Call of Duty Week: Day Five

Call of Duty: World at War is next in line for Call of Duty Week. The second outing from Treyarch into Call of Duty land takes the series in a rather more … visceral direction.

Blimey, this game is brutal. I mean, it’s the first time they put gore into the series and they certainly didn’t hold back. The only thing I can’t decide on is whether or not it’s really necessary in the game. It is true that both the Pacific and the Eastern Front were brutal battle-grounds, but do we really need to see a guy get a cigarette smashed into his eye? Probably not, no.

Positive

• The flame effects are pretty brilliant. In fact the whole game looks pretty nice.
• The levels are pretty huge most of the time. Granted, you are usually just moving through corridors but there are quite a few in a row, and the set-pieces are often spectacular.
• They at least tried to do a story that wasn’t entirely clichéd.
• It is quite entertaining through most of it.
• There aren’t many first-person shooters set in the Pacific theatre on the whole.
• Co-op campaign!

Negatives

• Turret sequence ahoy! Except this time, you occasionally have to do QTEs as well. Great.
• The story is way too scripted. There are times when, if you’ve played the game before, you should be able to save someone, but you can’t. They could have at least incapacitated the player or something.
• There are many corridors.
• The amount of grenades is ridiculous (especially on higher difficulty levels).
• They re-did the Reichstag mission. You know, the (arguably) best mission from the first game. Yeah, they ruined it in this one. Respawning enemies, massive amounts of grind. Stupid scripted events at the end. A real mess of a level.
• The tank sequence is awful.
• The gore system seems a little excessive and out of place.
• The moral choices are stupid (shoot someone or let them be hit by Molotov cocktails. Good one).

Despite what seems like a fairly large tally in the negatives column, I actually don’t mind World at War existing. It isn’t as good as the previous Infinity Ward games, but it’s a heck of a lot better than Call of Duty 3.