Reviews// Call of Duty: World at War

Those same intro scenes are incredibly well designed, combining archive footage with stylised graphics into a didactic mix of history lesson and MTV ident sequence. It's World War II explained to the attention deficient, and as one of them, I approve!

One of the things Call of Duty conveys is the chaos of war. With so many games it's easy to look down the barrel of a gun and think of "Them" - who are by their very nature targets - and "Us", the righteous avengers dealing death from behind a shield of divine protection. Call of Duty makes it pretty clear that on a field of combat, things are far less clear cut than that.

It can be difficult to recognise your comrades from the enemy, especially when, in the thick of battle, they are all mixed up. As some of your troops provide cover, some perform pincer movements, and some just advance fearlessly, so the battleground become all mixed up. Iit's not safe to shoot someone just because they are firing "this way" rather than "that way". CoD identifies your buddies by displaying their names as you get them in your sights.

However, if you are playing duck-and-cover, popping up only occasionally to take potshots or to snipe, it is easy to plug your buddies. Equally, in the heat of close combat, it it sometimes difficult to avoid hitting your comrades. Fortunately, it is quite difficult to kill them too - friendly fire is inexplicably actually quite friendly to them, or at least quite forgiving.

This is another area where 100% accuracy is sacrificed in favour of greater playability - if your shots were as deadly to your allies as to the enemy, there's a fair chance that a good number of your squad would become collateral damage.

Your squad-mates are a vital part of the CoD experience. They will guide you and chide you through the game, providing support and covering fire if you are a “lamer noob”, or just providing cannon fodder for enemy fire if you are an elite warrior. Either way they guide you through the game and give you hints as to your mission objectives. But one thing World at War brings to Call of Duty is split screen multi-player.

You can play either co-operatively or in competitive co-operative mode, where each player gets a score for his kills, and where hiding under the biggest pile of sandbags and waiting for your buddies to wipe the area clean will win you no glory. You need to get out there and shoot some enemies, and that's when you risk taking fire yourself.

When you do die, or more importantly when your opponents die, they do so with a mix of stored frames and ragdoll death animations that makes each death unique. This adds greatly to the feeling of randomnity and chaos, and adds to the sense of realism.

In terms of actual playability, it's great to see good old fashioned local split-screen multi-player making a come back in this world of online multi-player gaming. But if that's your bag World at War features the same online features that previous games in the series have.