When I first heard that world at war was going to be in WWII, I thought it could be good because I, believe it or not, haven't played too many in that genre. What upset me was the developer. Treyarch's track record has been less than stellar and it had some large shoes to fill following the success of COD 4. Now, on the upside it does use the same engine as the aforementioned game, so what could go wrong? Well the answer is not much, but it also results in pretty much nothing getting better.
If you had issues with the fourth, then rest assured they will still be in here. Now, World at War is a pretty solid game, but the developers didn't put forth much effort. Its much more of a copy paste scenario following the success of COD 4. The single player is a pretty meek effort over the pacific and european campaigns with horrible AI, dumb characters, rip offs from COD 4, and a horrible vehicle segment. The CO OP is a pretty vanilla affair with meager split screen support, and levels that go by like a snap. The graphics also seem like a step down from COD 4 as they lack sharpness, and have pretty shoddy fire effects. But nit picking aside they are still pretty decent overall.
The one standout addition to the game is the addicting Nazi Zombie mode which I hope they support with some DLC as it is a blast to play through. Lastly, there is the online; the real legs of the game. It is like COD 4's, pretty much exactly. Differences are the kill streak bonuses (i.e. artillery and dogs) and tanks. The tanks are actually pretty well balanced, they can dish it out but have many weaknesses. The weapons included are good (granted if you have played WWII games before you have used much of the arsenal), but not as much of a standout as COD 4's array, with the exception of the satisfying flame-thrower and improvements to the shotguns.
Lastly, there are some good maps (I'm looking at you, castle) but alot seem far too large, and leave you scrambling to find action. Oh yeah, and the gore addition is nice and satisfying, but leads to more glitches such as "hey look, three of my legs just fell off!". All in all, it is too little effort too late. It should have been an expansion on the already solid game-play and introduce fresh ideas to all modes of the game. I can recommend this game to players who wanted more of good old fashioned COD4 fun, but skip it if you are looking for something more.
