Call of Duty: World at War Co-op Review

While it is perhaps a little early to be writing a review of World at War, especially as I haven't played the multiplayer much yet, I'm going to do so anyway. So far, my experience has mostly been in the competitive co-op mode, which is essentially the single player campaigned played with 1-3 other people. I've played through the all the co-op missions with a friend and also played a bit of the Nazi zombie mode.

Without further ado, I present to you my thoughts:

Loved

• Co-op Mode. I like co-op mode in games. A lot. I don't know how many times I've sat down with a friend, or even my brother, and tried to find a game that supported some sort of co-op play so that we could play together. While it is fun to play against your friends, I really enjoy the camaraderie that comes from playing and fighting together. While co-op is often something hastily tacked on late in a dev cycle, in World at War, it actually feels like thought was put into it. Additionally, co-op has its own set of challenges that you can play through to improve your multiplayer profile. I especially like the competitiveness of it as I fight to get more head shots, more kills, and more points than my teammate. All in all, it's a good feature and done well.
• Zombies. It's hard not to love a good zombie mode, and the one in World at War is good. The game play is pretty basic: you get points for killing zombies that you can use to buy new weapons and even unlock new places of the map. The zombies start out really slow and sparse, but very soon become quite fast and dense. We only did a couple of rounds, but I definitely found myself wanting more when I was done. While it's certainly no Left 4 Dead, as far as added content goes, it's great.
• Cheat "Cards." In both the single and co-op campaigns, there are "cards" you can find that are used to unlock cheats in co-op play. Instead of regular cheats (unlimited health/ammo, etc), these don't generally give you an edge. Some are purely cosmetic, like one that makes enemies explode when you score a head shot on them (my favorite), while others actually make the game harder, like the one that limits you to a knife and rocks. I really enjoy unlockable cheats in games (I earned EVERY cheat in GoldenEye on the N64), and these are just a lot of fun as they add a little bit more replayability to the game.

Hated

• Lack of polish. World at War was created with the same engine that was used by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4... and it shows. However, it was NOT made by Infinity Ward (it was made by Treyarch)... and it shows. It really just seems to be missing something when it comes to polish. Despite 2 gigs of patches, the game still feels slightly unfinished. Since I have started playing, I've seen: a black screen upon starting the game that doesn't go away, constant timeouts when trying to start/join a co-op game, my friends list mysteriously clear itself, and some in-game fonts (like the player names above heads) that are completely unreadable at my settings. While none of these things have been full game stoppers, they have definitely been annoying and have tarnished what would have otherwise been a great experience.
• Weapons/setting. While this isn't really a critique against World at War, the weapons just aren't all that interesting compared to Call of Duty 4. I suppose that is more to blame on the fact that World War II was 60 years ago than anything. Which brings me to another point: I think we should be done with WWII games about now.
  
• Story. I should probably do a full single player play through before dogging on this too much, but the story was just really blah. It split between an American fighting in the Pacific and a Russian trying to repel the Germans and eventually take the Reichstag (didn't they already do that in the first CoD?). I also didn't really like the way it jumped back and forth between the Russian and American campaigns. I think it was better in the first game where you played all of one campaign before moving on to another. The story in general just seemed to lack cohesion to me.

I'll probably write up a proper multiplayer review after I spend some more time in it.

As a final note, I must say that it really is a very respectable game and a must have for any Call of Duty fan. Probably a must have for any shooter fan. Even after you finish all the single player and co-op content, there are still dozens/hundreds of hours of multiplayer modes to play and enjoy. I know I'll be enjoying regular play sessions for quite a while.