It was this very week last year when we told the world that co-op was coming to Call of Duty. At the time we’d been on the piss with then Infinity Ward head honcho Grant Collier, who had given us the heads-up that plans were afoot to bring a co-op mode to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare via DLC. We told you, you said ‘yay’ and it never happened. We’ll probably never know why, although kickass sales and an avid online community no doubt took the pressure of Infinity Ward’s bank balance enough that they could do without a co-op DLC cash injection six months after launch.
The thing is, Grant wasn’t lying. Co-op was definitely part of Infinity Ward’s vision for their Call of Duty 4 engine, but rather than refine it themselves for a DLC release, they’ve passed on the challenge to developer Treyarch. Treyarch, using the CoD4 engine, will deliver four-player co-op in this Christmas’ Call of Duty: World at War. We’ve just been bashing about in this very mode, and we’re here to tell you it’s just as good as we hoped it would be.
But before we advance, let’s examine the lay of the land.
For the latecomers, developer Infinity Ward – the creators of Call of Duty – demand two years of time for each game they produce, which clashes with publisher Activision’s want of a yearly CoD cash-cow. As a result Treyarch tackles the in-between year iterations, such as 2006’s CoD 3 and this year’s World at War. Despite the less than great results of CoD3, Infinity Ward and Activision obviously have plenty of faith in Treyarch. We recall Grant also throwing his support behind the developer, claiming that Infinity Ward had two years to work on CoD 4, while Treyarch was given a mere eight months for CoD 3. Certainly the disparity in quality of the two games wasn’t as great as that timeline would’ve suggested.
This time around, Treyarch has had much longer to work on their instalment. Unlike last year’s Modern Warfare, the game takes us back to World War II, although this time at the backend of the conflict and on completely different fronts. There are two campaigns, one set in the Pacific, as American forces tackle the Japanese as they island hop from one tropical paradise to the next, and the other on the Eastern Front as Russia moved in on the final capture of Berlin. We played through levels from both.
It’s pretty bloody spectacular. As we’ve come to expect from the Call of Duty series, you really do get immersed in the world through a non-stop barrage of sound-effects, explosions, bullet-fire and well executed action set-pieces. Yeah it plays straighter than Ron Jeremy’s cock, but it is sensory overload of the highest order and it facilitates such tension that your butt cheeks will creep ever forward, clinging onto the edge of your couch as a clam would latch onto a diver’s ankle.
In the Pacific its kamikaze warriors rushing out of the trees, mortar raids and planes dropping from the sky while you scurry around in trenches, staying out of the line-of-sight of roaming tanks. In the urban landscape of Berlin, its heated corridor combat in abandoned houses which suddenly open up through collapsed walls to show you a dilapidated city at night, lit up by air-raids as you dodge falling rubble and constant bombs. We’d even go as far as to say it does a better job than CoD4 at brining the war to life – some call we know, but Treyarch aren’t taking a backwards step in taking Infinity Ward’s engine forward.
That said, it is a different type of game. The weaponry is old-school, and while new additions like the flamethrower provide plenty of comedic value – that’s right kiddies, watching foes light up like kerosene covered hay bales is worth the price of admission alone – if you love your red-dot enabled M16A4, you might be more than a little put-off. The graphics too, while impressive, aren’t as good as CoD4. Both games may use the same engine, but very few assets were able to transcend from modern day to the forties and the attention to detail, as well as the sharpness of the A.I – where Infinity Ward’s talent really shines – aren’t as impressive. At least in the build we saw.
But of course it’s the co-op which is World at War’s hadouken – its power play. Co-op is available as split-screen for two players (thank the Gods!), or as two-to-four players online. We played four player online.
The rules are pretty harsh. If someone dies, the game ends and it’s back to the last checkpoint. If there is mortal friendly fire, the same dealio. But it makes for more engaging gameplay as it forces you to think more about moving the frontline forward as a unit and watching each other’s backs. And while there is no leeway when it comes to friendly fire, if a player is downed by an enemy they can be revived within a certain time frame.
This is visualised by a revive marker that appears on the screen and slowly fades from green to red as the breath of your dying brother in arms comes to a close. If you can get to them first though and hold ‘X’ for a few seconds the magic needle will bring them back into the battle. It’s pretty cool and brings a whole new element to the traditional ‘creep-forward far enough until your A.I controlled buddies are willing to run up another ten meters and chew up the enemy’s bullets’ strategy of the past CoDs.
Now your human mates are your buddies, and if one of them runs up ahead and gets monstered, it is tough yakka to go in and save them as they are obviously in the line-of-sight of hostile forces. You’ll need to try and snipe out a few enemies first, or use a smoke grenade, or get someone to draw fire before you make the run for the fallen soldier. And of course that is if there is only one of you dying. We had instances where all three of our comrades were lying on the ground moaning like bitches, and we had to hop around the level like electrified rabbids trying to dodge bullets, revive them and then order them to look after the second noob while we rescued the third.
Throw it up to the hardest difficulty, and you and three CoD veterans will find yourselves engaging with the same enjoyable Call of Duty gameplay you always have, as a human squad - exciting to say the least. And while we think that CoD 5 will be pushing shit uphill encouraging the CoD 4 community away from Modern Warfare to the WWII setting, we do expect them to at least run through the single player in this mode at least once.
Certainly in the last two years Treyarch has come along way to bridging the gap between themselves and the mighty Infinity Ward. Clearly they still remain in separate classes, but that is the nature of talent, isn’t it? There can only be one Gold Medal winner. Thankfully, Silver ain’t bad either.
Gameplayer - Call of Duty: World at War