Other Platforms: PS3, PC, Wii, Mobile, DS, PS2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a great game. In my own opinion it was possibly the strongest game in the entire Call of Duty series. It decided to no longer stick to fighting the Nazis. Now we were to fight today. This was Modern Warfare. We were fighting the perceived enemies of the West in the 2000s.
All was well and happy as we saw our fellow Englishmen die right in front of us in the final battle and the Americans being brutally massacred within a nuclear explosion. Both of these moments took my breath away as I felt so connected to these well rounded characters. Thank you Infinity Ward for a fantastic game that I have played many times.
Now it is Treyarch's turn. It would seem that Infinity Ward and Treyarch take it in turns to develop Call of Duty games for Activision. Because I was so enamoured with CoD4 I decided to play Call of Duty 3, developed by Treyarch, which was alright as a game, but not fantastic. I know it was made with technology that was not as good as the technology used for CoD4 but that was not the problem. Firstly, the story was bad in that I felt no attachment to any characters, which didn't make me enjoy the experience.
And then there is my pet peeve with games like this that are set during World War 2, and that is this: you end up fighting off half of the German army within each trench you enter. Now, it really doesn't seem historically accurate to me that a mere Private ends up attacking what appears to be the place where Nazis spring up from the ground to rip your nipples off. I am so glad that within CoD4 there was no moment (to my recollection) that every single member of the Ultranationalist party comes along to brutally sodomise you whilst you hold on to Captain Price's moustache. But I digress.
Now on to the game I am actually going to review. It follows Call of Duty FOUR in the series so evidently I am reviewing Call of Duty FIVE. Sorry, but it isn't. It is Call of Duty: World at War. Not Call of Duty 5: World at War. Just Call of Duty: World at War.
Okay, so they have now decided not to number the sequels from now on. I can see their reasoning behind this as, sadly, World at War is actually set in World War 2. So Treyarch have decided to take a step back and not continue with Modern Warfare. Okay, okay. Fine. I can deal with that. It'll make new members of the series confused but okay, whatever.
I think I may as well get off this petty stuff. Hopefully it won't harm the rest of the series.
This game has also tried to be a special one within the series as it now takes us away from the European front, but now we get to go to the Pacific Theatre. Cool, that worked really well for Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. I had a lot of fun with that game. But now they have decided to ruin fighting in Japan for me by giving me three recurring characters who are absolute gits (who made such an impression on me that I forgot their names and didn't care when two out of three of them died on me), Banzai troops that knock you to the ground and give you half a nanosecond to actually kill and finally, you guessed it, millions upon millions of Tojos (their words, not mine) to dispatch before deciding that we should bomb a tonne of places and then go home.
Then we have the fact that every single American soldier decides to swear like a sailor whenever they stub their toe. I mean seriously! The swearing within this game could not be any more gratuitous. The word “fuck” is constantly chucked about as if we were going into battle with a battalion of chavs who had to swear after every word, including the curses. I don't mind swearing, I just find it pointless. It never seems to fit in with what they are saying. “Abso-fucking-lutely” Why not absolutely? CoD4: Captain Price can't get a helicopter to the bridge in time: “Useless Wanker!” The shit is about to hit the fan. Of course he'd swear!
Then we have the terrible AI. Your team mates fail at killing any of the enemies. By the end of the first mission your character should end up becoming Lord High Ruler of the Universe for the amount of Japanese warriors he has killed. This wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many warriors coming after you. And when I say coming after you I mean YOU and only YOU! Emperor Hirohito must have put a bounty of your head for 10 trillion Yen. You play on Veteran and they will all be chasing after you with bullets with a heat seekers on them, which won't fare well with your health. But don't worry, hide for a bit and you'll be back to normal. I love that about these games. I guess you just assimilate the bullets into your system and rebuild yourself with the materials, giving yourself a metallic organs and bones (which would explain why you can take so much punishment, I suppose).
Oh, and then we have the grenades. My God the grenades. I need a paragraph on its own to talk about grenades. Even on Recruit they have some form of homing device on them. No matter where you are, no matter how many enemies there are, you will have four or five grenades drop at your feet. You can't throw them back because once you send one on its way to the nearest enemy you'll have the others blow you into tiny pieces. None of your team get 'naded. Just you. They must have something that repels these grenades, because they are always safe. You get no time to shoot. You get a grenade up the arse. They are annoying. That's the reason the Japanese lost the war. They put all their war effort into creating as many grenades as possible rather than better weapons.
Well, that's out of the way. Now on to the other half of the game.
Then we have the other half. The Russian part. And... I liked it. The characters were well rounded and the plot was interesting. Walking forwards to slowly put the Red Army's flag on top of the Reichstag was a good touch, especially as you are wounded, and it made me feel as if I were a part of the war. It kept more to the old formula within CoD4, but wasn't as good. All I can really say. It was a better part of the game.
By the way, where are the British? We played a major role in the war, with all of 1939-1945 having the British fight in it. We were there for it all. But we never crop up at all within this entire game. I hear the British are in the PS2 and DS versions, but why not on the Xbox or PS3 versions? Confuses me.
Now, the online element of CoD4 was absolutely amazing. I played it constantly and went through several prestiges. Yet now I feel that Treyarch has let the series down yet again. They used predecessor's online gameplay and made the maps massive and open. Now, one of the great things about the CoD4 online, I felt, was that it was very close quarters and there was cover to hide behind. World at War decided to take this element and throw it into the bin, introducing vast landscapes that allow snipers to see everyone and kill them. However, sometimes the problem is actually not being able to find anyone. The maps are so big that everyone tends to be on the other side of the map, eliminating any sort of tactics that include flanking and... flanking. Actually, the only tactic is to flank, but that can get some kills.
The dogs are a bitch, too. I like that it's easier to kill the replacement of the helicopter, but we still have very little chance against them. And they should definitely not put points for killing dogs on the score. I do, however, like the fact that experience for assists is given relative to the damage given to the enemy. A lot fairer than +2 every single time. Basically, the online was like Halo 3: fun, but only with friends and only if played fairly rarely.
Nazi Zombies is a good mode, but can get boring after a few goes, and Co-op absolutely sucks. It just does unless you put on cheats to make it a little bit challenging. That's all the can be said for those.
As you can tell I am not an absolute fan of this game. There are some really good points but it is just extremely adequate. Very, very adequate. Playable, but not for long periods of time. I'd rather play CoD4.
No comments:
Post a Comment