Call of Duty: World at War

The decision to take the fifth Call of Duty game back, kicking and screaming, to the second world war wasn't the most popular of decisions with series fans. Trading in fresh techno-turf for another rake over those frighteningly well represented six years of world-wide immolation seemed cripplingly devoid of ambition. It didn't help that Treyarch were back behind the driving seat. Their previous effort Call of Duty 3 was front heavy with slog missioning, and subject to more than its fair share of frustrate-you-up rough corners. Never mind that the game was completed in under a year, I got stuck on scenery once or twice!

Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare pole-vaulted forward several decades from the clear moral certainty of allies vs axis / good vs evil World War II play acting, to post-Cold War black-ops nation propping. It was also polished within an inch of its life. The SAS missions that formed the backbone of that game were nasty snatches of wet working: an assassination here; an ethnic cleanse intervention there. Infinity Ward worked extremely hard to create a muddled theoretical conflict frame, utilising hot potato concerns like break-away ex-Soviet nations, and Islamic fundamentalism. Players finally got to have a dabble with contemporary death spewing bullet brooms, right slap-bang in the middle of the Coalition of The Willing's War on Terror™. Hooray for topicality.

Imperialism / third-rate action movie tropes aside, among COD4's most triumphant aspect was simply chatter. The SAS missions are full to the brim with insistent state sanctioned murder euphemisms, and pally back and forth as a mask for head wringing brutalism. Purely expositional dialogue and badass zingery is thankfully elsewhere. It was a treat. Odd-number interim developer Treyarch obviously agree, they've hired Hollywood voice talent to propel Call of Duty: World at War's two pronged campaign through the dying days of World War 2. Kiefer Sutherland gruffs up as Pacific island hopper Corporal Roebuck, and Gary Oldman gives us his Air Force One best Russian yak as Sergeant Reznov.

Roebuck, like his in-game campaign, doesn't really go much of anywhere. He starts out a taciturn uber-marine and stays that way right up until his theatre exits. Reznov is similarly stuck on one-note repeat, although thankfully it's a great track: there's never a single second you're in Reznov's company that he isn't preaching genocide doctrine. Hot on the heels of the retreating Nazis, as they are pushed from Stalingrad all the way back to Berlin, Reznov is front and centre screaming for blood and blood and blood. One stage memorably ends with street fighting Soviets chasing down Third Reich straddlers. The level fades out with the rout in progress. Reznov revenge rhymes ringing in your ears, as you struggle to exterminate your fleeing enemies before the area vanishes.



Reznov is indicative of Treyarch's new direction for the WWII series: from slightly wearying bugle horn sermonising to out-and-out pulp. Bodies struck by bullets explode into meaty bleeding messes; savage attack dogs are arsenal; surrendering enemies can be callously executed. Less impressively, ropey electric guitar wailing intrudes on the soundscape, threatening to lurch the mood from cruel to very crass. The Day Today info dump story sequences that mix real atrocity footage with hyper active stats and camera sweeps also leave a sour aftertaste. Least of all the post-credits occult additional stage makes a hamfist of the pro-Veteran plaudits that close out the maker listing, no matter how fun it is.

The other big idea for this installment is fire. It's everywhere. In your hand, coming out of tanks, all over your foes. Everywhere. The Russian campaign has impromptu revolution favourite the Molotov Cocktail, flash forward to the Pacific and you get the flamethrower. I struggle to think of a weapon more directly nasty than a flamethrower. Launching sub-sonic lead through a person seems civilised next to painting them and their friends with frothing liquid hell. And paint them you do.



It's not all shits and giggles though. Whereas games like the Halo series gift the player a vast area full of finely tuned AI enemies, the Call of Duty series prefers to lead players through checkpoint incident. Cross a line and dodge the spectacle. COD is built on NFL land seizure mechanics, players assault infinite respawn choke points until they can widen a pass gap, neutralising them.

As a rule, Infinity Ward are much more accomplished at concealing these rules than Treyarch. A low in COD3 seeing unending Nazi hordes materialising out of a wall of shrubbery. World at War also features dead-end passageways that spawn countless foes, and invisible pass points that evaporate entrenched legions. It's tolerable at Normal difficulty, glaringly obvious any higher. It doesn't end there either, whereas COD4's AI assist characters were so brutally efficient you felt like you could leave them to get on with finishing the game themselves, COD5 sees friend characters milling around somewhere south of the player, doing very little to win the war. Many's the time I came across invincible priority characters either standing nose-to-nose with the enemy, or shrugging off endless lethal assaults to eventually clout noggin and 'save' themselves. I'm also fairly sure Roebuck charged around a whole level with an invisible gun, bullets spewing out of nowhere.



I'd rather not leave you with negatives though. I did thoroughly enjoy Call of Duty: World at War. I don't think I've played another war game that so completely enveloped the player in mind-numbing chaos. Set pieces bleed into each other - urban ruin clearance is just a wall vault away from fraught tank battling. Dispense with that and your snaking through trenches, flanking your foes with fire. It never ends. There's no respite. Aside from the horror, there's arcadey tank missions that spoil the user with massive health bars, vast amounts of overwhelming weaponry and enough raw swift to outflank squads of Panzer tanks. There's a sea plane stage that has you strafing Japanese merchant navy, scrambling from gun emplacements up and down the length of your craft. Best of all there's a sniper mission modelled after the young Captain Price stage from COD4. Stirring in a mass grave, your young Russian private is taken on a whistle stop tour of battered, occupied Stalingrad. Your mission? BLOW A HOLE IN SOMEONE!

In recent times, there's been a silent movement to eliminate anything unpalatable when depicting the second world war in games. Swastikas and Reich imagery is routinely pulled from games in Europe - there are laws against their depiction operating in at least France and Germany - flags and uniforms are instead covered in iron crosses. I've always found this more than a little alarming. Surely it is preferable to be fighting the Nazi regime than just German people? You eliminate the ideological component and you're just murdering blond uniform foreigners. They may as well be aliens, or zombies.



No matter how wrongheaded Treyarch have been with some aesthetic decisions, they are to be applauded for attempting to show war in a way that isn't bloodless or meek. The brash pulpiness may be somewhat obtuse, but at least it doesn't portray a toy soldier conflict free of any immoral dimension. Why did I enjoy setting all those Japanese men on fire? Why did I execute the Germans trying to surrender? Why did I wish the blubbering, sinking naval ships yielded floundering men to be strafed? Why did I want Berlin defended by notably shorter Hitler Youth Nazi models? I'm sick with war, and it's not Treyarch's fault.