Game Review: Call Of Duty: World At War (Xbox 360)
http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/6FE...lofdutywaw.jpg
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Players: 1-18 (2-4 co-op)
Genre: FPS
Price: $59.99
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
ESRB:
http://www.xbox.com/xweb/lib/images/ESRB_M.gif
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Overview: It seems like every year, a new call of duty game comes out during the holiday seasons, how does this one stand out from the rest? I really have no idea because I have never played a COD game before, so this year I am jumping in and heading out to see what all the fuzz is about in this bullet packed FPS. (CAUTION: DOES NOT CONTAIN ACTUAL BULLETS!)
Gameplay: There is no denying that WWII games have been done quite too many times, and for gamers that have been keeping up with the franchise this may be a good or bad thing, this is still Call Of Duty in every single way so if you didn't like the old ones, there is a slim chance that you will enjoy this one.
What REALLY sets this one aside from the rest is an extra game option you unlock after beating the game where you are stuck inside a house and an unlimited number of waves of nazy zombies, they can come into your house but they have to break walls and wood that covers windows first. You can re-build any barrier, buy new weapons, and expand your ground, tho when you expand your ground, you also increase the number of gaps that may lay in your home for zombies to come in. The zombies get faster and stronger as the waves go by making your initial guns useless against them, guns that use to kill them with one shot will later take 2, 3, 5, 7 shots to kill them after a few waves go by, tho a head shot will always blow them up, it is alot harder to do so when they are running at you by the bunch. this is a great experience specially with friends, but I do wish they had expanded a bit more in it, there is only one type of zombie and the house is pretty small, also, it is great to have a small group so that team work becomes easier to achieve, but having about ten guys in a house kicking zombie butt would have been cool too.
Now on to multiplayer, this game supports up to 18 players which is great, you have to constantly watch your back or else you will die easily, I learned this thanks to an awesome death cam that puts you in the eyes of your opponent seconds before your defeat, and sure enough, most of my deaths were caused by enemies whom i did not see mys self, if you learn from the mistakes that the death cam shows you, you will quickly be able to dominate the grounds. The ranking system on Call Of Duty: World At War is great, you level up constantly and get great rewards, from new weapons to perks that you can add to your character to give him more health or make his bullets inflict more damage, after you reach level four you can create your own class to fully be able to customize your character to fit your gameplay style.
The AI can be very dumb at times which takes away from the experience, sometimes I feel like i am just target practicing due to the fact that they just aim at me and wait for me to shoot at them, sometimes you can even stay behind them or follow them for long periods of times before they notice you which is odd because this could have possibly been done on purpose to encourage you to be stealthy in certain areas, but if they did, they need to fix it because even I would notice people when they are running behind me or starring at me with a gun few feet away from me.
Your team mates are no better, you will often see them shooting at walls just because there is an enemy at the other side of it, I once saw a squad member run sideways across an opened door and once the opening was over he started to shoot at the wall, it was quite a late reaction.
Any time you are at your feet (not on a tank or something) your gameplay will most likely consist of the following: walk around, get ambushed, hide behind something, come out to shoot at your enemies and get back in cover once you have taken enough hits, and then go to the next area, this is all good at first but after a while you start to notice this pattern.
The loading times are covered up by a mix between real live footage, and CG content, it always loads up before the introduction is finished and you are free to skip it afterward tho some of them are quite interesting and you may want to watch each at least once.
There is an icon on the bottom left of the screen where the map is located that tells you where to go, this way, you will never get lost which is a great touch, tho not completely necessary due to the fact that this game is very linear, tho this simply further escorts you to your next checkpoint.
Most of the achievements have to be done alone, which is a shame because normally you have the option gain achievements ether solo or with a friend, and who doesn't love to grab a friend and go achievement hunting right?
Aside from the regular gameplay where you run around and shoot there are only two missions that have you doing something differently and they are both short, one of them takes you inside a flame throwing tank that can self-regenerate somehow and while its nice to have a completely new mission and all, this particular one was not all that fun, and then there is the other mission that puts you inside a plane where you will have to shoot down boats and plains, here you can only control and fire turrets and the game will ask you to change position every now and then to shoot at objects on the other side of the plain, this one is actually fun.
Graphics: Character models are well made and often go out of their regular behavior to do a scripted one such as opening a gate or killing captured enemies which is rare in games, there is a strange mixture between high res textures and low res ones, the grass for example has an incredibly high resolution texture for what it is, I crouched and zoomed in on it and it was still relatively smooth, yet when I was hiding behind what seemed to be a desk, the texture was low enough for me to see each pixel without having to zoom in on it, I had so walk away from it to figure out what it was.
Another thing that HAS to be pointed out is that the level of detail in the environments is amazing, the jungle is filled with numerous species of plants, and the buildings are filled with chairs, dirty walls, garbage, ect, not to mention that your battlefield is always changing, this keeps the game from getting repetitive too early. The fire effects are also excellent and the reactions from the flames are normally good too, except for the fact that I think there is only one animation for being burned, I once burned two enemies at once and they were mirroring each others movements perfectly.
Sound: The sound in this game is top notch, you hear bullets coming from every direction and hitting the ground or walls near you, solders screaming for their lives and dying, voice overs are good too but the lip sync can use alot of work, while you are in cover you can count on the sound of bullets hitting your cover to see when the enemy is reloading so you can pop out and lay a nice grenade on their feet to keep them warm. Overall the sound in this game is so great it improves the overall experience by a long shot.
Replay Value: The main story can be fully played in co-op and the online mode is great too, that is not even counting the great zombie survival extra that you unlock once you beat the game, tho you don't need to beat the game in order to play it if you have been invited by someone to play it, the regular multiplayer modes also have missions that you can choose to completely ignore or you can face them, this missions are small things like stab someone a certain amount of times and things like that, but one should never look at the teeth of a given horse, if it is there as an extra and is not mandatory then no reason to complain but to appreciate.
Conclusion: The game will last you about 6-10 hours depending on the difficulty level and your personal skill level, it takes 6.5 GB to install this game and it only shaved off about one or two seconds of loading time on my end, so unless you REALLY want to play Call Of Duty: World At War with a silent xbox you are gonna want to play this one from the disk, and its not like you will hear the xbox with all the sounds from guns, grenades, tanks, and people screaming.
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Overall Score: http://games-reviews.dcemu.co.uk/review/review4.gif
.:Great Game!:.
