I've been a huge fan of the Call Of Duty games since I played that COD2 demo on the 360 way back when. Sorry, I should restate, I've been a huge fan of the COD games made by Infinity Ward. COD 2, despite the fact that the Germans where having tea parties in every house you were assaulting, was an enjoyable experience, even on veteran. COD 3 I literally played for five minutes, it was that bad. COD4 was of course fun, minus the stand off at the end of the sniper mission while playing on veteran. The whole game had the really great immersive cinematic experience just like COD2, even in multiplayer, which was brilliant. The camera movements in first person felt very fluid and natural, and the constant switch between attacking and defending was great pacing. Even though the modernness of Modern Warfare was a nice change of pace, I missed the feel of killing someone with a bolt-action rifle. It was good to know the next COD, now know as World at War, would be back in the world war two timeline, that was until I found out it was made by Treyarch, the game then fell off my radar.

Not to get any more back-story, I had the chance to play some World at War at a friend’s house in co-op. Which brings me to my first complaint, what the hell was who smoking when they decided to do that to split screen? For those who don’t know, instead of doing normal one screen on top of the other, the screen on the top is off centered, and you get a stupid picture behind the two.

Anyway, now on to the game. The controls and movement feel right, like COD4, not that crap from COD3, it appeared they just took the engine from Infinity Ward. I’ll say now from further playing, I guess that’s exactly what they did. So it handles fine, but there is plenty more for Treyarch to screw up.

As for single player, keep in mind I played on veteran, was a pain in the ass. Yeah, COD games on veteran are usually pretty hard, but still enjoyable, WAW on the other hand is just hard and very stressful. I think cheap is a better word then hard for this game, or I suppose just saying grenades works well enough. After beating the game, I’m fairly certain grenades just spawn underneath you, I’d have grenades underneath me even when standing behind a wall. Don’t think your safe even in places where it’d be physically possible for grenades to reach you. Seeing five grenade indicators on the screen at once was not an uncommon thing. Once I recall getting four grenade indicators instantaneously, one in front of me, one each side, and one behind me, leaving me nothing to do but put the controller down at wait for a reload. Next, your teammates don’t do anything, the only time I’ve ever saw my teammate shoot someone was when I was dead. So if you come up to a group of fifteen guys, you have to kill fifteen guys, hell, I don’t even know why your teammaes are there, its just you doing everything. And of course, the enemy only shoots you, I’d see my teammates at cover, and run over to them only to be killed guy an enemy sitting right next to them. Or instead of shooting my teammate at the front lines who is firing his gun hitting nothing, they’d turn at shoot at me hiding in a bush. Lets not forget when they charge, they would run past five of my guys, and attack me, and only then after stabbing me, would me teammates shoot them.

Further more, and this may seem minor, but I think it’s very important for immersion; the camera movements for the first person cinematics were so stiff and unnatural. The pacing was just bad, none of that attack and defend thing, just constantly attacking. Plus a few missions poorly copied from COD4 such as the sniper one, and one with you in a gun ship. Can’t really think of anything redeeming about the campaign, when I got to the end and unlocked the zombie thing I didn’t even bother with it, I was so fed up with the game, I haven’t played it since, glad I borrowed it.

As for multiplayer, its pretty much the same thing as COD4, but with WWII skins and guns, which is what I was excited about. But you still have these weird gun attachments, like some fake red dot sight; totally killing everything I was excited about. Same perks, same challenges for leveling up, nothing new at all. Well there is tanks and dogs, but nothing to buy a whole new game about. I’d have liked a classic mode, were you could only use WWII weapons with none of those attachments.

Another thing, and this pissed me off more then anything, a massive problem with COD4, if you had 8 friends, two Xboxes and two TV, you could only do a one versus one LAN. So no split screen LAN, which is complete bull, and guess what Treyarch copied and pasted that as well. Not that it would be much fun anyways, you only get to pick from a few horrible classes, you can’t pick your gun or any perks when playing with friends, something I questioned even in COD4. Though I guess most games are doing this, sure we have Internet gaming on the consoles but that doesn’t mean we can’t have LAN parties anymore. Gaming has always been about having fun with friends, but now I guess the trend in gaming, and everything else, is to cut back on social interaction, or at least face-to-face interaction.

Now let me quickly address the one kind of cool thing Treyarch did. They added a bit of gore, which actually looks pretty good, and fits well with graphicness of war. And I’ll say they fire effects in the game looked fairly decent.

In the end, if you want to get pissed off and break something, or you want to play COD4 on crappier maps, or you just want to waste money, go ahead and get Call of Duty: World at War.