Call of Duty: World at War

World at War is a highly popular first-person shooter for all major console platforms. But does it deserve it its place as the unofficial fifth title in the highly acclaimed Call of Duty series?

World at War returns to the traditional theatre for war games as its historical grounding: World War Two. Whilst this immediately ties it in with the majority of Call of Duty games, it also demonstrates a possible lack of imagination. The incredible popularity of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was primarily due to the fact that it had broken away from the traditional WW2 setting, in favour of a more modern slant on the series, with high-tech weaponry, stunning graphics and a powerful storyline. Whilst World at War is centered primarily around the Eastern European front, and the Pacific conflicts between Japan and America, the return to seemingly primitive weapons and environments may have lost the game a considerable amount of potential fans.

Truth be told, I can sympathise with those fans who find Modern Warfare to be the superior of the two games. Althout Treyarch must be congratulated for a compelling campaign, beautiful graphical effects and good multiplayer, it must be said that much of this is simply a slight improvement on the work of the development team for Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward. The key issue is not whether World at War is a good game in itself, it’s whether Treyarch deserve credit for a game that can only be considered a change of scenery from Modern Warfare.

Whilst the storyline is compelling, it is simply not as fluid and logical as that of Modern Warfare. In the Russian campaign, the settings for each mission seem to have highly erratic transitions, sometimes with a gap of several years in between them, in which characters are mysteriously no different than before. Also, the characters are difficult to relate to, as they fail to develop a bond with the player much further than pointing him/her in the right direction, mindlessly repeating the same line when the player is confused as to what they are supposed to do next.

The multiplayer game is good, but has hardly changed from Modern Warfare. It could consider itself a good expansion pack, but a mediocre full-price game. The only difference is the weapons (which are, truth be told, not as fairly balanced as in Modern Warfare), maps and a few of the ‘activated effects’ (e.g. air strikes have been changed to releasing the dogs).

Therefore, whilst the game is completely playable, and is even rather good, Treyarch simply haven’t done enough to truly consider it their own masterpiece, as most of the aspects which have made the game so popular were designed by Infinity Ward.

7/10 “Play World at War, by all means. But then play Modern Warfare again, and try as you might, you’ll be forced to admit that Modern Warfare was its superior.”