Call of Duty: World at War Review - (Xbox 360)

I know what you are thinking: Why did the Call of Duty franchise go back to WW2? Well, I don’t know. I suppose the games roots are in the second World War. I didn’t mind because I have always been interested in the history of the war and the Call of Duty series has usually been fairly historically accurate. I got my copy of the game on Thursday with my early morning post. I opened it as soon as it arrived at 13:05 hours (Yes, I DID say early morning post, but we all know what a fine service Royal Mail provide!). I hastily ram the disk into my 360 and press start.

Thursday, 13:06 hrs: I will say that I was not disappointed. The graphics are good. The sound is good. And the music is good. Yes, I said the music was good. In fact, its so good I nearly didn’t realise it had changed. I first realised when I was flaming some Japanese soldiers and could hear rock music.

Thursday, 17:30 hrs:What? That’s it? No. There must be some mistake. There must be a second disk. Nope. Nothing. That really was the end of the game. 4 hours of game play. Wow. Well, after consoling myself with a cigarette and a cup of tea, I switch to multi-player mode.

Thursday, 17:55 hrs:I’m still in multi-player mode. Am I enjoying the multi-player experience CoD:WAW provides? I don’t know, because I haven’t played yet. I cannot get online. It keeps saying Checking Match Quality. I assume something must be wrong with my net connection. Nope. I do the usual Test Xbox Live Connection from the system blade. Nothing wrong there. Hmm. I checked online and it appears a lot of people are having the same issues. I’ll keep trying to get online…

Friday: Nope, still can’t get online.

Saturday: Still nothing.

Sunday:Finally managed to get online. Its quite good actually. I managed to play for 10 minutes and then get booted off. I try to connect again for another 30 minutes and still no luck. Bollocks to this.

Until they release a patch to fix the Xbox Live issues, the only way to extend the life of this game is to 1. Play through the game on veteran and 2. Collect all the offline achievements.

The game is an excellent extension to the CoD series. It’s shorter than CoD:4 (at least it feelsshorter) but the storyline is good; the Russian campaign is fantastic and the ending is as good as any war film. A few new weapons are introduced in the game, the best (and funniest?) by far is the flame thrower. I don’t know if you can bring the flame thrower into multi-player because I only managed to play for about 10 minutes online. Following on from CoD:3, this game reintroduces vehicles into the multi-player mode, which should prove interesting.

Go and buy this game. If you have enjoyed the other games in the CoD series, you will not be disappointed. Once the Xbox Live problems are solved I will post an updated review because I don’t think we will see the best aspect of the game until we get online.

Review by: Kai Gohegan

Editor's Note: Xbox Live seems to be suffering outages globally and not just in this game. This does not seem to be the fault of Activision or this game itself. We will have more news about this issue soon but please E-Mail us if you experience anything strange yourself.

I guess it's back to system link and SP for us all eh?

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2nd Editor's Note: Live is back online and has been for a while, so I will add some comments about the Multiplayer. Co-op is fantastic. 4 Players taking on most of the levels ruins the story and tension but can be funny as hell, especially as you can unlock challenges which rank you up in versus online modes. The regular multiplayer is basically COD 4 with WW2 weapons, a few new perks and a pack of angry dogs instead of the helicopter death squad. It's still just as addictive and following your dogs into the lair of the enemy and watching as they tear them to pieces is awesome. It's fun, but no points for originality here.

Another new MP option is enabled once you finish the game, Nazi Zombies. This will probably offend a few people (as will the INCREDIBLY harsh SP storyline) but games are meant to be fun first, and anything else second. You and three friends can hold off the undead in a small farmhouse spending the points you make on new weapons until you die. It's very similar to the Horde mode in GOW2, which is no bad thing.

The game is fun, but really nothing new. If you like WW2 and fancy taking a shot at the Japanese instead of the Germans (their suicidal tendencies make them very different to fight) as well as enjoying some co-op, this game is for you. If you are tired of the gameplay of COD or WW2 in general, avoid. This game remains a silver, but it really earns that score.