Enter Call of Duty: World At War, a game heading back to World War II afterCOD4’s venture into modern combat.

For some, this is an extremely strange decision. COD4 reinvented the series, attracting a mass market, bored with the numerous WWII shooters before it. But Treyarch know what they’re doing, having earned experience with their work onCOD3. They’ve taken the ever so familiar war into unfamiliar territory, focusing on the Russian’s final push into Berlin and America’s battle against the Japanese in the Pacific; two battles rarely seen in video games before.

So it’s interesting that World At War shares more similarities with Modern Warthan the other WWII games in the franchise. By using the COD4 game engine we’re treated to the same gameplay we all know and love; with massive set pieces, fun and accessible shooting, and the high octane, explosive combat that has become the series’ trademark. But depending on who you are this can be a good or bad thing. On the one hand the gameplay is superb and you can’t wait to get more of it, but on the other you might be bored with it, so a game that’s more of the same might not suit your needs.

And that’s essentially what World At War is; more of the same. Even some of the missions have striking similarities to those seen in COD4. Early on there’s a sniping mission that can easily be compared to the infamous All Ghillied Up – it’s not quite as good, but has its own memorable moments – and there’s also a level aboard a giant gunship, flying over the Pacific sinking ships and shooting planes. It hits all the right notes and ends up being one of the most exciting missions in the game.

It’s moments like this that make World At War its own game; those stand-out moments that separate it from the comparisons with its predecessor. It may be World War II all over again but there are plenty of new gameplay additions that keep things fresh. Being in the Pacific we have a new enemy in the form of the Japanese. They present new threats that are guaranteed to keep you on your toes; Banzai soldiers charging like madmen, prepared to die, jumping out of the grass and trees to surprise you in every skirmish. It adds a new dimension to the combat that has been previously unseen in the COD franchise.

Luckily there are plenty of new firearms to fend off the wave of attacks, the stand-out being the flamethrower. If you’ve played any amount of shooters you would have used a flamethrower before, but none as effective or enjoyable as in World At War. Think back to the opening D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan where a solider uses a flamethrower to burn the Nazis out of their bunkers. That’s exactly what it’s like here.

And on the whole the campaign offers the same satisfaction. The two sides of the campaign have their own memorable moments and they’re varied enough to keep it from getting stale. If you’ve played COD before, you know what to expect. You’re sent down a linear path, there is no exploration, it’s all about getting to the next set piece, all while using plenty of authentic firearms to stop anyone getting in your way. It’s a tense, exhilarating experience, and there’s no reason to change it when it works this well.

The story, on the other hand, is a mixed bag; with most WWII shooters it’s hard to build up an engaging story like what was done with COD4, purely because we all know how it ends. World At War uses historical footage and narration to move the story along, with the capable hands of Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman providing the voice work. The presentation in these sections is great, using highly stylised effects – reminiscent of the opening to the 2007 film, The Kingdom – to show the footage along with statistics of how brutal this war was.

And the brutality of war is ever prominent in World At War. It’s the most visceralCOD to date, with bodies being ripped apart, limbs flying about the place; blood pouring out, covering the battlefield, the stark crimson red of it standing out above the murky colours of the environment. It’s extremely gory, and does an excellent job of showing how soldiers felt in this war, especially with the Russians. Their anger shines through more than anything, constantly shouting at their foes, condemning them to hell. You can feel the emotion, and it really adds a new layer to the combat and narrative.

Strange then, that after completion you unlock Nazi Zombie mode. A new addition where hordes of the living dead hunt you, and three other buddies, down. It takes place in a rundown house full of boarded up windows to stop these flesh eaters from gaining access. It starts with your run-of-the-mill zombies – slow movers that are pretty easy to handle – but as you move up levels they’ll eventually get a lot faster and stronger. To counter their attacks you’ll need to earn points by killing them, and then using these points to buy better weaponry and ammo, as well as fixing your defences. It’s a good mechanic that encourages headshots and teamwork; and just like Gears of War 2’s Horde, it’s an outstanding new addition that should provide hours and hours of fun. It’s just an odd choice when you consider World At War’s focus on the visceral, brutality of war.

Of course, the rest of the multiplayer is COD’s big pull, and it’s no different here. But, once again it’s COD4 all over again, good or bad depending on your view point. If you like it then there’s obviously a lot to love here. The gameplay is largely unchanged so it’s just a case of adjusting to the old weapons and new power ups. In COD4 earning different kill streaks would allow you to call in reinforcements for the cause; three kills for a UAV, five for an air strike and seven for a chopper. In World At War these stay similar, but they need to apply to the large jump back into the past – most notably the helicopter being replaced by attack dogs. These little mutts comes in large packs, jumping up and killing you just as easily as they can in the single player. Luckily you can fight back with a couple of bullets or a quick swipe of the knife, but more often than not there’s just too many to handle, giving a big smile of glee to whomever got enough kills to send them out.

And it’s this system for rewarding the player that makes World At War as addictive as COD4 once was. The level based system is back, and there’s still all the same challenges and perks as before – with a couple new additions. Vehicles on some of the maps differentiate situations a bit more, but essentially, and I hate to say it again, this is COD4 but in WWII. It’s fun, but it would be nice to see a little more originality.

For that, you can always head over to co-op. Not original, I know, but it’s new forCOD and ends up being one of the best modes in the game. You can play through the campaign with up to four players, and a scoring system adds a sense of competition to proceedings.

Visually the COD4 engine has done it again; World At War looks stunning. The smoke and explosion effects are as good as ever, blowing you away however far or close you are to them. The varied environments all have their own qualities, and textures look great, especially in the lush scenery of the Pacific jungles. Elsewhere the rain and water effects are superb, combining with clothing to create a damp, shiny look to what are already heavily detailed character models.

Sadly, Treyarch haven’t fully wrapped their heads round the engine yet. The AI is laughable at times, with Japanese Banzai soldiers sometimes running straight past you as if you weren’t even there. If they do they’ll normally attempt to attack your comrades, but they’ll even fail at this, often standing next to each other, doing nothing. It’s comical and does detract from the experience. A disappointing aspect.

“Clocking in at around five to six hours it’s a very short but sweet experience.”Call of Duty: World At War offers a lot of content. The campaign is short but it’s as good as any other shooter on the market, and the multiplayer has proved to be a big hit already with COD4. But that’s the problem: it’s too much like its predecessor. For a lot of people this will be a great thing, whilst others may find the formula wearing a bit thin. It’s an enjoyable experience but may leave you wanting something more. It doesn’t have that same feeling of awe as when you first popped COD4 into your disk tray. I’m sure it’ll be a big hit, but for those already heavily invested in COD4, it might be best to stay there, for now.

————————————————————————————

10: 32: Treyarch head Mark Lamia comes out to the stage to show off Call of Duty: Black Ops demo.

10: 34: Running around in the jungles of Laos, a firefight commences. The smoke effects from a grenade explosion look particularly impressive.

10:37: Getting into a helicopter. It isn’t clear if you are flying the helicopter or if it is on rails. Nevertheless, blowing up stuff along the river is looking very nice.

10:38: The fighting starts up again, the water and smoke effects are really fantastic, it looks like a serious improvement over previous Call of Duty games.

10:39: Don Mattrick come to the stage. He announces a Microsoft-Activision deal, all Call of Duty map packs and add-ons will be exclusively released on the Xbox 360. Then he says that this is only a timed release (PS3 will get the content eventually)

10:42: Hideo Kojima takes the stage, he says that Metal Gear Rising footage will be shown off for the first time. He then introduces his protégé, Shigenobu Matsuyama, the next leader of the franchise.

10:44:The trailer starts for the new game, showing off Raiden and a really powerful sword. The big idea is “cutting”, using the sword, doesn’t look like a stealth game, but perhaps a hack-and-slash.

10:48: Cliff Blezinski takes the stage, he is going to show off Gears of War 3. He calls up some other people from Epic Games who are going to be playing 4-player co-op with Cliff

10:49: Players can hand each other weapons. Good thing they can do this because here come mutant locust! They have long tentacles and are really bringing the pain

10:51: The fighting is showing off some of the new lighting effects. The light coming through the tree canopy above is nice.

10:54: Peter Molyneux, the creative director of Lionhead Studios,  comes out to the stage and reintroduces the Xbox 360 exclusive, Fable 3.  He announces that Fable 3 will be coming out on October 26.

10:55: The trailer for Fable 3 makes it seem as though the five decade gap between Fable 2 and Fable 3 meant some major technological improvements.

10:56: Phil Spencer returns to the stage, announces the new Crytek game, Codename Kingdoms, which appears to be a gladiator game—it doesn’t showoff much, just an announcement trailer.

10:58: Bungie creative director, Marcus Lehto come to the stage and talks about the success of the Halo Reach beta. He proceeds to show off the first look at the campaign and announces that Halo Reach will be shipping this September.

11:01: The battle against the Covenant starts again and this time there are Lady Spartans thrown into battle alongside the men.  The game looks much grittier, has a Gears of War look to it.

11:03: The Spartans are getting into a rocketship and are launching into space.  This spaceship is not just part of the cinematic, players get to fly it and engage in space combat.  The demo ends with the release date of September 9

11:05: Now we are onto the explanation of Project Natal…err…Kinect. Ron Forbes, an engineer on the Kinect team, is showing off screen navigation using motion controls. Kinect recognizes the person playing and allows them to navigate the menus using their hands. There is also voice controls, allowing the user to say “Zune” to start the Zune app. The interface looks very similar to the Wii’s home screen, but you don’t have a controller with this one!

11:08: Showing off a movie, the user can say “Xbox Pause” or “Xbox Play” to start and stop the video hands free. They also mention that there will be 15 games at launch.

11:10: Xbox Live is coming to Windows 7 phones…no one is clapping. They are busy typing on their iPhones or Android devices apparently.

11:11: Video Kinect is announced, another engineer from the team takes the stage, Laura. She says that you can talk to friends over Xbox Live and MSN messenger. She begins talking to her twin sister—wait, twins?!

11:13: You can watch movies and other things with the person you are chatting with, seems to be a facelift of some of the old Xbox features. The demo is really showing off more voice controls and more interconnectivity with Microsoft services.

11:15: ESPN 3 is coming to Xbox Live.  This service will allow users to watch certain live broadcasts of ESPN programming and “over 3,500 live events” exclusively over Xbox Live.

11:17: Trey Wingo and Josh Elliot, two Sportscenter anchors, take the stage to show off the new ESPN feature on Xbox 360. They show off some interactive features using voice controls—you can vote for which team you want to win, watch replays, and do other basic control functions using Kinect.  “Kinect will make taunting even easier”

11:21: The ESPN feature will be available for no additional cost to Xbox Live users.

11:22: Kudo Tsunoda, the creative director for Kinect, takes the stage to explain some more about Kinect.  He says that there are going to be 6 new games going to be shown off today for Kinect, obviously, all exclusives to Xbox 360.

11: 24: A young girl comes out to play with Skittles…the TIGER?! This seems dangerous. She uses the voice controls to tell the tiger to do tricks and uses the “touch” controls to pet Skittles.  There is a jump rope and you can make the tiger jump over it. It goes into Matrix style slow motion.

11:26: Tsunoda says that “Kinectimals” will feature 40 different animals with 30 unique activities. He introduces Shin from Rare Studios who is playing Kinect Sports.  You can play soccer and run the hurdles.  Here comes a video showing off the sports available: Soccer, Bowling, Track and Field, Ping-Pong, Boxing, and Volleyball.

11:30: Here is “Joyride” the new kart racing game that will “completely reinvent the kart racing genre”. The woman demoing the game is able to do tricks midair, but it doesn’t look like there is combat elements a la Mario Kart.

11:32: “Kinect Adventures!” is shown off, you are on rails, and you have to dodge obstacles and collect items. Its like a theme park ride, it even has the random photo part of the ride.

11:34: They are showing off another part of “Adventures!”, two women doing some type of rafting. One woman screams, “Look at the water!” and another follows with “We can go anywhere!”. The press conferences are completely overacted.

11:36: The photos taken from Kinect games can be uploaded to Facebook and other social networking sites. I don’t think I will do this—I don’t need to have photos of me being a nerd to confirm my nerdiness.

11:37: Tsunodo says that there are many developers making titles for the Kinect launch. Ubisoft is coming out with a Kinect game,  “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved”. Apparently, all these games are only this one.

11:38: Felicia, from Ubisoft, is playing the game. She says that “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” will redefine living room fitness. The game is able to detect the person’s height, muscles size, and other measurements.

11:40: Trainer to the celebrities, Michael George, comes out on the stage saying that he collaborated on the project with Ubisoft. He says that there is yoga, personal training, and other fitness activities in the game. This is totally feeling like a Nintendo press conference!

11:44: Here come the other game introductions, this time one from Harmonix, called “Dance Central”. BBD’s Poison begins to play and the woman on stage dances, extraordinarily well.

11:45: Alex Rigopolus takes the stage, officially announcing the game. He says that dancing shouldn’t be done with controllers or mats because it doesn’t capture the essence of dance. He says that the game will include music from across genres and highlights, Lady Gaga, No Doubt, and Beastie Boys. There will also be downloadable content.

11:47: Rigopolus says that Harmonix work with choreographers to get unique dance routines—600 moves and 90 different routines. Kasson Crooker, a nerdy engineer comes out and tells us that he couldn’t dance before “Dance Central”, I believe him. He begins to dance to No Doubt’s “Hella Good”, this game won’t teach you to dance, but it will allow you to move to music.

11:50: Phil Spencer comes back out on the stage and annunces that Kinect will launch on November 4 in North America with 15 launch titles. It will also be compatible with all 40 million Xboxes that have been sold.

11:51: LucasArts is making a Kinect game, a Star Wars game, which was already shown off last night at Microsoft’s other event.  Gameplay is being shown, but no one is actually playing.

11:52: Bill Giese and Dan Greenwalt from Turn 10 Studios come to the stage and show off Kinect features in the Forza franchise. Players can walk around the car and look at the various parts, even get into the vehicle and play around with the various instruments.  It is the “future of racing” and is coming in 2011.

11:56: Don Mattrick is back on the stage. He shows off the new Xbox 360—built in Wifi, 250 GB harddrive. He says it is “sleeker, smaller, and more quiet [sic]”, it is shipping to retailers today. He finishes up by saying that everyone in attendance is getting a free console on the way out.

————————————————————————————–

Thanks for joining us! Check back all week for more live blogs and information from E3 2010!

Call of Duty 4 was a beautifully polished game, featuring both a memorable campaign and addictive multiplayer. Without a doubt it deserved all of the accolades it received when it was released two years ago. From the minute that Modern Warfare 2 was announced, I wondered how a close to perfect game could be improved upon. Infinity Ward included more guns, explosions, and action sequences in an attempt to make the game better.

Unfortunately this game design mantra negatively affected the single player campaign.  Call of Duty 4’s story was particularly memorable largely because it was filled with dramatic twists and turns. Infinity Ward attempted to make Modern Warfare 2’s campaign even more thrilling by injecting it with action movie steroids. You will ride snowmobiles and boats, climb and repel down cliffs, and escape the most hopeless of situations.

The action moves so quickly that it makes the story confusing. I found myself constantly confused with how the game was relating back to the main international conflict. Part of this is due to the Call of Duty franchise’s switching around soldiers in different theaters of the conflict. You will be fighting in Brazil, then in the US, then in Russia, then back to Brazil—moving so much that you can’t realize who you are fighting a specific points. Yet a larger reason for the confusing mind numbing campaign is because you are always in a collapsing cave, exploding building, swooping helicopter or speeding humvee.  Modern Warfare 2’s campaign is overwhelming because it is overly dramatic.  Of course, there are parts where you are sneaking and sniping, but the fast parts greatly outweigh these tense sections.

Fortunately for multiplayer fans, the inclusion of bigger and better action definitely improves the online component of the game. The bigger arsenal of weapons and perks allows players hundreds of new combination possibilities. More important is the addition of the killstreak reward choices. Instead of automatically getting a reward at 3, 5, and 7 kills, you can choose your supports. Taking control of an AC-130 gunship and a heavily armored helicopter is enormously satisfying, but pales in comparison to the 25 killstreak reward of a tactical nuke.

Simply put, the multiplayer is still addicting. I know this first hand because I have played almost 40 hours through the first week of the games release. Infinity Ward did make some great improvements to the multiplayer portion of the game, so much so that I took breaks from the campaign to play with my friends online.

If you do get frustrated online by “cheap” through the wall kills and campers, you can play the new Spec Ops mode. Essentially it allows you to play some of the campaigns more exciting moments and special challenges with a friend in co-op.  Broken up nicely into chapters, the Spec Ops mode includes the same action movie type sequences but doesn’t overwhelm you. Playing with a friend makes the experience all the better. However it does beg the question of why there isn’t an option of playing through the entire campaign in co-op.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a great game largely due to the great formula created by Call of Duty 4. The franchise is still one of the best-engineered shooters but I wasn’t thrilled with the changes in the campaign’s design. Fortunately, Infinity Ward included some improvements to the multiplayer portion of the game that freshens the experience and makes it more addictive than ever.

Entertainium played both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.