sadistic guard right in front of you. Refusing to answer his questions, the private has his throat savagely slit by your captors. You realise you are next but luckily, rescuers (primarily in the form of Kiefer Sutherland's Sgt Roebuck) storm in and prevent your death in the nick of time. From here, you assist in escaping the island prison and returning to the pillowy bosom of US territory, before being shipped out to help the war effort.
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Like the death of your character in COM, this particular sequence isn't what you'd expect from a big-budget consumer-friendly title. In fact the level of brutality on show - Japanese soldiers getting their limbs blown off, Nazis viciously executing the dying and wounded in Stalingrad - makes the whole experience grittier than ever, certainly more so than any previous Call of Duty game.
All this happens in the same graphics engine as COM. so you can expect a brilliantly optimised engine that looks gorgeous even on lesser systems (although the character models sometimes look a bit ropey). There are some lovely little touches here and there, like the barrel of your gun being spotted with rain in certain levels. Despite occasions when your surroundings look like they've been shrink-wrapped, the only stage that really lets the side down visually is one where you take control of a Soviet tank rolling about the Seelow Heights outside Berlin. In fact, this level is probably the least interesting part of the game, feeling tacked on and out of keeping with the rest of the Soviet campaign. You can see why they've added it - to break up the on-foot action and prevent it getting samey - but you can't help feeling this was a decision made late in the development process.
This isn't the case with the other 'interlude' section, a turret mission above the Pacific Ocean. I can hear the collective groans - on-rails turret missions aren't exactly flavour of the month in the gaming world. Amazingly, WAIVs gaming pariah is actually damn good fun. What Treyarch have done well is add a great sense of movement and activity to the otherwise stationary action. You are constantly being ordered into different areas of the bomber, moving quickly through the inside of the giant plane in order to take up positions on each of the turrets. At one point you even land on the water and are given the task of preventing kamikaze bombers destroying your fleet while floating survivors plead to be hauled aboard.
This is where one of the game's moral moments rears its head. You can rescue said survivors if you like, but you risk giving the Japanese planes an opportunity to break through. Such morality plays a much heavier part in the Soviet campaign, as Treyarch make sure to highlight the intense savagery of the struggle between the Soviets and Nazis. Some of the set-pieces are on a par with the original COD'S Stalingrad level, especially when you're working your way through to the Reichstag in Berlin. The game's engine does a good job of handling the more epic battles, with smoke, explosions and corpses flying about all over the shop. AA flak zips across the sky, greriades and Molotov cocktails explode all around, while wave after wave of men drop like flies. There are few game series that put you right into the heart of the battle like this and World at War lives up to expectations perfectly. It even has a D-Day style beach assault although there aren't any cliffs to climb up this time round.What WAWdoes very well, specifically in the Soviet campaign, is give you a great sense of the struggle for humanity that is taking place. As you progress, driving the Nazis back behind the borders of Germany, your constant companion, Reznov (played by Gary Oldman), is driven by the desire to crush the 'rats' who butchered his comrades in Stalingrad. At least one other soldier fighting at your side questions the need to kill surrendering troops where they stand, to show some mercy where their enemies had previously shown none - pleas that are subsequently ignored.
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Some moments are genuinely thought provoking, with Soviet troops dealing with a captured German soldier in a ruthless and brutal fashion - one that is celebrated by Reznov, yet may well disgust you, the player. Treyarch have done superbly in refusing to shy away from the madness of the Eastern Front the horrors of which we in the West can only begin to imagine.
Perhaps the best moment in the game, therefore, comes not from the storming of the Reichstag but when you find three Nazi soldiers at the entrance to a subway. They are of no threat desperately pleading for mercy. However, surrounding them is a group of Soviet soldiers clutching lit Molotov cocktails, and Reznov places their fate in your hands.I won't splay the scene wide open for you, but it's enough to say that the outcome is grim either way.
Rank Dissention
There's a strange aspect to the missions that sometimes grates a little. It was the same in COD4, but is more pronounced this time out Sometimes the battles seem to progress without any input from you, while at other times, if you don't take the risk and advance yourself, your squad will remain stuck where they are forever. It doesn't really matter too much, but it can still lead to a few moments of 'Am I meant to advance now or what? You might even advance too early and get rinsed by a sudden wave of enemies.
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If you're after anything resembling a challenge, it's best to steer clear of the easiest difficulty levels. You certainly won't get the most out of the battles when you can take ridiculous amounts of punishment before finally carking it The larger battles are meant to be exercises in intense action, but when you can survive so easily, they lose most of their impact. You'll find yourself virtually impervious to damage, apart from grenades and flamethrowers.
Speaking of flamethrowers, you'll find yourself equipped with one pretty early on in the Pacific campaign. It's devastatingly powerful and makes clearing out bunkers and enclosed spaces a doddle. Unfortunately, due to the nature of your Japanese opponents, specifically their banzai charges, the weapon makes some sections far too easy. When enemies rush right at you, a one-shot-kill weapon takes any sense of fear out of the equation. This could have been solved by making adversaries appear from unexpected directions more often, catching you by surprise, but disappointingly, this rarely happens. They usually just pop up right in front of you, virtually pleading to be roasted alive. You can also use the flamethrower to bum the long grass the Japanese sometimes hide in, as well as the trees enemy snipers call home. However, due to the nature of the game engine, it doesn't feel as natural as the flame-bringers in Far Cry 2 or even Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Follow The Leader
World at War is still as resolutely linear as its predecessors, except for one or two moments where you get to choose whether to go right or left.
In these days of free-roaming worlds and vast environments, the extreme linearity is both frustrating and, curiously, comforting. Sometimes you don't want to be overwhelmed by side quests or options - you just want to get stuck into the combat When you get that particular urge, the Call of Duty series remains at the top of the pile, providing one' of the most tightly scripted and linear gaming experiences money can buy. Nevertheless, some more choices here and there would have been nice, even if it was just along the lines of a branching campaign that involved some form of decision making on your part.
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Multiplayer has been expanded since COM, with the addition of a co-op mode, vehicles and a Nazi Zombies mode unlocked by completing the single-player campaign (see 'Zombie co-op'). There will also be the usual Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag modes, plus the usual perks and achievements for people with far too much time on their hands.
The multiplayer beta that has been doing the rounds hasn't gone down too well with some fans, specifically veterans of C0D4, who have complained it is effectively just a reskinning of that game's own multiplayer section. Even if the more competitive elements of WAWs multiplayer don't go down too well, the co-op side is, as such modes tend to be, great fun.
What we have here is an excellent game that will suffer not because of its quality or lack of such, but because it is inevitably going to be compared to its immediate predecessor. Gameplay-wise, there is little to separate the two titles in terms of quality. Both are perhaps the finest current examples of tightly scripted, linear rollercoasters, packing in as many extraordinary moments into their relatively short timespans as possible.
World at War is a bit more expansive than COM, in terms of both level design and length. So the fact there are so many moments I'll remember long after the game's credits is a testament to the cinematic quality of the game. Sadly, for some players the fact they'll feel like they are playing a mod of C0D4 will be too difficult a barrier to overcome, especially when the scenarios are, at least initially, unexciting prospects for a COD veteran.
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Nevertheless, if you can get over these obstacles, you'll find yourself enjoying yet another example of exhilarating action.While World At War isn't original and has moments lacking in inspiration (the tank section, ugh) it has refined the linear World War II shooter template as much as perhaps it can be.