Forget that, pal – what you should really concern yourself with is –will Treyarch's World at War get it right this time? After the massive rush-job development cycle behind Call of Duty 3, Treyarch has had a full two years of development time to right the wrongs with their last game and even improve on Infinity Ward's last effort. After spending a couple of hours with the game, we're thrilled to report that things are well and good in Treyarch's hands. Follow us as we trace the biggest steps forward in Call of Duty: World at War.
It's Fresh. And Clever.
I thought World War II games were supposed to be bland rehashes of the same beach-storming, bunker clearing scenarios and playing as Brits or Yanks. Well, to be fair, you will do some of that stuff – but for the first time in a long while, you'll feel like this is a relatively fresh experience.
One of COD4's greatest achievements was integrating great scripted moments and twists into tight action and giving AI troopers terrific chances to stand out and add integrity to the story. This definitely continues in World at War's campaign. Though players still jump between roles, nationalities and settings, more than ever you get the feeling of being emotionally involved in a mission. Since the game can be played with 4 players, many of the levels feature branching paths or clear 'side A / side B' routes too.
Smoke effects are a great example the small but notable steps forward Treyarch is taking. Smoke has a gameplay affecting presence in a shocking way. I had one of those are 'wow' moments when I turned a corner in the Berlin mission, Eviction, as a burning building began to fill with smoke. The hallway I was in had volumetric smoke pumping in from the rafters and, just like in real life, standing upright mean that my character and his squad of Red Star Ruskies couldn't see and couldn't breathe. In order to pass through the thick smoke, you have to crouch or wriggle forward prone-style just like in real life. That's damned clever stuff.
Wheel of Morality, Turn, Turn, Turn...
Still in the grim streets of Berlin, you lead your battalion of disgruntled Russian troops on a path of destruction down a central laneway. After escorting a tank through heavy oncoming fire and taking out Nazis along the way, you come across a handful of German troops waving white flags and begging for their lives. Suddenly the game breaks out of combat and an exchange between you, your Ruskie squad and the potential prisoners of war. Your men want them dead, but they want you to make the call. Will you shoot them? Or let them live and risk being slowed down?
US peacekeeping forces participating in another act of diplomacy, civility and mutual consideration.
I made the call to let them live (Hey – I'm a nice guy, what can I say?). Suddenly, one of my troops opens fire with a flamethrower and toasts the lot of them. I was genuinely taken aback; my moral stand came to no good in the end, and indeed it actually prolonged their suffering when I could've ended things very quickly. It was an interesting and decidedly dark conundrum that I really wasn't expecting.
Flamethrowers: Setting My Heart on Fire
Some people love them, some people hate them. Flamethrowers. In Call of Duty: World at War, the flamethrower makes an early appearance during the campaign, and thankfully it's not immediately yanked out of your hands as soon as you've used it to complete the objective. After collecting it from out the front of a hillside artillery, you need to go prone and wriggle up the left bank and inch your way up to the front of the cement outpost. Then it's up to you to jam the flaming nozzle in there and finish the job.
Continuing on, you get to keep the flamethrower, which has infinite fuel and a generous time to overheating. Naturally, we decided to do a little experimenting with the fire effects and we were largely impressed. Grass does catch on fire, as does just about any wood-based environmental object or dead body. However, only select trees would ignite, leaving us to approach every palm tree with a burst of flame just to double check. One particular palm tree had a well-concealed Japanese soldier in there taking pot-shots at us. One hot minute later, the tree was smouldering like an old-fashioned witch-burning on a hill in Salem.
It also earned us a bloodthirsty achievement. Paraphrased, it went something like this: "No Safe Place (10 Points): No hiding place is safe from your flamethrower." Indeed. All shall bow down at my flamethrower and despair.
War is Deadly. And Pretty.
Running on the Call of Duty 4 engine, World at War looks amazing. It really does. In the pacific jungles of south-east Asia, an American contingent pushes through the muddy swamps of a dense thicket, searching for a downed Spitfire. The sun pours through individually rendered leaves in beams as you clutch your Arisaka bayonet. As Japanese soldiers begin to pour out of the jungle around you, you'll encounter melee-savvy enemies, ready to split you in half. The attention to detail on their uniforms is staggering; excellent textures suggest the dense weave of the fabric, while branches of foliage adorn their helmets.
Later, standing on the top floor of a burnt out building in Berlin, the skyline was filled with jetfighters, smoke, tracer bullets and layer upon layer of haze, particles, volumetric clouds and chaos. Below, at street level, we took in the view; dozens of wrecked cars (presumably VWs, being wartime Berlin) arcing down the long street. Buildings, once ornately decorated and bright, were now riddled with pockmarks and impact craters from constant shelling. Between the crates, upturned waste, corpses, twisted steel lamp posts and flaming wreckage, dozens of soldiers waged battle independently, taking cover, flanking and advancing. Like COD 4 before it, the level of detail and organic design work was astounding. A bassy, thrulling rock theme fades in and intensifies as you press forwards, crate by crate, barrel by barrel, upping the tension and atmosphere.
Not pictured: enormous marshmallow.
The Definitive WWII Experience
Every World War II game claims to be the be-all and end-all of World War II games. If it doesn't think it's the best, then what's the point? Honestly, that was Treyarch's biggest flaw with Call of Duty 3; it just wasn't as good as COD 2's interpretation of WWII. It made a lot of big promises but only really delivered on the multiplayer front. This time, things are radically different. We do think that, given Treyarch's excellent multiplayer foundation, COD: WW will succeed on this front. More critically however, from what we've played so far, the single player campaign is engaging and exciting too – the missing puzzle piece from COD 3. This could very well be the definitive World War II experience this generation.
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