Call of Duty: World at War Review

Crap.




Ok, I guess I'll have to write more than just that for it to be a review.

In true activation fashion, they took a good product, let someone else take hold of it and drag it through a thorny hedge backwards, into a barbed wire fence and then hacked with a meat cleaver. As you can probably tell I did not enjoy World at War, although at least it had the decency to ditch the numbers so we could forget that we have wasted years on a franchise that has evolved as much as a dodo has over the past eight years.

Lets start off the autopsy by looking at its story/campaign. Based in World War two, as Treyarch didn't get the memo that that time period was hopelessly overdone and that Infinity Ward had realised this two years back and so had made theirs in a modern setting, you are put into the shoes of either a Russian or a American. Because the British had as much to do with the second world war as sponge cake, apparently. Anyway, as the Americans you fight through the pacific against the Japanese. Obviously Treyarch's researchers found out that some of the Japanese at this time like to go kamikaze and run into battle prepared to die at the death of the enemy, and so made EVERY ONE OF THEM run at you screaming bloody murder and ram their freshly sharpened bayonets up your arse, via your left nostril. I can't tell you the amount of times I marched into battle boldly when 7 Japanese soldiers popped out of the earth and straight into my ovaries, so upon respawn I would sneak in after my counterparts have been able to pass through the same area unabated only to find the same soldiers crawling around my insides once more.

As the Russian you play the part of the little soldier who could. Upon first meeting with him, the sniper you meet decides that he's bored of sniping Nazi scum and would rather let this total stranger, luckily named the only Russian name their is, Dimitri, wield the weapon against the grey clad villains. As I went through completing tasks set out by this glorified stereotype of a character, I started to wonder why I didn't just tell him to get stuffed and do his job, it clearly says Sgt. Reznov, Sniper. Anyway as the game progresses you end up doing every role ever, even operate a tank, because this rookie soldier who the story half the time makes out to be someone out of his depth but then tells you to shell 50 billion Nazis to kingdom come, whilst juggling chainsaws, each used to cut through Hitler's defenses, and then use your feet to wrench the fuhrer's head off.

Now, online multiplayer, use the MP40 like everyone else with juggernaut and stopping power if your feeling particularly nasty. This overpowered gift from god himself is able to turn men into chips faster than the death machine in Black Ops.  The entire experience was irritating and about as balanced as a Jenga tower on top of a tightrope in a force 9 gale.

Out of 10 I give it a 5.

'nuff said.

J Stanley.