As a singleplayer game, Call of Duty: World at War is another very high quality experience. The ferocious pace of action and perfectly pitched difficulty for whatever setting you initially choose, make for one of the most engrossing and addictive FPS campaigns around. Rather than play for a couple of hours in several sittings here and there, this is the sort of FPS story mode you could easily work through in one or two sittings.
While that’s a testament to the game’s pulling power, it also makes the very short campaign more obvious. The campaign this time is surely even shorter than in COD4’s (which was already widely regarded as short, compared to other FPS titles), and it isn’t even as long as either of Half-Life 2’s episodes One or Two – let alone the mammoth original release. We’re talking six or seven hours tops, people. It’s no epic.
But here’s the thing: as an overall purchase, World at War is not so bad off for its very short single player campaign, and this is for three reasons. Firstly, it’s a really, really tight singleplayer romp. There’s some great variation between the European and Japanese levels, which switch back and forth through the mode – the environments are stunningly designed, enemy AI is noticeably improved, and the game unsurprisingly inherits all of the qualities that made the previous Infinity Ward effort so staggering – perfect controls, crisp sound effects and simply the most cutting edge FPS graphics engine on consoles in existence.
Secondly, because its multiplayer component is arguably the major part of the game (people are still playing COD4 online in vast numbers, though that may have taken a dent this week with the release of the sequel we’re reviewing) – we’ll come to multiplayer later in the review. And lastly, because of the significant replay value of the campaign, which comes in the form of not only the usual collectibles like achievements and trophies and quirky new cheat-enabling ‘death cards’ spread throughout the levels, but more importantly – and this is the bit where World at War significantly one-ups Modern Warfare – in the addition of co-operative play.
All of these are reasons to go and play back through the sharp campaign levels of the game, and the co-op side of things works really well. It’s the first time co-op has been done in the Call of Duty series, and yet frankly Treyarch had no shortage of games to draw inspiration from. The result is something that isn’t easily comparable to any single existing product, but more of a successful blend of all the stuff that feels right for a Call of Duty game, particularly a console one.
It flows seamlessly without toning down the difficulty, and the revival element, in which players must revive teammates who’ve taken a hit that would otherwise kill them in singleplayer, adds a lot to the playthrough. I’d had my doubts about it and thought it might just get annoying, but you can use it to your advantage by timing your revivals in order to further your own point score, while at the same time enjoying another go through story with your friends as many times as you like. It’s really a great way of enriching the campaign you’ll complete within a day again and again, and the incentive is there because the world is watching who’s best. And it’s fun.
The campaign isn’t the only thing you’ll be playing in co-op either, with COD4’s bewildering post-credits affair replaced with the unlocking of an entire new mode – arguably a whole new mini-game in its own right – Nazi Zombies. Good enough to warrant a Live Arcade or PlayStation Network release all on its own, the game is a survival situation that scales up as you earn points for killing zombies, through a series of ’rounds’ that pushes you to see how far you can go. It’s really good, really addictive and often really fucking scary, quite frankly. Serious props must go to Treyarch for including this, because after the groansome return to WWII since the thrills of Modern Warfare, it’s nice to see that it’s not all dusty school books and reminders of detention with the history teacher, but rather that there’s a developer sense of humour and commitment to offering extra value and the sort of good fun that puts a smile on your face.
Talking of World War II, let’s say a few words about the story. The first thing to note is that Treyarch has come good on its promise: the aspect of WWII explored in World at War really is a side less frequently looked at in past video games, and is both interesting and well converted to video game form. It’s split into two distinct sides: you as the Soviets versus the Nazi Reich, and secondly you as the Americans (obviously), versus the Japanese. The stylised, story-furthering cut-sequences of the game in between levels are beautifully presented, and actually make flickery old black and white war footage look eye-catching and slick. Voiced by the in-game actors including Keifer Surtherland, this subtext of the game looks at the American revenge for Pearl Harbour in the unfamiliar setting of the far east, leading to the eventual, poignant and literally explosive conclusion to the war, as well as the determined, death-defying effort of the Russians to bring about the end of Nazi Germany.
There’s a genuine sense of hardcore wartime with these ruthless Japanese soldiers charging towards you yelling with murderous, suicidal, honorary intent, and it’s true that there is a more aggressive, relentless feel to the game overall (hence the flamethrowers), which chillingly reflects the desperate final stages of the actual war itself.
From the perspective of a traditional video game, the story is very partitioned with its skipping back and forth several years at a time, but it really doesn’t matter because its presentation is slick, and the characters you get to know along the way – particularly on the Russian side when you play as Dimitri (more than a slight reminder of certain a Rockstar title with the accents during these bits!) are really well acted and implemented through your first-person view of the world. As an overall work, however disjointed and relatively shallow the story may be, it doesn’t matter because both sides of the tale have satisfying conclusions, and we hope it can also nicely round off and mark the conclusion of WWII storytelling as a whole for the Call of Duty franchise. For COD6, COD7 and beyond, let’s do modern, future, fantasy, or ancient, please. Enough of WWII, already.
Visuals are actually marginally improved above Modern Warfare. The already-stunning Infinity Ward engine, with its uncompromising mix of detail, architecture, effects, quantity of action, AND 60fps frame rate, still looks the business with its lovely texturing, explosions, particles, dept-of-field, brilliant animation, and some excellent set-piece visual effects. But it’s now improved further with gorgeous effects like the fire of the new flamethrower weapon (which has its own strategic uses in the game, incidentally) as well as fixes to some of the glitches we noted in our COD 4 review (“shadow rendering, in places (like on characters’ faces) leaves a lot to be desired, looking all glithcy and shaky… somebody needs to find away around this tacky shadowing”) – guess what, IW and Treyarch now figured it out because there’s none of the shit here – characters’ faces look brilliant.
There’s some nice building destruction that plays into your missions, and while the physics of stuff that’s happening in this simulated world is understandably less than in pretty much any other shooter, in order to maintain the frame rate and thus support the awesome speed of the action, the overall illusion of real-world conflict and intense, detail-heavy carnage is unwavering. Taking into account the frame rate (which is the major factor in COD4’s and COD5’s slickness, whether you realise it or not, whether you’re a developer than pretends it’s no big deal about achieving 60fps or not), this is the best looking console FPS going, although on a high end PC of course, the playing field is a lot more even because all the FPS games run at high frame rates.
On the multiplayer side of things, World at War picks up where Modern Warfare left off, offering a whole bunch of brilliant new maps and cunningly skill-locked modes of play and class types, which adds some depth and further incentive to the considerably deep (in console terms) multiplayer experience. Although I’ve only been playing mostly cross-Atlantic matches, the lag is absolutely minimal, and the more local games I have played (with journalists, since it’s not out locally yet) are basically flawless.
To be honest, I don’t know what else to add about multiplayer; I often still find it tough competing with the really highly skilled players online, and I don’t mind losing to these experts, and I know that as the player base fills the matchmaking will work better. But the ability to fine tune matches and the exemplary overall design of COD4’s multiplayer showcase is still in effect here, with new weapons, new sessions, and great new maps. It will last you a whole year until COD6 shows up, and if that doesn’t represent great value when it comes to your online shooter needs, I don’t know what does.
It’s harder than ever to make a decision about which FPS to buy, if you could only choose one or two. In my mind there is still no better singleplayer story mode experience to be had in a shooter that topples the Half-Life 2 series, it’s that simple. World at War, while holding your interest by swapping between Europe and Japan, and while dazzling with pretty levels that masterfully give the illusion of scale and depth, are actually pretty samey (with the exception of a couple of areas) and ultimately rather flat when compared to the vast, dynamic levels of the Valve handbook, with structures as tall as they are broad. World at War also fails to offer the variety of gameplay seen in the various singleplayer story levels of Modern Warfare.
There’s also competition coming from every angle, much of which offers deeper stories and more complex levels: Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2. There’s a lot going on right now. But it has to be said that as an overall package, World at War is so slick and so damn perfect on the controls and gameplay fronts, with so much value of more significance on the deep multiplayer and inventive co-op modes – not to mention the brilliant new extra – that it’s difficult not to position World at War right near the top of the whole pack when you assess it as an overall purchase. And given that it’s very comparable to Modern Warfare by most measures, it is inevitable that you, the gamers, will rightly agree with your wallets.
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