Call of Duty: World at War Review

As I promised in the previous post, I'm putting a bit more effort into reviewing games as a learning experience (and it doesn't hurt that I just finished a game).

This time around I'll be reviewing Call of Duty: World at War (CoD:WaW) for the PC, like my last review this is from a designer/player standpoint, not a buy me/don't buy me guide.

First of all, I'd like to mention the developers Treyarch, they are veterans in the Call of Duty franchise, but as I understand Call of Duty 3 the game they developed wasn't all that good.
Well Treyarch, let me congratulate you on a job well done, CoD:WaW stands in the ranks of CoD and CoD2, as a WWII shooter, I was skeptic at first but they pulled it off.

So, to the review:

The Good:
The graphics, well not much of a surprise there, CoD4:MW had some amazing visuals and since CoD:WaW is utilizing the same engine, it's not a surprise that it provides some great visuals of its own, the things that stand out:

• The German cities in the Russian campaign, especially Berlin, they recreated the battle-ridden Berlin and the ruined Reichstag building, things you could have only seen in old photos up until now.
• Fire, there's a lot of emphasis on fire in the game, it looks very cool and it spreads out as you'd expect it to when burning grass.

The location, well as you might know (or not) the game takes place in the pacific theater in the American campaign and in Russia/Germany in the Russian campaign.
The idea to set it in those locations was great, since most of the WWII games take place in Europe it's really overdone, taking it to those locations was a very good change of scenery.
And it allowed you to fight a "new" enemy, at least in the American campaign.

The Flamethrower, that's an awesome weapon, burning people was never as fun :)
Plus, as I said before, the fire seems to spread realistically over the grass.

Another small but very cool part, the cut-scenes, they are shown in a very cool, modern, cell-shaded manner, which really stood out for me, from other games and other titles in the franchise.

The famed zombie level, this was just a rumor among the gaming community, but it's true.
If you finish the single-player campaign, you get a bonus level where you fight wave after wave of Nazi zombies. This is a very fun level and you can find yourself playing it for hours, it's no Left 4 Dead killer but it's pretty good for a mini-game in a game.


The Bad:
Length, the game is pretty short (4-5 hours of gaming, max.), although most of the CoD games are short, this felt a bit shorter for some reason.
Either it was because it was too much fun or too intense, but it was over way too quickly.

Script triggers, this is a problem in every CoD game, the game runs on script points that you have to trigger in order for the plot to move on. Well, for some reason those script triggers were really evident in some of the points in the game.
There were some places in the game, that you could literally stop all action in the game and make all the AIs just stand around and do nothing, they just keep waiting for you to pass somekind of line.
Obviously the action should have been so intense that you wouldn't even notice those script triggers, and in most places you don't, but there were some, that were really badly done.

Tank level, this was one of the most frustrating control schemes for a tank that I've ever experienced.
Most of the times I died just because I used the control scheme wrong.
Plus, what am I doing in a tank anyway, the main character is a rifleman, where the hell did he learn I how to drive a tank? maybe that's why it drives so awkwardly...


The Stupid:
Plane sequence, this was one of the only stupid moves they made.
This was a total filler level, it wasn't really related to the main character or the main plot, it was just a level so they'll be able to say that the game has a plane level.
Losing this level won't take anything away from the game, they should have just thought of more plot twists and levels in the confines of the plot, instead of thinking about filler levels.

Well, that's it for me, although there are some flaws in the game, this game is great, I had a lot of fun with it, and it deserves to be up there with CoD and CoD2.
I definitely recommend playing it, especially if you're a CoD fan, I give it a 8.8 out of 10.

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