Call of Duty: World at War

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I have been reading all the other reviews over the past few days and some of them made me wonder if the game was worth it or it was gonna be a dud. I was really worried about the aspect ratio in the coop mode. I was worried about the online play. I was worried about the scoring system. I was worried that a game I really enjoyed, Call of Duty 4, was going to be tainted by a bad game. WoW was I ever glad to be wrong.

Let me tell you about Call of Duty: World at War.

Its realistic. Its honest. Its brutal. Its massive. Its haunting. Its chaotic. Its mind-numbingly astonishing. Its everything COD4 introduced and everything COD4 could not be. It hits home. It makes you appreciate the terror our men faced during those times. It makes you realize that war is not pretty, its evil and sick; and the landscapes, buildings and natural surroundings are just as deadly as the people that hide in them.

For those of you who have ragged on this game I think your nuts. The controls are the same. The ranking systems are similiar. The coop play is amazing. The single player story line is terrifying. The maps on multi player stay with you long after you stop playing... the belfry that you can snip from, the cat walk beside the giant water tower that you can hide on, the tanks, the bunkers, the assylum and its haunting rooms, the air field, the normady beach, the cliffsides, the jungles...

I was playing last night on one of the online maps. I was running away from this guy and I had ditched him and found a small hiding place to make a stand and ambush him. As my heart slowed and I gained my bearings I started looking around... thats when I realized I was in a room with bars on the windows and a broken wooden door not far from me. I started examining the room. I looked up and thats when my heart stopped. I saw a long set of pipes that trailed the ceiling and at the end of each set of pipes was a sprinkler or a shower head... I was in a gas chamber. I was standing inside a chamber that was recreated from images out of a WWII concentration camp.

World at War is incredible. It is beyond imagination. I am floored and I am left without anything more to say than WoW.

Buy this game. If you loved COD4... hold onto your SixAxis controller cause your gonna be blown away.

Happy Hunting and as you play, remember those who have embraced the slumber that they will never be awakened from... who sacrificed their life so you could have the freedom to play a game like World at War.

Never Forgotten! Always Remembered!

Edit:

It is December 22nd and I am reviewing what I previously wrote and I must say that I am even more impressed with COD5 than I originally was. I went back and played COD4 the other day and I was dissapointed at the lack of colors and suspense and at how 'sandbox' the levels are. I have fun with COD4 but to be honest there is just something about COD5 that hooks me.

I must admit that I am fairly new to the COD franchise. I recall playing COD3 I believe or possibly COD Big Red One. But I was not impressed. It was fun. But no high replay value. The WWII stuff was cool but not so much. The game was cheesy and hard and I was not impressed with the COD franchise at the time. When I played COD4 I was really impressed. When I played COD5 I was hooked and I am now a believer in the COD franchise.

I do not want to spoil too much for anyone but here are some small tips. Go online and try the Co-op campaing modes with your buddies. Or rather go head to head with them in a coop competition to see who gains the most points at the end of the session. COD5 is brilliant and I do not regret a day gone by for having bought it. While you are playing look around the maps, use teamwork that you will need to achieve victory against your opponent. I have to admit that I truly enjoy all of the maps. Each map has the perfect place for every kind of player and ever kind of player class. The only problem is others know those perfect spots too but occasionally you find your sweet spot.

So. Once again. Happy hunting and I will look forward to seeing you on the battle field.

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COD WaW is way different than COD4. The first thing you notice is the grainy (almost Sepia) quality of the graphics. That said, the cut scenes and the graphics are better that COD4. Unlike anything made by Ubisoft or Unreal (IMHO their games blow), this games smokes all of the competition.

Cooperative play is an interesting new feature to the COD series. You can play in split-screen mode with another player. Basically, it's solo mode for two (if that makes any sense). If your comrade is injured, your have to find him and administer first-aid otherwise you both die. I have 2 HDTVs and 2 PS3s and sprung for a second copy so my son and I can play cooperatively. It's really cool playing zombie in cooperatiive play. Oh yeah, don't forget to get your raygun in the second level. Check youtube for some good glitches -especially the one on the second floor in zombie mode (bring a flamethrower and an LMG). Cooperative play on a smaller screens just doesn't work.

I completed solo play in Veteran mode and it took about 20 hours. Yeah, you get killed a lot and it takes forever to complete a mission -but that's the point. War isn't running into a room full of enemies and hosing them down with your machine gun without getting a scratch. It's about tactics, planning and killing the enemy without getting yourself killed. In Veteran mode, you have no choice other than to plan your moves, use the terrain to your advantage and proceed cautiously. Simply put; it's hard to survive. For some reason, I completed a level where you clear out the artillery from the Japanese caves but it doesn't register as a checkpoint so I got stuck and couldn't continue. If you get stuck like I did the download a saved game from the Internet (for free).

Other reviewers said they completed the game in under 10 hours. I doubt it can be done that quickly unless they're playing at the Rookie level. No way at Veteran level.

There's some cool new fetures too: you can drive and fire a tank, and then there's also a flamethrower. The tank is OK and the trick is to hang back and take out opponents one at a time -using the landscape as cover against other tanks. If you're up to flaming-up the enemy and watching them burn (some burning much more energetically than others), then this is a ton of fun in a sick kind of way. In story mode, I've done entire levels with only the flamethrower despite its limited range (even though I was packing a LMG too). This is possible because Activision programmed in a feature that the enemy doesn't shoot at you until you get close when holding the flamethrower. You can prove this by switching to another weapon and you instantly get shot at. It's a bunch of fun to burn down trees too. A word of caution: You can burn yourself up if you walk into the flames.

In Veteran story mode, ammo conservation is always an issue. While your teamates seems to have an unlimited supply of ammo, you don't. Swapping your weapon for an enemy's drop is an option but not in all cases. For example, you don't want to drop your sniper rifle for a machine gun. You're better off locating enemies using the scope and picking them off using a lesser weapon that you have a bunch of ammo for.

Online play is good once you level-up to some decent weapons. Keep in mind this is WWII so there's no lasers, night-vision and barely any scoped weapons. Automatics are slow and not too accurate. It takes several body shots to drop a target. I find myself going for head-shots because a single shot does the job. There's a new level called Bootcamp that you can play until Level 8. There's a glitch that you can exploit to level-up more quickly. Once you're in Bootcamp you can stay there indefinately as long as you don't leave. In other words, you can level up to 44 in about 8 hours in Bootcamp.

This game is rated M for Mature. The rating is justified because there is some pretty graphic material and language. For example, when you step on a land mine your legs get blown off. This is way more intense than COD4.

Buy Call of Duty: World at War Now

Since most gamers are probably a lot younger than me, I'll give a review from an older person's view. This is more on an old school game. If you're looking for a game like COD4 with a modern theme, and advanced weapons, this game will might disappoint you. World at War is a great game, but this game is not really a sequel. It is an entirely different game and theme. This is what COD3 should have been. It takes the COD series back to it's WWII roots. It's not perfect though. It has its minor glitches, and the the single player is a little short. But it's a huge improvement to COD3. For those that feel the old WWII theme might bore you, it does have a bonus mode called "Nacht der Untoten", or Night of the Undead. You get to fight Nazi zombies. The game features excellent graphics and sound. The gameplay is very good. There are enough modes to keep the game fresh. All in all, I give it 4.5 stars. 5 stars for people like me that enjoyed the original WWII themed COD games, and 4 stars for the corwd that enjoyed COD 4 better.

Read Best Reviews of Call of Duty: World at War Here

I've been playing video games since the late 1970s when "Pong" was all that was available. Throughout the years, I've owned many video game systems, including the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Playstation, Xbox and now a PS3. I've played many different games over the course of those years and nothing, and I mean NOTHING, compares to "Call of Duty: World at War."

Simply put, it is the best video game ever created, and it keeps getting better. Since it was released in late 2008, Activision has offered several downloadable upgrades that provide additional map areas and additional games. There are so many aspects to this game that it never gets boring. It can be played in a solo mode where the player battles through various WWII battleground sequences as either an American or a Russian, it could be played online in various "versus" modes, and then there is the "Nazi Zombie" modes which lie in their own world apart from the other offerings of this title.

My favorite way to play World at War is online in the "Free For All" mode, which pits up to eight individual players against each other in various WWII scenarios, all fighting for first place by trying to get the most kills.

It is difficult to explain to somebody how great this game really is with words. It is something that needs to be played to understand its neverending greatness.

Want Call of Duty: World at War Discount?

Call of Duty needs no introduction as pretty much anyone into this FPS genre has played, let alone, heard of this great series. Yes, there was a mishap when COD3 was not made by the same company, but fear not. COD: World at War is just as good as COD4's campaign was... with some improvements. The only letdown may be the multiplayer this time around.

The core aspect of these COD games is the gameplay. The intense, single player campaign is here again, but this time along with it comes the very well done cooperative campaign mode. I played through this coop campaign mode with a friend of mine, and we were in love from the very beginning. It settles you in beginning in the Japan nation as a POW. After the cutscene, you then join up with your squad-mates and make your escape. The cooperative campaign was very well done. Each player receives points for kills, and your points can increase through multipliers received for chain-kills. As if the campaign wasn't intense enough as it is, this cooperative mode adds just that much more fun to an already amazing game. Props to Activision and Treyarch on this amazing new feature.

I really like the things that the developers though up for possible scenarios in this game. The traps that your squad falls into are realistic and well done. Especially the first one, which I won't spoil, but it was just simply amazing. I will remember moments like these in games forever. One of the coolest moments I had in this campaign was using a flamethrower to burn down trees that enemies were shooting at you from. Neat stuff.

My only complaint with the cooperative split-screen is the unique way that the developers incorporated the split-screen mode. It's just too small. It's a vertical split, giving player 1 a square box on the left, and player 2 a box on the right, but you don't just get the entire screen space to use even when it's split. It's further cut down. You are actually wasting several inches of screen space on both sides by doing this. I'm not sure if this was done to help frame-rates, or if they wanted to maintain a certain aspect-ratio or what they were going for here, but it's a shame that they chose to waste some of the screen space with this split-screen mode.

The audio is intense as ever. Explosions roaring through all speakers in 5.1 blazing glory. It really does sound like you are actually playing out this war yourself. You can hear your squad-mates yelling out commands and can tell if they are right behind you, or beside you. You can pinpoint enemies yelling at you and know which direction to face and return fire at. Great stuff here, no complaints in the audio department. Pure aural bliss.

I have not had enough time to comment much on the multiplayer. I did just test a couple maps quick, but I do not think this COD is a game that will take over the multiplayer aspect of COD4. I believe COD4 is still a better online game, and this new World at War game is really great for its campaign, but not necessarily the online play. If your looking for a great single player, or cooperative experience with a friend, then by all means look into getting this game. If you are wanting to know more about the online aspect, you will need to wait and find out from others who know more about the online portion. However, I really must say that this game deserves the $60 price tag for the campaign mode alone. You will want to play it alone, and with a friend. There is certainly replay value that is added to it with the cooperative mode. It's always fun to see who gets the highest score on each level. You will not be disappointed with this purchase. I'm just not too convinced that the online multiplayer will keep you for too long. If I could I'd rate it 4.5/5 for this reason.