Review: Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360)

I'll kick of my first review ever by reviewing a game I've been playing a lot lately- Call of Duty: World at War. You'll notice that my reviews usually will be pretty short; I'll basically just say what I feel about the game and then give it my score. WaW (World at War) is a good shooter with the usual solid and responsive controls and the strategic, realistic (for a game) feel that has become the trademark of the Call of Duty series. It doesn't propel the series to a whole new level and make huge strides in gameplay, but it takes the solid CoD gameplay and adds a few things, and does a nice job where it tries. The new Nazi Zombies mode is amazing, playing that online with friends is definitely the best experience that came out of the game to me. The online match-making is fine, it follows the same formula as previous CoD games, and adds a few new things like dogs and tanks. The dogs are a nice touch, but I absolutely hate the tanks online. I feel like they're overpowered, and if a team manages to get both tanks on a map, forget it. The ability to do the campaign co-op (something I wish Modern Warfare 2 was going to include) is also a great thing that was missing from most of the previous games. The campaign itself was good, the levels were well-designed and challenging. It got a little long and repetitive in some parts, but as a whole it was a decent experience.

So while the game overall is good (maybe even great if you think about Nazi Zombies), what keeps it from being excellent (5-stars) is the fact that whether it's fair to this game or not, it's always going to be compared to Call of Duty 4. Yes, this game adds some stuff, which is nice, but it doesn't do anything ground-breaking enough to earn it that fifth star. Nazi-Zombies is somewhat ground-breaking and I have had a ton of fun with that, but in the end it is basically a mini-game that you cant even unlock until you beat the story (or buy the map packs), and when the game shipped it only included one map for that mode (though now there are 2 more if you buy both map packs for an extra $20). In fact, even though I mentioned mostly good things above, there were some things that weren't as good as CoD 4. The story, while decent, didn't evoke the same feelings (in a good way) as CoD 4, and especially the ending (even though the two endings are fairly similar). The whole story itself and the characters all seemed kind of bland (yes, even the one Jack Bauer voiced). They were given no back-stories, and everything about them was largely forgettable. I cant even remember their names now, and I beat the game under a week ago. While a shooter with gameplay this solid would usually be forgiven for that, (like I said before) this game will always be compared to CoD4, whether or not it's fair to this game. Also, I already mentioned that I didn't like the tanks in multiplayer, and the guns in the game as a whole weren't as good as CoD4's. Maybe they're supposed to be that way since they are all WWII guns while CoD4 is modern (technology has grown a lot in the last 60 years), but even so I felt like most of the guns in the game were throw-aways while there were maybe 3 or 4 that I actually liked using and felt effective with.

As for the graphics and sound, they were both great. No complaints there.

In Summary:

Pros: NAZI ZOMBIES!!!, some new add-ons to matchmaking, gameplay/controls, graphics, audio.

Cons: weak story/characters, tanks in matchmaking, many of the guns in the game are worthless.


FINAL SCORE: 4 out of 5.




Note: All reviews on this site are solely the subjective opinion of the author. While I try to look at media objectively, this is pretty much impossible (everyone has bias whether they admit it or not), so if you disagree with my review please feel free to post in a polite manner and state your opinion. I welcome respectful discussion on my blog and would love to get feedback on my review and also read yours. Thanks!