Call of Duty: World At War Gamer Review

_{by Secarius}

A review after 22 days....

OK… I thought that, after 22 days of playing WaW (averaging 3.5 hours per day), I have a few observations – and a few bugs that I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere.

Overall, I really like this game. Despite some of its well publicized issues (like the BSOD, crashing to desktop, loss of rank, etc. – I’ve experienced them all), I still think it is a better game than CoD4. (Before any jumps my ass, I never played any CoD online before CoD4 – although I did play all of them solo. Admittedly, the solo campaign in WaW is kind of weak.)

There are some things that happen that are pretty subtle. For instance, did you know that you can predict where an incoming artillery strike will hit (without needing the reconnaissance perk) by watching the vapor trails of the shells as they arc across the sky? To me, that’s seriously cool.

Have you watched the various water effects, from bullet splashes to exploding grenades to the wakes made by your passing? And, its is also pretty neat that molotov do not explode when they land in water (I do wonder if signal flares do – I haven’t tried it, yet).

I also think the challenges are worthwhile. If you make it a point to do them, you should discover that not only do they award you experience points that help you rank up, but they go a long way to teaching you HOW to play the game using the various items available to you.

Now for the bugs I’ve found (the ones I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere):
 

Turret Hunter challenge: You can get kills applied towards this challenge even when killing a person NOT IN A TURRET. I’ve had this happen a number of times while working through a few prestiges. I think I’ve figured out what’s going on: Apparently, if a person WAS in a turret, and you kill them after they’ve dismounted from the tank, it still counts towards the Turret Hunter challenge.

How the ? challenge: I got this one. But, when it happened, I shot a sniper’s bouncing betty, killing him. Problem was, I did NOT shoot through any wall or other surface, as the challenge parameters describe.

Dead Silence perk: My favorite perk… Anyway, it doesn’t mute your footsteps on ALL surfaces or at ALL times, like it should, particularly on wooden floors; you still sound like you’re stomping around in heavy boots. Of course, I don’t know what other players hear – maybe I’m quiet to them…?

The BAR and using a bipod: Maybe not a bug, maybe it is intentional, but the BAR’s firing rate increases dramatically when the bipod is deployed (it seems like it is about 50% faster). I didn’t notice this effect on the other HMGs.

OK, I’ll mention one more that’s been mentioned before: the sound. The sound is both fantastic, and maddening.

It’s fantastic to hear the tinkling of cartridge casing as they ejected from my silenced weapon, or the sound of the artillery, or the whistling of a tank shell, or the rolling report of a sniper’s shot.

It is maddening when I have dead silence, and I still hear the sound of dragging chains when I climb something, or when I cannot hear the footsteps of an enemy that’s near me.

*sigh*

Anyway, all in all, I’d have to give the game an easy 8 out of 10.