Call of Duty: WaW, CoD 5



Developer: Treyarch
Platform: PC, 360, PS3
Multiplayer: Yes
Single player: Yes

World at War, the title of the latest episode in the Call of Duty franchise, released a year after its predecessor, developer's Treyarch wasted no time in finalising the game and releasing it to the Public, perhaps this time was wasted?

One thing that becomes Apparent the first time you play the game, be it in single player mode or in multiplayer mode, the game is Call of Duty 4, minus 60 years, you see the perk and prestige systems, though argueably it would have been foolish not to continue it, and the mission ideas and concepts follow a similar suit, for example, the Sniper mission in Call of Duty 4 which required the player to assassinate leading villain Zakhaev is now replaced by a Similar sniper mission in which you must assassinate a wretched Nazi General called Amsel. In Call of Duty 4, the player also assumed control of the arsenal of weapons carried by an AC130 gunship, however in this installement, the behemoth of a plane is now a tin can of a sea plane called a 'Black Cat' which in due course gets pepper potted by Japanese AT boats and Zeroes.

Aside the mimicing of it's predecessor, CoD5 is a decent game, though perhaps it followed to safely in the foot steps of CoD4 and did not bring anything new to the table. I played all of the difficulties of the Single Player through to the end, from Recruit to Veteran.

Recruit
I played Recruit at the end, after I had completed the other difficulties, as I feel Recruit never complements the standard of a Games AI, and makes the entire game a complete joke, CoD5 is no exception, after playing several missions it soon became apparent that it did not require me to use a gun of any sort, instead I found rushing towards the bewildered Japanese with only a melee attack, on my own, soon disorientated them and the dozens of Japanese conscripts were now cowering in the face of me alone, not quite the challenge I look for in a game, I moved on to the harder difficulties.

Hardened
I decided to skip Normal and just go straight to Hardened, Hardened is said to be the way a game is to be played to get the full effects of the AI and its 'Intelligence', Hardened, is called so for a reason, the simple reason being that it is a slightly hardened version of Recruit, meaning the AI have the opportunity to throw several Hand Grenades your way and to aim slightly better. I would class how difficult a difficulty is by seeing how many times a died during the course of a mission, on the missions I played, I didn't.

Veteran
I have a love veteran. I have completed veteran on Call of Duty 2 aswell as Call of Duty 4, prior to completing it on 5, enough rambling, Veteran is the other end of the scale when it comes to Difficulties, instead of the Japanese and German AI cowering in fear from your own banzai attacks they now spam grenades blissfully and never surrender or backdown. One thing I found particularly remarkable was that I could be standing at the back of an entourage of American Soldiers yet I was the one they picked out from them all, I was flattered, truely. Grenades, as I mentioned previously, are possibly the one thing, and the lack of health of course, that makes veteran difficult. On the Call of Duty series a 'Grenade Danger Indicater' appears on-screen every time a grenade rears it's ugly head, well as long as it's close enough to hurt you (most of the time), on one occassion I managed to witness a ring of these 'Grenade Danger Indicater's' encompassing my crosshair, the Five grenades which had encircled me took no mercy and each blew up momentarily after finding a home next to my megre piece of cover.

After finishing the singleplayer I moved onto the multiplayer, briefly. I had played Call of Duty 4 to death, every game mode, recieved every gun and most of the accompanying camouflages, so when I arrived on the World at War scene there was nothing stunningly new, a few new weapons, which I've seen before from other world war two games, and the blasted Red Dot sight came to haunt me again in the form of an 'Aperture Sight', I dislike it the ease in which someone can aim. Instead of Helicopters you now aquire Dogs after killing 7 enemies in a row, however instead of a single assistant hovering around over head, you get several speedy dogs which kill in two hits and, if unprepared, can kill you without you realising due to their small size. For a 5 kill streak you get an Artillery Barrage, and just like in CoD4 it arrives10 seconds after the enemy team has moved on and stormed your base, as usual 3 kills summons a recon plane, proudly telling everyone in the game where you are hiding.

I was swiftly bored of multiplayer and had retired after 5 games of noob.. I mean boot camp, a playlist for level 1's - 8's who had never played the game before :0.

Next I moved on to achievements, I am quite fond of achievements as they require you to often re-play the game in a different fashion. This time around Intel from CoD4, an achievement you aquire for collecting them all, has been replaced by death cards, same story, you find the death card and it unlocks cheats which are useless and crap. The other achievements are an assortment of completing each level on veteran and other in-game events, such as saving a private from a Bonzai attacker. There was also an achievement for Asassinating General Amsel with a pistol, as opposed to your Barret 50. Cal look a like the PTRS-41, an Anti-Tank rifle, which is a bit rediculous but challenging and quite fun to achieve.

Overall this game is a cross between the core of Call of Duty 2 and the Good Features of Call of Duty 4, apart from the new feature that allows you to blow off peoples limbs... and there is a nice Co-op feature to have a bit of fun with your friends, when on recruit that is, though the Levels don't have much replayabillity to them, as they are designed, poorly, and for only one player, so only one player can make use of a flamethrower, or bazookas, in some cases.

After completion of CoD4 the player plays the very challenging level 'Mile High Club' this time around the player plays on a game mode called 'Nazi Zombies', and is just that, the player is in a deserted house and a horde of German Zombies attack your location, you can pick up various weaponry for a small fee in return for fixing various barricades and defences.

Pros
- Co - op
- Limb Removal
- CoD4 engine
- Achievements
- Nazi Zombies

Cons
- WW2 again..
- Not much new to the main game
- Too Easy or Too Hard
- Stupid AI that does the same thing everytime

Total Rating - 7/10

First Review :0