Call of Duty: World at War is hell

Posted by Adam Hartley on Sat 22 Nov 2008

Gaming experts speak to T3 about the latest CoD game

Activision’s (Infinity Ward developed) Call of Duty 4 was unquestionably THE game of 2007, having totally cleaned up at the recent Golden Joystick Awards. So can the uber-publisher and the new development team at Treyarch top that success, or even come close, with the newly released Call of Duty: World at War?

And should we, as gamers and avid fans of war movies and virtual battlefields, perhaps have a more heightened moral awareness of our actions as we blast the face off yet another Nazi in glorious 1080p high def?

T3 considers these and other questions this week, when we can drag ourselves away from the frequent bouts of CoD: WaW. (No, not ‘cod war’, it’s our acronym for the game, dufus!).

While many out there gripe on that WWII has been done to death (sorry!), Treyarch’s senior producer on CoD: WaW, Noah Heller told CVG recently that he feels, “it will be a long time before WWII is done.”

Heller sums it up pretty well, adding that, “the real line here is whether you can tell new stories and whether you can present something in a contemporary and new fashion.”

Content wise, initial impressions of the game are very positive indeed, with Official Xbox Magazine deeming that CoD: WaW will be seen as: “Treyarch's middle finger to those who said that they could never make a war game as sophisticated, slick, or stunning as Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.”

The developers have stuck limpet-mine-like to the familiar and successful CoD formula, while throwing in a few new tricks and features (such as the introduction of Japanese soldiers and some rather cool vehicles) to keep both the single-player and multi-player action both fresh and exciting.

Also, in addition to the usual PS3, Xbox 360 and PC versions of CoD, Activision is releasing a Wii version this time around, with Zapper gun support, a unique co-op mode and full, proper multiplayer support. What’s that you say? A decent shooter on Wii?

“This is easily the best shooter on Wii,” claims Treyarch’s creative lead Rich Farrelly. “We've got a great engine that can go onto multiple platforms.” Though Farrelly admitted that the team had “to do a bit more to get it onto the Wii, but for all intents and purposes it's the same game.”

Not every games mag has been convinced, however, with Xbox World 360 editor, Tim Weaver telling T3: "World at War is an excellent World War II shooter, beautifully paced with some fantastic weapons, and even introduces a few clever new features of its own...but is it better than CoD4? No way. CoD4 remainds one of the best shooters around, and 'All Ghillied Up' remains one of the best missions in any first-person shooter ever".

As ever with ultraviolent games based on defining events in real-world history, there are also deeper ethical questions that many (psychologists, ‘concerned’ parents and others) will be asking, regarding CoD: WaW’s at times frighteningly hyper-realistic graphical representations of the well-trodden virtual battlefields of WWII.

“This was always going to happen as the graphics capabilities of videogame consoles began to catch up with the stark realities of combat injury,” as The Guardian’s always perceptive Keith Stuart notes. Though let’s not forget that, as Stuart oh-so-cleverly reminds us, “if you want to start wringing your hands over the entertainment value of gore, you may as well go right back to Greek theatre and ask why the audience received catharsis from seeing Oedipus gouge his own eyes out on stage.” Quite.

And it’s not only the liberal beard-strokers on the Guardian that concern themselves with such ethical conundrums. The good people of Kotaku also drew our attention to the rather cringe-worthy efforts of Activision’s marketing department in putting out a trailer that seemed to transform WWII into some form of ‘radical’ extreme sport (with accompanying metal soundtrack, dude!). Yet while T3 had to agree that this execrable trailer was utterly unforgivable, we also have to point out that some of the greatest war movies of all time DO rock some kick-ass soundtracks. Apocalypse Now, anybody?

So while a concerned minority in the gaming press likes to consider, as Stuart puts it, the moral issues surrounding the conflicts between one’s own moral compass and the “demands of the game design” most gamers aren’t really that bothered about such hand-wringing and cultural quandaries. They just want to know one thing. Does this game give me forty quid’s worth of entertainment value?

Gamers and movie fans have lapped up Hollywood’s multiple re-takes on this epic conflict, not to mention played most of the games (including such notable classics as Medal of Honor, Brothers in Arms, Battlefield 1942 and all the previous outings in the Call of Duty series). And if we are talking about ‘desensitisation’ to the horrors of war, then perhaps we might all be better off not watching the ten o’clock news every night? The bottom line is that we always want and demand something bigger, better and more intense than we have seen or played before. “The challenge to us,” as Treyarch’s Noah Heller puts it, “was to present something new.”

Gamers don’t want a history lesson or a treatise on moral philosophy. If the developers don’t deliver what the fans want, they won’t get those all-important 90%-plus review scores and, most importantly, they won’t shift units. Thankfully, going by CoD:WaW’s healthy scores to date over on metacritic and the fact that it shot straight to the top of the UK’s all format videogame charts in its first weekend on sale, it seems the devs have done something right.

And if you really do find that you are feeling a little ‘ethically queasy’ about shooting the Nazis in CoD: WaW, then there is always a simple answer. Go out and buy Gears of War 2 or Resistance 2 and blow up some cartoonish and outlandish sci-fi baddies instead.

Conundrum over. Easy!