Call of Duty: World at War
Year: 2008
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
BBFC: 15
Published: 08/06/23
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
BBFC: 15
Published: 08/06/23
With the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 the franchise had well and truly attained the level of commercial success publisher Activision wanted the series to have, and developer Infinity Ward had reinvented the wheel when it came to modern military shooters, and how games approached competitive online matchmaking. The game also ushered in the two-year development cycle for Call of Duty games to allow for greater innovation between titles, but of course the games would still release yearly as development duties were now being shared with Call of Duty 3 developer Treyarch. So, the fifth mainline Call of Duty game had big boots to fill, not just following on from the monumental success of Modern Warfare, but also being Treyarch’s first real chance to show what they were capable of with the Call of Duty brand when given a decent length of time to craft the game. Call of Duty: World at War released with great commercial success and high critical praise in 2008, however I have never been able to shake the feeling that World at War is a major step back for the franchise following Modern Warfare.
Set between the years of 1942 and 1945, World at War sees players participate in two theatres of war. The first being with the U.S. Marines as Private Miller as he and his squad battle Japanese forces on the islands of Makin, Peleliu, and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean. The second sees players take control of Private Petrenko of the Soviet Union as he fights alongside Sergeant Viktor Reznov as they retake Nazi occupied territory in Eastern Europe before staging an assault on Berlin.
Set between the years of 1942 and 1945, World at War sees players participate in two theatres of war. The first being with the U.S. Marines as Private Miller as he and his squad battle Japanese forces on the islands of Makin, Peleliu, and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean. The second sees players take control of Private Petrenko of the Soviet Union as he fights alongside Sergeant Viktor Reznov as they retake Nazi occupied territory in Eastern Europe before staging an assault on Berlin.
World at War attempts to build upon the foundations of storytelling established in Call of Duty 3 by presenting depictions of real WWII battles, but with recurring characters and developing relationships with squamates throughout the two campaigns. In comparison to Call of Duty 3 this is a natural progression in terms of how to better implement character driven narratives in a game primarily designed to showcase historic battles, but in comparison to Modern Warfare it’s impossible not to see this as a step backwards. Where Modern Warfare was truly a story driven by its characters, World at War feels considerably more similar to the first three Call of Duty games where you were just a generic soldier on a battlefield.
The pacing of each games story is also a little off because it will switch perspectives every couple of missions, meaning that once things start to get interesting in one story, you’re dragged away from it for a couple of missions on the other side of the planet. It means you can never get into the swing of either one of them, so by the time the credits roll you don’t feel that sense of triumph.
That said the Russian campaign is by far the more interesting of the two, with Petrenko and Reznov being much more interesting characters. Reznov in particular is a standout character whose larger-than-life characteristics make him both extremely endearing and highly memorable.
Call of Duty 3 began to show the early signs of stagnation in the gameplay formula for Call of Duty for multiple reasons. Firstly, it not only didn’t mix up the status quo established with Call of Duty 2, but it also didn’t do it anywhere near as competently due to some iffy level design and a feeling of been there done that. World at War meanwhile takes a number of cues from Modern Warfare, primarily in relation to the speed of gameplay. Thanks to the proper implementation of a sprint function, World at War will see you darting around the arena style maps at a much faster pace in comparison to the first three games. However, with this comes the first true abandonment of the series origins as a shooter that never wanted to allow you to be a one man army. Whilst Modern Warfare was fast in pace, you still needed to rely on your AI squad-mates to help you push forward most of the time. World at War meanwhile seems to have some of the worst friendly AI in the series so far, and the odds are stacked so massively against you because of grenade spamming enemies that seem to kamikaze charge you wherever possible (honestly, I don’t think I ever went more than two seconds without hearing a soldier shout BANZAI! As they charged at me with a raised bayonet); as such World at War is best played like DOOM…don’t stop moving, and don’t stop shooting. This doesn’t really work because the gameplay mechanics are the exact opposite of that, regenerating health, slow walking speed, you can’t sprint and shoot etc. But in World at War you’re not able to stay still for more than a few seconds without being the target of dozens of grenades.
The level design also doesn’t accommodate the run and gun playstyle either, as much like Call of Duty 3, Treyarch can’t seem to populate a level with objects without making them completely hazardous. I was always getting stuck on scenery and random objects on the ground during my time with World at War, combine this with incompetent friendly AI that often would get in my way and overly aggressive enemy AI that never gave you a second to breathe and it takes a considerable amount of luck to get through any mission.
The pacing of each games story is also a little off because it will switch perspectives every couple of missions, meaning that once things start to get interesting in one story, you’re dragged away from it for a couple of missions on the other side of the planet. It means you can never get into the swing of either one of them, so by the time the credits roll you don’t feel that sense of triumph.
That said the Russian campaign is by far the more interesting of the two, with Petrenko and Reznov being much more interesting characters. Reznov in particular is a standout character whose larger-than-life characteristics make him both extremely endearing and highly memorable.
Call of Duty 3 began to show the early signs of stagnation in the gameplay formula for Call of Duty for multiple reasons. Firstly, it not only didn’t mix up the status quo established with Call of Duty 2, but it also didn’t do it anywhere near as competently due to some iffy level design and a feeling of been there done that. World at War meanwhile takes a number of cues from Modern Warfare, primarily in relation to the speed of gameplay. Thanks to the proper implementation of a sprint function, World at War will see you darting around the arena style maps at a much faster pace in comparison to the first three games. However, with this comes the first true abandonment of the series origins as a shooter that never wanted to allow you to be a one man army. Whilst Modern Warfare was fast in pace, you still needed to rely on your AI squad-mates to help you push forward most of the time. World at War meanwhile seems to have some of the worst friendly AI in the series so far, and the odds are stacked so massively against you because of grenade spamming enemies that seem to kamikaze charge you wherever possible (honestly, I don’t think I ever went more than two seconds without hearing a soldier shout BANZAI! As they charged at me with a raised bayonet); as such World at War is best played like DOOM…don’t stop moving, and don’t stop shooting. This doesn’t really work because the gameplay mechanics are the exact opposite of that, regenerating health, slow walking speed, you can’t sprint and shoot etc. But in World at War you’re not able to stay still for more than a few seconds without being the target of dozens of grenades.
The level design also doesn’t accommodate the run and gun playstyle either, as much like Call of Duty 3, Treyarch can’t seem to populate a level with objects without making them completely hazardous. I was always getting stuck on scenery and random objects on the ground during my time with World at War, combine this with incompetent friendly AI that often would get in my way and overly aggressive enemy AI that never gave you a second to breathe and it takes a considerable amount of luck to get through any mission.
World at War is also an ugly game. Environments are adorned with low quality textures, jagged geometry, and almost exclusively use ugly muddy browns and greys for everything. Character models are similarly janky with animations still looking as stiff as they did in the original Call of Duty, and hitboxes that are incredibly inconsistent. World at War goes for a considerably grittier approach than the first three Call of Duty games and employs the use of bloody gore frequently. If you shoot an enemy with a shotgun it will blow off their limbs, and whilst I feel like Treyarch probably thought it made them seem more mature it actually makes the whole thing look kind of silly just seeing these bloody body parts flying everywhere. It’s just kind of tasteless and as a result is borderline insulting to the real-world tragedies it’s trying to depict.
World at War also suffers with a number of performance issues, most noticeable of which is the unstable frame rate. Call of Duty had garnered a reputation for almost always being able to maintain a consistent 60FPS during gameplay, something that very few games at the time were capable of. But World at War often struggles to keep its head above 30FPS, with frequent and major dips in frames even when things aren’t particularly busy. Combine this with lots of screen tearing and major on screen artefacts that muddy the visual quality of the game and frankly World at War is a total let down in comparison to all of its predecessors without even matching the visual fidelity of Modern Warfare which was capable of maintaining a generally good performance.
But on to multiplayer, because that’s where the real meat of Call of Duty was at this point. World at War’s multiplayer suite is structurally identical to Modern Warfare’s, which makes a lot of sense, I mean why fix what wasn’t broken? It also worked so incredibly well that there was no point in trying to fiddle with it just yet. That being said I find the guns considerably less fun to use in World at War and as a result the multiplayer never landed with me the same way that Modern Warfare did. The killstreaks on offer in World at War were also wildly unbalanced, Attack Dogs in particular were enough to ruin everyone’s day as they were infamously difficult to defend against. It was also notoriously buggy and unstable, drawing the attention of hackers the world over which did mean that World at War’s playerbase dropped sharply in the years following its release unlike Modern Warfare which remained reasonably well populated even almost a decade after its release.
World at War also suffers with a number of performance issues, most noticeable of which is the unstable frame rate. Call of Duty had garnered a reputation for almost always being able to maintain a consistent 60FPS during gameplay, something that very few games at the time were capable of. But World at War often struggles to keep its head above 30FPS, with frequent and major dips in frames even when things aren’t particularly busy. Combine this with lots of screen tearing and major on screen artefacts that muddy the visual quality of the game and frankly World at War is a total let down in comparison to all of its predecessors without even matching the visual fidelity of Modern Warfare which was capable of maintaining a generally good performance.
But on to multiplayer, because that’s where the real meat of Call of Duty was at this point. World at War’s multiplayer suite is structurally identical to Modern Warfare’s, which makes a lot of sense, I mean why fix what wasn’t broken? It also worked so incredibly well that there was no point in trying to fiddle with it just yet. That being said I find the guns considerably less fun to use in World at War and as a result the multiplayer never landed with me the same way that Modern Warfare did. The killstreaks on offer in World at War were also wildly unbalanced, Attack Dogs in particular were enough to ruin everyone’s day as they were infamously difficult to defend against. It was also notoriously buggy and unstable, drawing the attention of hackers the world over which did mean that World at War’s playerbase dropped sharply in the years following its release unlike Modern Warfare which remained reasonably well populated even almost a decade after its release.
But World at War also offered a co-op wave survival mode, among the first to kick off the trend alongside Gears of War 2’s Horde Mode. Nazi Zombies is arguably the most memorable and most popular aspect to World at War. Seeing you fight wave after wave of relentless zombies, unlocking better weapons and new arenas within maps as you progressed. But Zombies mode never clicked with me. I think because I already found the gameplay so underwhelming in World at War, Zombies never stood a chance when compared to the likes of Gears 2. To this day I find Call of Duty Zombies one of the most horrendously overhyped gamemodes in any game ever, and considering that World at War had by far the best iteration of the mode that’s saying something when I don’t even really like that version of it.
As I said earlier, World at War to me is nothing but a major step backwards in almost every facet of its design and execution. Whilst it certainly improves on a number of aspects of Call of Duty 3, it often doesn’t do it as well as Call of Duty 1 or 2, let alone Modern Warfare. I can’t see why anyone would want to return to Call of Duty: World at War today, and I struggle to see why it was so highly regarded when it released because frankly it’s a mess. If I never play this game again, I’ll die a happy man.
As I said earlier, World at War to me is nothing but a major step backwards in almost every facet of its design and execution. Whilst it certainly improves on a number of aspects of Call of Duty 3, it often doesn’t do it as well as Call of Duty 1 or 2, let alone Modern Warfare. I can’t see why anyone would want to return to Call of Duty: World at War today, and I struggle to see why it was so highly regarded when it released because frankly it’s a mess. If I never play this game again, I’ll die a happy man.