Call of Duty: World at War Game Review–Leftovers In Shiny Foil
So by now you may have heard about Call of Duty: World at War, otherwise known as Call of Duty 5 for the PC, DS, Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstations two and three. It’s a game that manages to fuse together the mundane and the unique. The down side, of course, is that it mostly fuses the mundane to itself to make some horrible ironmongery of stuff you’ve already seen a couple hundred times before.
But before I get right down to business, it’s time for a plot rundown: we follow a series of different soldiers in all different parts of the Allied forces as they rampage their way across the Pacific Theatre, up into Russia, BACK to the Pacific, back once again to Russia before taking on Berlin, and accomplishing a series of missions, including calling down rockets on Japanese Ha-Go tank forces, handling a Russian T-34 tank and running the guns on a PBY Catalina flying boat. You will be effectively a part of the last and loudest hours of World War II.
And, in case you didn’t see this coming by the big number five on the title, yes, this is yet another in a long, long, LONG (and growing…) string of first person shooters. Sure, they’ve got some additions of new gameplay in here—when’s the last time you got to drive a tank in first person?—but let’s face it; there’s only so much variety you can get out of this particular chopped salad mix. There’s only so many ways you can make the same old baloney taste new and different.
However—if you’re willing to gut your way through a highly realistic, blood-spattered, downright gritty World War II simulation with more gunfire and explosions than even Saving Private Ryan could muster, presented in a format so eye-wateringly predictable that there’s almost no reason to play, then this time around, you’ll get a special bonus. It’s called Nazi Zombies mode, and, though they may not specifically be members of the Party, the mode itself comprises a series of maps, some of which are downloadable, in which you and possibly some friends attempt to hold a building against a legion of zombies bound and determined to break in.
The down side of that, of course, is like I said: you have to play your way through the ENTIRE CAMPAIGN to get access. I’m irritated by this. I’d personally like to see more first person shooters involving zombies (and ZOMBIES, not second-rate 28 Days Later knockoffs like Left 4 Dead, thank you very much), and the fact that these bastards made me slog through a hell of their own making just to get a crack at some zombie killing fun makes me furious to the point of derangement.
So let’s sum it up: Call of Duty World at War is not really a BAD game, it’s just more of the same. They offer some excellent graphics, and some fantastic realism, and even some unique features buried in all the warmed over leftover crap that is their primary campaign mode, but let’s face facts—aside from a pretty new paintjob and some fancy bells and whistles, this really is just more of the same. It’s up to you if you want to take another foray into the same crap you’ve been playing over and over for years, but if you love the first person shooter and just can’t get enough, then this is definitely the game for you.