Call Of Duty: World At War
Over the past couple days I gave into the Call Of Duty curse and picked up Call Of Duty: World At War. There have been previous discussions with friends of mine about this game in particular and it’s very addictive game play. Below is a brief explanation from wikipedia:
Call of Duty: World at War is a first-person shooter video game. It is developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. It is the fifth installment in the Call of Duty series. The game is set in the Pacific Theater and Eastern Front of World War II.
The story focuses on the final battles of World War II in the Pacific and Eastern Europe involving the United States, the Empire of Japan, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. It is told from the perspectives of a Marine Raider and a Red Army soldier and is based on several historical battles, including the raid on Makin Island, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Peleliu, the Battle of Seelow Heights, the Battle of Okinawa, and the Battle of Berlin. The multiplayer portion of the game contains various game modes and contains a leveling system that allows the player to unlock additional weapons and rewards as they progress, which was originally implemented in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. A new feature to the Call of Duty series is cooperative mode, which can support up to four players online and two offline.
I purchased the game over last weekend when I found out that they were having a double XP weekend. What does that mean? Well, let me get geeky with you for a second. When you play multiplayer games (games with up to 20 players from all over connected by the internet and XBOX live servers) you receive points (XP) for kills and task you accomplish throughout the game. When you build up enough XP you move up in rank in the game and begin to unlock new features, weapons and challenges. Over the weekend they doubled the normal amount of points you receive for kills and task. This set me up for moving through the ranks fairly quickly. I had seen friends of mine playing the game for the last month or two since it came out. I tried to hold out but could resist no longer since my favor with Gears Of War 2 had gone. In other words, it got boring.
I enjoy playing the multiplayer matches with friends of mine (who happen to be really stinking good) and it really adds a nice comfort to the game. A nice perk of the recent XBOX update is the ability to party up outside of the game and then play the game in multiplayer mode. Normally in some games when your character dies, you loose communications, however if you party up outside and then go in, you can continue to speak with your teammates. This nice feature also eliminates the in-game chatter that you usually hear. Most of the time I can do with out the in-game chat. Too many times you get these little kids playing the game who have nothing better to do then talk trash, yell, curse, play annoying music and just generally make the game play suffer.
Some new features in the game are the addition of attack dogs in place of COD4’s helicopter support. A great feature to combat the hiding in buildings that usually happened in 4. This time you have the very mobile and vicious attack dogs that will run into building to attack you opponents. But don’t think they are invincible. Just as you can be shot or stabbed, so can the dogs. You’ll notice that dogs attacking you are black, dogs you send out have a typical German Shepherd look. Airstike has been replaced with Artillery strike. They work and act similarly… not as great as you’d hope! Some new perk features include shades which help you see through flares, fireproof for resistance to flame throwers and the flame thrower itself is a new addition which is quite wicked! So far I am very pleased with this game. I do like it more than Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in the regards of level design and game play. This edition of the series seems much more colorful and the levels have more natural barriers and barricades, hideaways and flanking routes that the last edition. It is overall, just more fun. I have yet to go through the actual single player game, but the first couple levels that I have completed have been no disappointment. So I would think it’s safe to say that Activision has another hit on it’s hands. Now if we can stop them from making a new Call Of Duty and just improve and add on to the current one, I think we’ll have a game we can play for a long long time!
Lancaster, PA
