Call of Duty: World at War seems to have all the gameplay elements that made CoD4 a success, but something still feels lacking…
I was able to spend some time with the Call of Duty: World at War Beta this past week so I’ll spend this entry going over what I played and my general impressions after these first few days of playing. I may appear to be rambling at times in this writeup due to it being more of a “journal format”. I guess it may also be because I don’t know how I even really feel about this game even after several days. I can’t conclude whether I think this game is amazing or not!
Day 1 – Monday Night
I played only Team Deathmatch today as that was where the majority of my time in CoD4 was spent. The first game I joined was the Japanese castle level. I thought it was a pretty neat level but I was getting killed left and right. I was basically a Level 1 in a room full of Level 11 players (the max level) and I had no idea what was going on. I played for a bit and managed to get a kill or two but the next several games I played I ended up going like 4 and 10 and our team would generally lose even with the guy at the top going 25-1.
After more rounds I started learning it a bit more and doing better with the main rifle class. One of my friends joined me. We discovered the Squad tool which was quite neat. Basically, anyone on your team can create a squad and anyone else on the team can join it. By being on the same squad, your squadmate and you show up as a different color than your teammates: blue instead of the usual green. It’s definitely a lot easier to tell than in BF: Bad Company. Of course, the talking still goes to everyone on your team and not just your squad only.
When starting COD4, I generally used the MP5 to rank up high enough to unlock Challenges before switching over to the assault rifles. The MP5 worked great because in Call of Duty 4 many of the maps were small enough that you would often be fighting with enemies at short range. From the demo at least, Call of Duty: World at War’s maps are a lot bigger. I find the use of a submachine gun to be less necessary, even with people claiming that the SMGs are ridiculously powerful. I tried out the Thompson, but with its short range and ammo running out so quickly, I went back to the rifle. Even the starting rifle runs out of ammo as there’s only eight rounds in the semi-automatic rifle. I think I also tried a BAR, a heavy machine gun, and that chewed through its 30 rounds so quickly that I was not even able to kill everyone I saw before having to reload. That’s the biggest thing I noticed about this WWII weaponry – everything just run out of ammo too quickly.
New to Call of Duty: World at War (but archaic to modern warfare) is the bolt-action rifle. Those things were ridiculously tough to use. Basically, after every shot fired, you have to reload it and on top of that it’s not a one hit kill – something that people are complaining about. I would often hit a guy with it, then while I was reloading he’d turn and kill me with his semi-automatic rifle. I think I’m going to avoid the bolt-action rifles for now. In general, I’m not too fond of the WWII-style weaponry. Everything is more difficult to use, but at the same time, I’m guessing that makes the game a more skillful one than Call of Duty 4. I’m looking at kill cams though from when I die and people have a scope on their guns similar to a red dot sight. Here I am running around without anything so no wonder it’s hard.
The streak rewards, i.e. the Recon Plane, the Artillery, and the dogs, are kind of meh. I thought that the streak rewards in CoD4 – namely the airstrike and the helicopter, were perfect. Aistrikes often got 1 or 2 kills, and were quick so they helped to bring on the helicopter. I thought the chopper was a gamechanger as it could get 5-10 kills with almost no problems. But the dogs seem kind of weak. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely been killed by them (one time I was in a small house and I got killed by three dogs because I was watching the door and two jumped in through the windows). I just don’t think they can earn enough kills since I find myself killing 3-4 dogs every time they’re called. I feel like the most a person can get for calling dogs is maybe 3 kills or so because unlike the chopper, anyone can kill a dog going after them.
One kid in our game was pretty much in total awe about the game thinking everything from the dogs to the maps themselves were awesome. I wonder if he was high or something – I didn’t think everything was *that* amazing!
I’m also still trying to figure the perks out. I don’t have enough time to really digest the weapons/perks/etc. between rounds since there’s just not enough time. I figure the next day I’ll really review everything and create my five classes before getting started.
Firt day end thoughts – it doesn’t feel as addictive as the Call of Duty 4 beta was. Maybe because so many things in WaW are similar that I’m not super excited to play it. That combined with the use of archaic weapons makes things less enjoyable for a pure combat mechanic standpoint. Throwing flares and reloading every couple of shots almost seems comedic! However, there are a couple notable additions to WaW in terms of general changes that I’d consider improvements. First of all, there’s now a Lobby Leaderboard on the Matchmaking screen. You can access it to quickly see how everyone in the Lobby ranks on the leaderboard. It’s a neat way to see how the opposition stacks up. I also liked the squad idea and the change to the “Last Stand” perk. Basically if you equip it, you can bring back to life anyone else that is in Last Stand on your team – sort of like a medic function.
Day 2 – Tuesday Night
I was all set in a party to start playing Team Deathmatch with another friend for his first time. As soon as we entered our first game, he dropped from it and was completely off Live. When he called me a minute later, I thought to myself, “hrm he may have gotten the 3 Red Lights…but I don’t want to think this in case it jinxes him.” Surely enough he informed he had the 3 red lights. Sucks! As soon as you’re about to play the beta too! Now he’s probably going to miss most, if not all, of the beta while he waits for his 360 to get repaired.
I only played for a short while after that, as I was by myself. Having studied the weapons, perks, etc. and created my custom classes, I was all set. Most of my killing came from the semi-automatic rifle, so I stuck with that and I even got a silencer for it. Apparently the first Challenge (25 kills with a weapon) now gives you a silencer instead of the red dot sight for a weapon. I’m close to 75 kills with it though, which should unlock the first scope.
People are complaining though that there weren’t silencers and scopes back in WWII, and I’m honestly undecided about where I stand on this matter. Treyarch clearly decided to put them in to cater towards the Call of Duty 4 crowd, who is so used to silencers and red dot sights, but it’s obviously not historically accurate. Playing without the sight certainly makes the game more challenging, and maybe it would have worked out fine if no one had sights. But at this point when I find myself getting killed by opponents with sights, I can’t wait to get one myself to even things out.
It’s weird though – unlike Call of Duty 4 where everything was available for starting players to be on even ground with high level players, Call of Duty: WaW is now making it so the higher levels have clear advantages over the new guys. In Call of Duty 4, I’d argue that the M16 with Red Dot Sight, Stopping Power, and Deep Impact is probably the most powerful combo in the game. All of those items are starting weapons and perks except the Red Dot Sight, which requires just 25 kills with the M16 before you can get it.
Call of Duty WaW changes things around now with the sight where you have to get it at the 75 kill mark. Not only that, but to address concerns of the people complaining that the bolt action rifles don’t kill in one shot, Treyarch responds that we should wait until we unlock the high level bolt action rifles, which will be stronger and are capable of one hit kills. What? So unlike Call of Duty 4 where you were strong from Level 1 but just given more options as you leveled up, Call of Duty WaW requires you to be weak at Level 1 and can only get stronger if you tough your way up. I think that style works in a typical RPG/MMORPG game, but in an adversarial game? I guess less people are going to go back to Prestige modes.
That minor rant aside, I did pretty well Tuesday night. I only ended up playing three games, but won the first two of the three. I went something like 16-7 in one match and led for our team, getting a 10 or 11 kill streak for the first time. No kills with the artillery but I did get 3 with the dogs.
I also finally unlocked Last Stand, which allowed me to get several kills of both people and dogs. I was on the Castle level and got taken down on the stairs right before our opponents unleashed the dogs, but I was able to kill off my guy in Last Stand mode. Then I just laid there on the stairs and as both dogs and the opponents tried to come up the stairs, I killed them. I killed 3 dogs and 3 opponents in that single Last Stand situation and thought it was totally awesome. Of course, one of the three guys I killed came back to kill me since he knew exactly where I was by that point.
I also discovered that accuracy is really important in this game due to the way the weapons are. With very little ammo, people find themselves reloading a lot and I got several kills when stuck in a 1 on 1 close firefight with someone and they have to reload. I think a better idea would be to switch to the sidearm, but maybe these guys were new. But still – it’s somewhat amusing to see two guys trying to fire upon each other and then both quickly reloading.
I’m not a fan of the tanks in the game. The tanks are only on one level in the beta, but they’re so dinky that I find them ridiculous. Of course, maybe I was spoiled from the tanks in Battlefield: Bad Company, but these tanks in Call of Duty: WaW look like armored go-karts. One guy drives it and another guy can get on to man the machine gun. I often drive the tank since it seemed like many of my teammates had a hard time with it and just wanted to use the machine gun. That’s fine but the tank’s cannon takes forever to reload. It also requires practically a direct hit to get a kill since there’s no environmental damage like in Battlefield: Bad Company. All in all, I feel the tank may just be useful as a moving turret but even then they’re not as dominating as in Battlefield: BC.
Second day end thoughts – cool I actually did well and led my team in kills once! I guess that means it’s definitely possible. The game certainly seems harder, but I’m starting to figure things out. Still, I’m not as big a fan of the maps in the beta so far. It’s weird because the maps are quite big, but there aren’t really any good spots to camp. It almost feels like we’re just playing on a variation of CoD4′s Countdown map, where people just basically run around a big circle trying to kill each other.
Day 3 – Wednesday Night
Having already hit the Level 11 cap in the beta, I decided to try a different mode this time instead of the usual Team Deathmatch: War. The War mode was in CoD3, but not in CoD4 so it is a new mode for many CoD4 players. The idea behind the mode is that it’s similar to Domination where there’s five flags on each map that both teams fight for, but only one flag can be contested at one time. This makes it so there’s no real sneaking around to grab other flags if one is heavily defended. The single flag really just centers all of the action around that same flag and I guess that’s why the name “War” was given – it forces a major fight throughout the game. It’s also certainly possible that the map could last for hours as both teams find it impossible to capture a contested flag due to the other team preventing them.
I jumped right into my first War match and went with my trusty rifle build so that I could head towards the 75 kill mark and get the scope. But after dying over and over almost immediately, I had to switch to the Thompson SMG. Our team was getting owned and we were on our last flag. You have to get near the flag like Domination for the flag to slowly change over to your side. It seemed almost like no one on my team was even doing that, and so I often rushed to the flag, lay prone for a few seconds, and then I’d get picked off by an opponent who was also rushing towards our final flag. It was complete mayhem. We were playing on the night map with the huts and the entire match was practically fought in one corner of the map – our last flag. Eventually we lost though and I found myself going something like 4 and 15.
The next round we played War on the Japanese castle map, and on that one we did a little better. Since I was there at the start, I was able to witness how the game played. Both teams start with two flags and the flag in the middle of the map is the contested one. This flag was indoors in a room, and both teams just kept pouring guys into that room and there was death all over the place. Eventually they got the flag though, and slowly continued to push us far back enough that we eventually lost again.
So my thoughts on this mode is that it’s pretty much complete chaos in terms of just rushing. From a tactical standpoint, I would imagine it would be best if you had three or so guys going past the flag to fight the enemy while the remaining team members stay in the flag room to secure it. Our teammates never really advanced past a contested flag to protect it – instead we all just sort of threw ourselves at the flag and died over and over again. The mode was decent, but I can’t say it was that fun because the action was far too concentrated (especially if the flag is in a room). People would just throw grenades and stuff over and over with no recourse because there’s no friendly fire.
Third day end thoughts – War is not a bad mode and certainly a welcome addition to the gameplay types, but I may just stick with Team Deathmatch. One problem with the “autobalancing of teams” that was present even in Call of Duty 4 was that if your strong opponents are all in the same party, they won’t get split so you’ll just have to play against them every round as you pick up new scrubs for your own teammates. I liked that Team Deathmatch had a “Lone Wolves” option that makes it so no parties can join it but wish that it were present in the other modes as well. One negative thing about the Lone Wolves Team Deathmatch mode is nobody talked at all. I guess if you don’t know anyone else on your team, there’s no socializing and maybe that’s a good thing!
Final Impressions for the Week
After playing the beta for a few days, I actually reconsidered whether or not I should keep my pre-order for the game. The game is definitely good, but I’m not all into it like I was with Call of Duty 4. Even with the new gameplay features, the WWII weaponry is still a turnoff and I haven’t been addicted to the beta enough to keep playing for lengthy sessions. But I also figure that if I were to get it, I’d still probably enjoy my time in multiplayer. I just wish we could see more of the levels and perks. I’m very glad though that I learned there’s actually a perk called “Camouflage” that prevents you from being seen by the Recon Airplane. The UAV Jammer was probably my favorite perk in Call of Duty 4 so I’m relieved it’s made a return in Call of Duty: World at War.
Maybe I’m just not as excited about the game because it’s perhaps a little too similar to Call of Duty 4 but with old technology? Who knows. But for now I’ll keep the pre-order (more likely because I feel guilty that I got a beta code out of it).
