I figured there was no better way to celebrate Valentines Day, that sweet, sensitive, romantic holiday that brings out the best and happiest in all of us - especially the single ones, than to kill a bunch of Nazi bastards, and kamikaze SOB's. So I picked up a copy of Call of Duty: World at War for the Xbox 360 and went back, yet again, into the breach of WWII shooters. The short of it is that it's basically everything you loved or hated about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with that nice World War II shine. Short-short single player, well honed and known multiplayer mechanics, and not a damn thing new. It's a solid but so-so 6 out 10.If you want some specifics, hit the jump and we'll go into detail.
The single player is short, really short. It took me just a little bit longer to finish Modern Warfare than this. Just like the previous, it jumps back and forth between multiple characters. In this case you play a U.S. Marine Private in the Pacific theater and a Soviet Red Army Private in the European theater. The Pacific missions were the more enjoyable of the two, but neither provided a whole lot of meat. The story was pretty weak and jumped around from one scenario to another, often being many years in between the end of one characters mission and their next. The bad guys were pretty much retarded. When they ducked, they rarely ducked to the point you couldn't still get a head shot, and when you picked one off, they were replaced seconds later. Instead you gained ground by just charging from one cover point to the next, supposedly driving them back when your comrades charged with you.
The Soviet missions made me want to pound my balls with the controller on so many occasions. There was a maddening sniper scenario that pitted you against a Nazi sharpshooter hiding in a building across the road. It pretty much boiled down to luck because you had to find, anticipate, and then steady your aim at just the right moment to even have a chance of hitting something other than the wall. Then just to make things more fun, they threw in a second sniper scenario, only this time you had a counter-sniper, machine gun fire, a running and ducking target, and a getaway car. I got pissed off and was trying to take out my anger by killing the getaway driver and ACCIDENTALLY killed my mark. If you still had a TV left after the sniper scenarios you were treated to more bombed out cities where you had to run in the direction of the people trying to kill you to make any progress. Sadly, the most fun I had in the Soviet missions was a tank driving mission where you got to drive around blowing shit up, but had to be carefully because the other tanks and anti-tank guns had amazing aim, vision, and maybe a bit of bullshit cheating.
The more fun of the two story lines, and the only reason I put up with the Soviet side, was when you got to go back to the jungle and kill some more Japanese guys hiding up on top of palm trees. Luckily there weren't and ridiculous Marine sniper missions, but probably the low point of that end of the game was it's vehicle mission in which you ran back and forth between mounted guns in an an airplane. I really enjoyed the one that was in Modern Warfare, but this one was boring and provided absolutely no challenge. Once back in the jungles and armed with a flame thrower, I was feeling much happier. I usually don't get much out of flame throwers and bazookas in these games, but the flame thrower was actually really useful for clearing out those gunner nests and little tunnels full of ambushing Japs.
Now I need to make a quick admission here before you take too much credence in my review. I don't really get much out of multi-player beyond co-op. I'll play a few rounds of whatever they call deathmatch and whatever flavor of domination or capture the flag is currently hot, but beyond that I don't spend much time sitting around letting 12 year old kids kick my ass and teabag me. That said, the multiplayer is pretty much the same as Modern Warfare, just with Nazi's and WWII weapons. Once again you get experience points, and for achievement whores there are a couple gamer points with your name on them. Otherwise, if you played CoD: Modern Warfare, you've essentially played World at War...in so many ways.
Oddly enough, the real shining point of this game is a completely useless hidden game mode that you unlock once you beat the game (on any difficulty). It's a little Survival mission where you're in a wreck of a building and you have to fight your way through wave after wave of zombies. You get points for killing each zombie, and a bonus for head shots, and then in between rounds you can do repairs on the barricades that help keep the zombies out, buy new weapons (all of which are the standard game weapons), and clear out rubble in the building to gain access to new areas. The novelty of this wears off rather quick though, especially since it's really no rival to Left 4 Dead and doesn't make the rest of the game worth $60.
Final Verdict: Unless you're just a softy for WWII shooters and feel an uncontrollable urge to collect every Call of Duty game, I'd stick with playing Modern Warfare for multiplayer, or just about any other shooter out right now for your single player fix. This one doesn't break the streak of weak Treyarch developed CoD games. Again, it's a 6 out of 10, but it's a pretty weak 6.
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