It's November again and that means Activision once again opens the doors too the Call of Duty Universe. After Infinity Ward brought the 10 milion units selling Call of Duty 4 last year, this year's game is developed by Treyarch. They promise the best WW2 Shooter ever createt plus a multiplayer experience beyond the standarts of CoD4. Will they suceed or will the game just go under in flames?
Story
Makin Atoll 1942: You play as Private Miller, the leader of an american reconaissance team. Captured by the Imperial Japanese Army you watch one of your soldiers being tortured and then killed. Fortunately a rescue squad arrives before the Japanese get the chance to kill you. Now the struggle for survival begins.
On the other side of the globe, Stalingrad 1941: From the eyes of Private Dimitri Petrenko you watch a true bloodbath: Dozens of dead soviet soldiers lying in their own blood, killed by German troops. For your own good you cheat death and wait untill the Germans dissapear. Then you start crawling your way out of the situation, when suddenly a dead body starts moving: Sergeant Reznov. He cheated death aswell and is now your only hope. He hands out a sniper rifle to you and commands to shoot down all german soldiers to revenge that massacre.
This is just a small taste of CoD5's atmosphere. It manages to suck you right in and giving you the feeling of being in real war. You experience yourself how it feels to fight for your survival, loosing comrades and striking the enemy. And with that you will imediatly know: This is an anti-war game.
But on the other hand the Wold War 2 setting is realy starting to get boring and repetative and Call of Duty: World at War is the perfect example for that. It all feels way too familiar and far too forgettable.
Character development is not a very strong point of CoD5 either. You will recognise your Sergeants Reznov and Roebuck, but appart from them there isn't anybody to care about. The same with the cutscenes in between each mission: Boring file footage and strangely animated briefings. With that it obviously tries to copie the briefing structure of CoD4, but it failes.
Overall the story manages to truly immerse the player and giving him the feeling of being a part of that epic conflict, but uses the already tryed WW2 setting.
Package
Call of Duty: World at war offers a short but punshy 7 hour single player campaign, and after it's completed a bunsh of other modes to choose from. First on the list is the massive competetive multiplayer mode, which is incredebly similar to last year's outing. Like last year the Game offers a class creator to let you customize your character. You can choose your primary weapon from 5 different categorys, a side arm pistol, a primary and secondary grenade aswell as 4 different perks, one of which is the brand new vehicle perk. You get all the game modes you'd expect: Team Deathmatch, Free for all, Search and Destroy, Sabotage, Domination and Headquarters. Treyarch also added 2 new game modes: The in Call of Duty 4 missing Capture the Flag and a brand new mode: War. In that game mode it's all about capturing a row of command flags to push the enemy back and once all posts are captures the match is one. This mode brings some fresh air into the game while it's obviously copied from Day of Defeat Source. Besides that you can still chose between core and hardcore and there is the option to reset your progress and go into prestige mode to earn new rank insignias and unlock more class slots. All this multiplayer options are hold together by the ingame leveling system, which goes up to level 65, 10 more compared to CoD4. Kill enemies to gain XP and level up to unlock new weapons and perks.
The multiplayer mode is truly massive and offers tons of options, but it isn't the only thing offered besides the campaing. You have the option to play co-op through the entire single player campaing with up to 4 players online and 2 on one console. There are even different modes to play: Competitive and regular. In competitive co-op it's all about gaining points via killing enemies and building up combos to get point multipliers. If a teammate is down you can revive him, which gives you points aswell. In the end the player with the most points wins, and even if you lost the points you gained flow into your leveling XP. Regular coop plays out pretty much the same, besides the fact that you don't gain points.
Last but not least is the co-op Nazi Zombie mode, within you and 3 other friends online, or 1 other freind on one console can fight it out against waves of Nazi Zombies. You find yourselves into a destroyed bunker with no way out, while the zombies get in through the windows. The number of incoming Nazis is handeled by a level system, starting with 6 zombies on level 1 and after that doubling the number after each level. The game even has an own little economy in it. Killing zombies and blocking windows gains you points to buy stronger weapons or open doors to get access to other areas of the bunker. It's incredebly fun and adictive.
Call of Duty:World at War offers alot of playtime for 70 bucks. The short lenghth of the singleplayer is dissapointing, but if you tackle on the incredebly deep multiplayer mode, the co-op and the Nazi Zombie mini game, your in for a ride!
Gameplay
CoD:WaW's gameplay i exaclty the same as every other one's in the series. Crouching, proning, sprinting and walking are still your movement options and combat is also what you'd expect. Weapons have a realistic feel of recoil penetration and weight, but the key is still using the sights on your gun. Outstanding moments include shooting from the seats of a catalina gunplane or being attacked by a japanese banzai. IN that case you have to quickly press the right stick down to knife him into the neck, otherwise he will stabb you with his bayonett and you have to start from the last checkpoint.
The difficulty is a, well difficult point of Call of Duty. World at War. You can chose between recruit, regular, hardended and veteran. The first for greenhorns and the last for everyone who likes it realistic. But in between are some problems. You can hardly find any difference between regular and hardended leaving you with a tough challenge if you just wanna do a relaxed playthrough. With that said, the game is full of cheap deaths. Besides the already mantioned banzais there are grenades, and grenades are defenetly the major difficulty problems. Enemies will throw nades directly on your feet from 50 meters range over and over again, it's realy an annoyance. The addition of a cover system would have been also good since the ordanary ducking behind crates becomes an annoyance aswell after a while.
The gameplay is solid and offeres some variaty here and there, but seriously lacks innovation.
Sound
The sounddesign is defenetly one of the strong points of CoD:WaW. Gunfire sounds frightnently realistic, with some weapons sounding like toys, and explosions are a real pain for the ears, positivly! The voicework is outstanding, with the voices of Kiefer Sutherland and Garry Oldman as your Sergeants. The average soldiers and their screams are just as good and japanese enemies realy give you that feel of being threatened. German soldiers on the other hand, just sound ridicolous.
The soundtrack is one of the best this year, making you feel terrible and pushing the war toward tragedy. Of course the clishee victory marches return, which are kinda destroying the feel of the game.
So if you have a good 5.1 systeam, cranck it up, it's defenetly worth it!
Graphics
Using the CoD4 engine CoD5 is easily one of the best looking games on the market. The lighting and larticle effects are still the best ones out there and the game runs at a constant clip of 60 frames per seconds. The fire also looks amazing and burning the enviroments is realy fun. The water effets got an upgrade aswell, looking as close to the real thing as it could possibly be.
The negative points come in form of a graphics downlgrade when playing coop, aliasing issues and low resulution textures that can be found everywhere throughout the game. Also the character faces look pretty ugly and not good animated. But all these points can baredly effect the overall look of the game, exept for the annoying texture issues. Some scenes are litteraly masterpieces of video game presentation that should be burned in the players minds forever!
Call of Duty: World at War is defenetly the best World War 2 shooter ever made. It's atmosphere is breathtaking and the tons of modes are just incredible. The short single player campaign and the step back to WW2 are dissapointing, but the rest is incredebly well done. Lock and load, and get ready to fight!
Story: 7,8
Package: 9,7
Gameplay: 8,9
Sound: 9,5
Graphics: 9,2
Overall: 9,0
IMage Sources: pcgameshardware.de, ign.com, 4players.de, teambox.com
. Overall, 9/10 
. BTW, this (in America) is rated T (teen). I bought this used for $20 at Gamestop, good deal 
. YOU KNOW WHAT 
, THIS SONG (
!! The only thing I find "missing" from this game is playing at Peral Harbor, and droppin the nukes on Japan (THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!!!!).