Call of Duty: World at War

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii

Rating: Mature

It would be hard to follow the grand slam success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with anything but another game-of-the-year release.

And while CoD: World at War tries hard, it does not succeed at improving on its predecessor.

There is an excuse: World at War was developed and published by a different company. Treyarch, which also developed the Call of Duty spinoff flop Big Red One, is behind World at War. Infinity Ward helmed Modern Warfare.

CoD4 broke from historical battles such as the Invasion of Normandy or the battle of Stalingrad and focused on a fabricated storyline about a Middle East coup and a Russian revolt, set in the present time.

World at War goes back to the familiar (and nowadays, somewhat overplayed) battlegrounds of the Second World War. This game introduces the Pacific theatre.

The player switches between a U.S. marine and a Russian Red Army soldier. The marine's storyline focuses on the aforementioned Pacific theatre, whereas the Russian sees his action on the Eastern Front, and his mission culminates in the capturing of the Reichstag in Berlin.

What is quite cool about World at War is that the settings are so diverse. There's the urban combat in burning cities contrasting with the dense jungles of the Pacific islands.

Also cool is the use of Kiefer Sutherland's and Gary Oldman's voices as American and Russian sergeants, respectively.

The real problem with World at War comes with the size of the single-player campaign. A dedicated player can shoot through the game in roughly eight hours, which is far too short.

The multiplayer shines for the most part, except for a tweak that was added to assist the flow of the game that actually ends up hurting it. In CoD4, when you were shot down by the enemy, you spawned in a designated area and had to run back to the battle. In this game, respawns change depending on where the action is. Unfortunately, the game is so good at getting you back in the fight that you're often gunned down again before realizing it.

World at War uses the same points-for-ranking system seen in Modern Warfare, which ensures lots of replayability as you unlock new weapons and game modes. There are multiplayer levels that also let you use vehicles, something not seen in Modern Warfare, but I preferred waging battle on foot and didn't think the implementation of vehicles was necessary.

World at War would have been a groundbreaking game had Modern Warfare never been released. World at War is basically a reskinned Modern Warfare, set 60 years earlier. Aside from the addition of vehicles in the multiplayer modes, there is not an improvement here, either.

While this does not necessarily make World at War a poor entry into the Call of Duty series, it has a "been there, done that" feeling.