Call of Duty: World at War (Sony Playstation 3, 2008)

As a game efficianado, I want to get my money's worth for every game I purchase. Some of the major titles out today are great, but they are not exactly worth the $60 dollar price tag. World at War falls into that catagory. It's not the best FPS in the world, but it is a very good one.

Call of Duty (5):World At War is yet another installment to the WWII timeline in Activision's shooter franchise. While I do like the Call of Duty series, I must say that the division, Infinity Ward, the creators of the original COD, COD 2, Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, is the much better developer than Treyarch, the creator of COD 3 and COD: WAW. Infinity Ward as a knack for giving player a fun and challenging shooter with a cinematic feel to it. There are many times when I played Modern Warfare and COD 2 and was impressed by the solid gameplay, surprises, and the presentation of how visceral the battlefields of war truly are. Treyarch really doesn't have that feeling.

Treyarch's COD 3 and WAW are fun, but they aren't really the best. They have the same solid gameplay, but the story in their COD games are sub-par. You take the role of some random soldier and basically grab a gun, shoot/blow up/knife everything that stands in the way of your objective. Characters aren't really drawn out and everything is over before you know it.

The new addition of the flamethrower makes the combat interesting, but it gets a little old after a while. The missions that involve the flamethrower are all the same; nothing new ever happens with it. All you do is burn trees, bunkers, and fields to defeat waves of enemy units. That's about it. Its a fun weapon to use, but I think the usage could have been improved.

One last issue with the game is the fact that enemies can have endless amounts of reinforcements. I've been playing Veteran mode, the toughest setting, and have gotten a tad bit annoyed with this problem. I cleared out many areas, and double checked to make sure I was safe. The second I try to reload my weapon, another horde of Banzai killing machines spring from no where and attack. This doesn't end, unfortunately, until you progress to your next objective, where even more soldiers come...with grenades! Lots and lots and lots and lots of grenades. Most of my deaths have been from grenades in this mode. I toss one grenade back and I get five more to dodge...while I'm stuck behind cover. It's very frustrating.

The game has many good moments though. The gameplay is addicting, the multiplayer is a lot of fun. The best part of this game is the Nazi Zombie mode. You can join up with three other players and defend a position from invading nazi zombies. It sounds rediculous at first, but the game mode is great. It's all about survival and how well you defend yourself, as well as your friends, from zombicidal maniacs.

The game is overall very good, but this goes back to my original point. This game is not worth the $60 price tag, trust me. I got this one for the price of $30 and I am very happy with this purchase. It's a fun game if you want multiplayer and something short to go through the weekend with. It has some good moments, such as nods to WWII movies like Saving Private Ryan and Enemy At the Gates, and it features a great voice cast, including 24's Kiefer Sutherland as Sgt. Roebuck. It's great game for 30 bucks and it should be picked up by fans of the COD series and WWII history buffs, but don't expect the best thing you've ever played.

I've tried this game on 2 different PC's only 1 could run it and the other just locks up and blue screens, if it doesn't do that it will get a black screen and hangs.

On the system that it works on, I played through the single player and at first I was really disappointed, it got a little better in some missions but the whole campaign is disjointed and didn't flow at all. Most the time the enemies would popup and down like a duck hunt game. The final scene was good but the whole SP campaign was way too short.

Onto the multiplayer, could have been alright but most of the maps aren't that great, connectivity issues are huge and everyone I know can't get into a co-op match.

I ranked my way up and after a crash trying to quit the game I lost all my stats.

The sound is also messed up bad on Multiplayer (I have an XFI 7.1 sound card) you can't hear people around you and guns being shot 10 feet away sound like they are a mile away as do the grenades.

I have 2 9800's and the game won't run in SLI so my frame rates are 1/2 of what they should be.

Overall I wish I hadn't bought this game as it's like a beta that still needs fixing and for $50 + it shouldn't have all these problems.
I've been looking at other forums trying to fix all these issues and there are lot's of people having the same problems. My computers are way above the min spec and that isn't the reason why this game is so flaky.
They play Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead great as well as COD4 at max settings.

Issues aside I'd give the game a 2 out of 5 stars based on the SP campaign and the overall quality of the MP maps.

Counting in the flaky game play and poor support from the game maker as of 04/06/09 almost 6 months after release I give this 1 star. Also I'd like to add that up to now I've loved all the COD's that came before except COD 3 - also made by Trearch. If you like games not working right and trying everything under the sun to fix stuff you shouldn't have to even touch then you might have fun trying to fix stuff but it sucked what little fun there is in this game - out for me.

Almost 6 months after the game came out and no patches to fix the tons of issues people are reporting. This is the worst support I have ever seen in a COD game, the game's makers won't even respond to people's questions and users are left to search for help in the user forums that are filled with people that flame you when you post a legitimate question. The sound is so bad that I just quit playing, I have a XFI 5.1 sound system and the sound is not close to working right. I can't hear the other players movements and grenades and guns sound muffled and distant even when they are right next to me. The positional sound isn't right and makes for pure frustration.

War, as Fallout 3 so famously puts it, never changes. While the weapons and tactics may differ, it's still about chaos and fear and the overwhelming of the senses as adrenaline surges through your veins. That's a hard experience to capture on a screen, but the Call of Duty series comes close thanks to its constant redefinition of what "11" is in terms of intensity for first-person shooters. Last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare delivered an awesome and varied single-player experience that was matched with an even better multiplayer suite, and it made for some really big shoes for Call of Duty: World at War to fill.
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.
This remains a Call of Duty game through and through. What that means is that the action is fast and fluid, as well as rigidly scripted. The success of the franchise proves that there's a vast audience for that, and this won't change anyone's mind. Enemy soldiers and your computer-controlled teammates respawn endlessly until you advance far enough to hit the triggers to make them stop reappearing. Then you advance to the next firefight and repeat the process over again. The thing is, you're far too busy shooting and ducking and dying to really notice much of the time. The sense of immersion is pretty complete.

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.

After Call of Duty 3, many longtime series fans -- myself included -- were skeptical at the prospect of future Treyarch-developed titles. Call of Duty 3 disappointed a lot of players -- especially when Call of Duty creator Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out just a year later and blew it out of the water. Call of Duty 3 didn't bring enough to the franchise to make it feel like much more than a generic retread of Call of Duty 2. This time around, though, Treyarch hits us with a solid game, taking several cues from Modern Warfare and crafting something that manages to stand on its own as the most visceral Call of Duty to date...even if it's still a few paces behind Infinity Ward's offerings.
The war-torn cities of Europe and the jungles of the South Pacific never looked so good: From the between-level loading screens to the actual in-mission visuals, World at War looks well on par with Modern Warfare. Not that I'm surprised, since they share the same engine -- which flexes its power to display lush jungles and destroyed cities, as opposed to shantytowns in a fictional Middle Eastern country. And while this is the best-looking World War II shooter I've ever played, beautiful settings are only a small portion of what makes the game so striking.

To begin with, World at War brings to life elements of WWII that its predecessors left mostly untouched. While enemies died en masse in previous installments, dismemberment and gore were essentially nonexistent. That's no longer the case -- here, legs are severed, men cry out in agony as they reach for lost body parts, and gouts of blood fly as bullets pierce flesh. World at War portrays the horror of WWII more accurately than ever before, and it even comes across as almost too much at times...until you remember that real servicemen actually witnessed similar events. Several other moments stand out beyond basic combat gore; shocking executions (men being set on fire -- ouch), Japanese ambushes, and brutal hand-to-hand battles remind you that WWII wasn't just a glorious victory for the Allies, but also a horrible event that viciously ended many young lives. I find World at War's portrayal mostly respectful (if a little repetitive), and it does a good job of showing just how evil -- and heroic -- humans can be.

The battles in the single-player campaign get pretty bloody, but they engage more than just your gag reflex. Treyarch's crafted levels with plenty of grandiose battle scenes -- like the Russians' siege of Berlin and an assault on a Japanese castle -- whose sheer scales help mask the fact that World at War's an extremely linear shooter. My problem with these levels is the same problem I've had with every other Call of Duty: They're unflinchingly punitive at times. Checkpoints are plentiful (thank the maker!), but that didn't curb my rage when an unstoppable barrage of grenades rained down or when enemies ignored my A.I. allies, despite the fact that they were closer targets. It was like I was wearing some sort of "Screw the Axis" T-shirt, prompting unforeseen anger akin to that of a charging bull to a matador. It really pulls you out of the game when enemies act in ways that just don't make a lick of sense.

While this mode left an indelible presence in my mind, the multiplayer -- against other players, at least -- still isn't good enough to warrant players moving on from Modern Warfare. I can't quite pin down what it is, but as someone who's put hour upon hour in

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.

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.

This remains a Call of Duty game through and through. What that means is that the action is fast and fluid, as well as rigidly scripted. The success of the franchise proves that there's a vast audience for that, and this won't change anyone's mind. Enemy soldiers and your computer-controlled teammates respawn endlessly until you advance far enough to hit the triggers to make them stop reappearing. Then you advance to the next firefight and repeat the process over again. The thing is, you're far too busy shooting and ducking and dying to really notice much of the time. The sense of immersion is pretty complete.

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.

The campaign does suffer a bit due to its broad scope; the narrative skips over months at a time, showcasing the major battles of the war. The result is that the sense of story doesn't seem as strong as it did in Modern Warfare.