The Call of Duty franchise has always been known to provide a very intense and war-like first person shooter.  The peek of this franchise, in my opinion, is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Cod4 provided something more than its predecessors, Modern Warfare.  Finally after long last when WWII shooters were becoming stale infinity ward created a true winner in the fps genre.   The single player so intense and puts players in situations that no other games really put you in.  The same can be said for the multiplayer.  I mean me and my group of xbox live buddies have roughly put in about 100 plus hours into the game.  Not many games can do that as well as Cod4.  Well maybe Halo 3 and Gears of War but those, in my opinion, are very different game.  In order to top Cod 4 this the next call of duty game would have blow my socks off.

Sadly the next installment in the call of duty series, Call of Duty: World War, falls short.  Now don’t jump on me because  I’m poo pooing the game based on the multiplayer.  In fact the only thing in looking forward to is the single player.  I think this will be a rental.

GRAPHICS:

The graphics look great.  I tried the beta on both standard and hd televisions and visuals look very good.  They look the same as in Cod4, which is okay because it is running on the Cod4 engine.  In addition some improvements to the visuals have been made.  One is from the artillery strike.  It is really cool to see when you call in an artillery strike you can see it coming from the distance arching in the sky line and landing on the position you chose.  Another improvement is to see chunks of body parts go flying if you get hit by an explosion.  In Cod4 when you were hit by a grenade you kind of just rag doll to the side a little bit as you were watching the kill cam.  in Cod: WW you see your arms or legs get blown off in the kill cam as you get hit by a grenade or artillery strike.

GAMEPLAY:

Aside from the graphics the gameplay is the section in which I have the most criticism over.   The game feels exactly like Cod4.  It feels like didn’t try anything new.  I mean all the perks are the same just renamed.  All the attachments are the same just look different to fit the WWII era.

Another beef I have with the gameplay is the kill streak rewards.  Like Cod4 3 kills gets you a UAV, here its called to a spy plain.  Makes sense because we are in the WWII era.  5 kills gets you an artillery strike.  However the strikes feel very weak.  Every time I call one it feels like it does nothing.  I see a lot of damage taking place but never any kills.  Its not like how it was in Cod 4 were an airstrike and a helicopter can change the outcome of a match.  The one I don’t get is at the 7 kills which are dogs. Yes, attack dogs.  Since there were no choppers in WWII they had to think of something else.  These things can get annoying as they go around getting so many kills for the person who called them in.  Just think of the dogs in Cod4 single player brought to the multiplayer.  I don’t really like them because they get very annoying and just come out of nowhere, but some people while playing seemed to like it.  It is sort a love-hate thing, you either love them or hate them.  The good thing is you can kill them.  However the dogs are completely broken in hardcore team deathmatch.   Normally the dog requires 2 hits and that gives you enough time to turn around and shoot it.  But in hardcore only one is required.  This can very stupid and annoying because you will probably get spawned killed 4 times in a row just because of dogs.   I mean who ever gets the dogs in hardcore will win the match as it pretty much gives that person a 20 kill streak.

Final thoughts:

Don’t get me wrong Cod: WW is a good game.  The only problem it has is that it has to live up to Cod4.  And from my point of view I don’t think it has.  I mean this game is basically Cod4 with WWII weapons.  I am so used to my MP5, M16, and 50 cal that going back in time does not appeal to me.  You will start to play this game and then after a while you will just go back to Cod4.  That is what happened to me.

However there is one part of this game you might want to check out and that is the single player.  It seems they are going with a very mature single player for this one.  Some inspirations are from movies like Saving Private Ryan.  So in my opinion I think this will be a good rental to just blast through the single player.

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