Call of Duty World at War has a lot to live up to. Last year Infinity Ward surpassed all expectations with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Heralded by many as the best game of last year, CoD4 impressed everyone. It was the multiplayer that everyone loved; it remains one of the most played games on Xbox Live, and I’m sure its the same on the PlayStation Network.

So after last year’s success, development duties have passed back to Treyarch, who have made the third COD. In a nutshell, CoD World at War is everything CoD4 was (but now in World War 2). But that’s the problem. There isn’t really anything new. Sure, there are some original weapons (ie a flamethrower and bayonets), the voice acting is great and the single player campaign is also good, but it feels like World at War is trying to emulate CoD4, not improve on it. But hey, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; CoD4 was very, very good. Now, a year on, World at War is nearly there, but falls just short. Its not perfect, not brilliant, just good. We experienced a number of times when we got stuck on random objects. Enemies fail to notice you walk up behind them, and often take no notice of you if you don’t come at them head on.

That said, World at War does have its high points. You are fighting with the Americans in the Pacific one level and the Russians marching on Berlin in the next. Again, something we saw last year in CoD4, but still a good feature nonetheless. The videos leading into each level are very impressive, switching between real life and animations smoothly. They give you a background to where you are, where the war is at and how things are going in your area.

This year saw Battlefield Bad Company’s destructible environments take a massive step forwards for shooter games. Unfortunately, there are no such environments in World at War. Your movements feel very restricted, and even the smallest obstacles can block your path. You can easily stroll upon a small wooden fence that is indestructible and unjumpable.

Something that is new is the Halo style four player story mode co-op. You can play either over the internet or locally and play through the missions. This is a great addition to the game, and adds that extra replayability to the storyline. Speaking of online multiplayer, the feature that everyone loved last year is once again present. I’ve said this before, during the beta, but I’ll say it again. World at War doesn’t really bring anything new to the multiplayer, it just pushes it back in time, and adjusts the weapons accordingly. An impressive feature, but its what you’d expect. The perks system will have you going back for more. And then some.

CoD4 brought a lot of new people to the series, and World at War, whilst not building on CoD4 much, World at War is still impressive and is recommendable to any FPS or Call of Duty fan. A solid World War 2 FPS.

Nometet.com says: 8.1

Xbox 360 version reviewed. PC and PS3 versions should not differ too much. PS2, Wii and DS versions will be different.

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