Call of Duty: World at War Review (PS3)

Written by Ender on December 13, 2008 · Filed under Games, Review 

After the impressive Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Treyarch had a lot to live up to with Call of Duty: World at War.

Treyarch are the company who made Call of Duty 3 and did it very well so there was no doubt that World at War was going to be good, but just how good?

It turns out very good indeed!

Some people did seem a little disappointed in the fact that this was yet another WW2 Call of Duty and that it was a step backwards, but this is more in depth than the other ones, albeit a hell of a lot shorter, which did annoy me, and was one of the faults with Modern Warfare. But don’t let that put you off, because it really is a great game.

The missions are only American and Russian ones, with the American missions taking place in the Pacific and Russian in……Russia, trying to take back the Motherland.

You can tell how big Call of Duty is becoming when they can pull in Gary Oldman and Kiefer Sutherland to voice the main CO’s (Commanding Officers) in the game. Gary Oldman does a very convincing Russian accent too.

The weapons are very similar if not identical to the previous WW2 CODs, but there is one little addition…the flamethrower.

This is a great weapon to use and can be very handy when you’re surrounded by 5 to a million Japanese enemy soldiers as the flame literally does throw out and cause huge BBQ. This might be a little spoiler (so look away if you want to keep the surprise), but the Japanese hide in the long grass, but you can burn grass! So if you see one hiding, burn the grass before he jumps and charges at you and watch the enemy burn to a crisp.

The gameplay is as usual, second to none and really gets you involved with the action and looks fantastic in High Definition. When I bought it, I had a 26 inch HD TV, and mid way through, I treat myself to a 40 inch 1080p TV and….WOW!!! It really is that impressive.

Again, the main missions in the game don’t last as long as previous games and is roughly the same length as Activision’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. To me, it seemed a little shorter, and I like my games to last me more than 10 hours, and that’s taking my time.
But there is the added bonus of trophy support this time around so you’ll be playing it over and over again to get your trophy collection up, and some of them are quite tricky to get!!!

Once you’ve completed the game, you unlock an extra bonus mission called ‘Nazi Zombies’. It’s a mission where you have get the highest score possible whilst keeping the Nazi Zombies out of the ‘house’ and boarding up the windows. You can unlock different weapons/grenades when you’ve reached certain points milestones. I’ve only played it a couple of times, but it is good fun and go for the head! THE HEAD! THE HEAD!!

After the insanely popular online mode on COD4, there was a lot of pressure for COD5 to be as good, if not better. But why fix something if it isn’t broke? The good news is they haven’t changed it, just made amendments to match the time period with little tweaks and it works very well.

When I logged on to start my online campaign to destroy everyone with a stupid headset (if you’ve got one, hold your head in shame), I realised there was a new icon on my little map in the corner of my screen when I joined a game. Is that……no!! It can’t be!! Yes it is, it’s a tank! You can now use tanks on certain maps to blow the hell of out everything and anyone which is great fun. Two people can jump in a tank at once, with one inside the tank and safe from bullet fire and the other on the turret but open to bullets and quite easy to kill. Tanks can be destroyed by Panzershrek’s, grenades, mines etc but take a few rounds to do so. But once you’re inside a tank, just open fire and watch bodies fly and rack up your kill count in no time.

The ranking system is exactly the same as COD4 with challenges for your weapons etc. But your skill streak rewards have changed. The only thing that’s the same is when you get a 3 kill streak you call your recon planes to spot the enemy. When you get a 5 kill streak, you can call in your artillery instead of an airstrike, which is more accurate, sounds and looks much better.

For a 7 kill streak, you get to unleash a pack of dogs instead of a helicopter. I was sceptical about this when I first heard of it, but it’s great fun when you can hear a dog coming but can’t see it until it’s ripped your throat out. You can kill the dogs and you get 3XP points, for each dog you kill.

Another little extra I like is how you see limbs get blown off people, when you get hit with a massive explosive, or heads explode when you pull of a great headshot with a powerful rifle.

Overall, Call of Duty: World at War is a fantastic game that has lived up to its predecessor in everyway. You’ll find that you prefer some moments on COD4 better than COD5 and vice versa. But break this in as soon as you can because we’ll be playing Call of Duty 6 in around a years time!! Will be interesting to see where COD6 is going and what improvements are made, if any!!

This is a must buy!

4 out of 5