chrisell's Full Review: Call of Duty: World at War PS3 for PlayStation 3
Another game of two parts.
COD-WAW - the latest installment of the Call Of Duty series is set in the closing stages of WWII. As with most COD games, you alternate between two characters. In this case a Russian advancing on Berlin, and an American GI clearing out the Japanese islands.
Controls As you'd expect, COD-WAW is a first-person run-and-gun game. You can sneak (and on some maps you have to) but for the most part it's shoot or be shot at. The controls are pretty good for this. Left stick moves you, right stick adjusts where you're looking. Various buttons crouch, jump, reload and fire. It's fairly intuitive to pick up and the controls are identical to the hugely playable COD4.
Graphics The graphics in COD5 are excellent. The environments are detailed and the map size is up on COD4 with some truly sprawling levels this time around. The Berlin levels leading to the Reichstag are simply incredible with brilliant artwork and modelling that truly represents the bombed-out city at the end of the War. The amount of popup (where items suddenly pop in to view) is lessened compared to COD4 but it's still very noticable, especially when approaching the windows of a building to look out. As with COD4, to start with you won't notice it, but once it catches your eye, you'll see it everywhere. The smoke and particle effects have been heavily modified this time around and are much improved. The smoke grenades in particular do not stress the PS3 anywhere near as much as they did in the previous game. There are specular highlights and bump maps used where you'd expect them to be used to pretty good effect. One of the neatest effects is the visual distortion you get around the muzzle of a gun during gunfire, or around an exploding grenade. Nice touch. New in COD5 is "graphic" content, by which I mean mutilated bodies. With the advent of the flamethrower - a truly terrible weapon - you will be presented with burned, mutilated bodies as a result. In multiplayer mode, your character takes damage now too - step on a landmine and in the instant replay you'll see your leg blown off with nothing but a bloody stump remaining. For the parents or squeamish, these effects can all be turned off though.
Sound The audio on COD-WAW is also improved somewhat on the previous game. There's good stereo separation at the front and excellent use of the rear channels. Often you'll be able to hear someone behind you giving you more reaction time to do something about it. The weapons effects are OK and they use the subwoofer to good effect. Again there's noticable differences in weapons types, with and without suppressors, but I suppose only a classic gun nut would be able to tell you if they're right.
Single player Single player mode is a good intro to World At War. The maps are varied and as I said in the intro, the missions are split between US and Russian troops. Each mission is a mission-on-rails in that you really can't deviate much from what the developers want you to do. Go from A to B. Kill everything. Collect item. It's a tired formula but I guess it still works. The game is mercifully short on cut-scenes so there isn't a lot of interruption. The cut scenes that do exist are a split between pre-rendered and game-engine scenes. As with all COD games, one level stands out head and shoulders above the rest, and this time around, for me it was the fleet defence mission. You find yourself as a gunner in a US flying boat trying to defend part of the US fleet against Japanese attack. The aircraft in question has 4 guns - left and right waist, nose and tail. The brilliant thing is that you can swap to the different guns, and when you do, rather than simply cut to the new position, you run through the aircraft, past other crew members to the new gunnery station. The first time I played this level it was an unexpected gem in the otherwise ground-based game. Having said that, the three maps leading to the toppling of the Reichstag in Berlin are also worthy of note because of the sheer scale and detail. One fun addition is the Nazi Zombies level. Once you finish the single player game once, there is a one-off level that you can play where you are locked in an abandoned house. Nazi zombies swarm the house and your job is to kill as many as you can before being overwhelmed. You can rebuild window barricades as they are pulled down by the attacking horde but it takes time - time you don't often have. There are extra sections of the house that can be unlocked once you have enough points. The advantage is that more powerful weapons exist elsewhere in the house, but then so do more doors and windows for the zombies to get in. There are a couple of awards - instant kill, nuke, and 2x points. Ultimately you'll be mauled to death by a hideous Michael-Jackson-Thriller-like zombie with glowing eyes, but how many can you take down before it happens. This is actually a surprisingly fun level to play and re-play although it's not obvious why it was included in World At War.
Online Online gameplay is where COD-WAW really shines in terms of fun factor. As with COD4, there's a load-balancing system so newbies don't drop into maps with 8 year old Korean kids who can snipe them through glitches in the map. The experience points (XP) system is present and correct as are the commensurate unlocks and and challenges. The more kills you get, the more matches you play, the more experience points you get. These unlock the challenges and the ability to make your own weapons load (instead of choosing one of the predetermined ones) as well as perks. Perks are things like the ability to carry three grenades instead of one.
There are a bunch of different online modes ranging from the usual capture the flags (Domination, straight from Halo), to headquarters, search-and-destroy and outright free-for-all and deathmatch. Team Tactical is a neat mode where each time only has three players, so the games become a lot more tactical. That mode also relies on headset chat otherwise you'll be running around completely uncoordinated. A new addition to World At War is the "War" multiplayer mode which is similar to Domination except that it's a proper staged battle across a map. The teams start either side and have to push towards the other team's base camp by capturing the flags as they go. The more you capture, and the more kills you get, the more 'momentum' your team builds. More momentum means quicker flag captures and respawns, which in effect rewards you for teamplay. The better you play as a team, the easier it becomes for you to overwhelm the opposing team with force. In addition, there are now vehicles in some multiplayer maps - typically tanks. They have two positions - driver/gunner and machinegunner, so up to two players can get in and roam around the map reaping destruction. There are vehicle challenges to go with this new feature - miles driven, most people killed with the main gun etc., and there are also anti-tank weapons and sticky mines so that foot-soldiers stand some chance of taking out the armour. This is a nice touch but I can't help but wonder if it was put in in an effort to compete with the Battlefield series of games. As with COD4 there are instant rewards in multiplayer. Three kills and you get aerial reconaissance, meaning you can see the other team's locations on your map. Five in a row and you get artillery. Seven in a row and you get to call in the dogs. Opinion is split on the dogs. Some people preferred the helicopter in COD4, but I sort of like the dogs idea. If you're quick, you can actually defend yourself against a dog attack. With the helicopter, you had no choice but to hide.
New to World at War is cooperative gameplay. This is where you can play with other players instead of against them. For example having 4 of you locked in the nazi zombie level, or trying to complete campaign missions with 3 other players instead of the computer-controlled AI characters. This is a nice addition and it has all its own awards and challenges to be completed too.
The biggest drawback of the online play is that the code still isn't distributed. This means that one person's machine is hosting the game. If they get annoyed at losing a battle, or being shot too many times, they can cancel the entire match, resulting in a "host ended session" message for everyone else. This is really nasty. In World At War, they do seem to have tried to implement code that migrates the host but it doesn't seem to work. Worse still, the send-you-to-the-same-game bug is still very prominent. If you're playing online and you decide you want out of the game, you can quit and go back to the multiplayer lobby. The problem is that if you then try to find another game, it will invariably dump you right back into the one you just left. Worse still, they still haven't solved the issue where it dumps you into games that have either just ended, or are within a couple of points of ending. This means you spend a considerable amount of time being shuttled from host to host just trying to find a game that is about to start. This and this alone is why I took a star off the review for this game. It was bad in COD4 and it should have been fixed. The fact that these problems still exist is inexcusable.
Trophies World At War supports the PS3's new trophy system. There are dozens to collect both in single player, multiplayer online and co-op modes.
Four stars or five? Very few games deserve 5-star rating at this point. Developers are still learning how best to get everything they can out of the PS3. Giving a game 5 stars implies the developers have nowhere left to turn for future improvements. This happens rarely although because of the improvements over COD4 I was willing to go the 5-star route. The improvements in the game engine, the sound effects, the smoke and explosion effects, and the engaging gameplay all help to raise the bar, but as I said above, the fact that it still suffers the abominable problems with multiplayer hosting are reason enough to bring the rating down again. It's quick to pick up and the online play, despite the server glitches, still has a high X-factor. As with COD4 it's hard to say what makes the game so much fun but it has that certain something that will probably keep you coming back. In the end, that's what it's all about. You can have all the hype and fanfare you like, but if your game has spectacular graphics, a long and twisting storyline but no fun factor, people won't play it. COD-WAW has good graphics, good sound, mercifully little storyline and it's fun to play.
Features Include :Harsh New Enemies, Environments and Tactics: Face off against ruthless and tactically advanced enemies that will stop at nothing to...More at Walmart
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