As I have stated in the past, I am a huge Call of Duty player but was somewhat let down by the multiplayer on World at War – in a previous article I spoke of the numerous glitches and bugs that caused to me to womble on back to my gaming with my CoD4 clan. Well over the past few weeks, I have once against picked up my trusty Garand rifle and headed back out to the battlefields of the Pacific and eastern Europe.
 
And things have certainly changed.
 
The first thing that I noticed was that the majority of glitches have been sorted out and eradicated and the game is so much better for it. The gameplay between the two games was always going to be different but World at War now seems a whole lot more balanced than it was when I initially played it all those months ago, weapons seem to be balanced correctly and the hardcore mode is a lot of fun to play. The major factor however is the radical change of tactics and style between the two games due to the weapons available. For instance on CoD4, my favoured set up is an M4 carbine with a red dot sight, its versatile; I can run and gun, I can sit back, I can give cover and also use it at close quarters. I can comfortably take this on any map in CoD4 and enjoy myself. The difference on World at War is clearly evident. Many of the maps are huge and running and gunning is a sure fire way of getting killed very fast and very often. Slow and methodical is the best way to play as the cover is plentiful compared to many of the maps on CoD4 – the eastern front maps in particular have dozens of excellent ambush spots to pick the enemy off; I have had to tailor my gameplay and approach radically to avoid the rampant beatings I was taking at the start of my World at War career and although I seem to take more arse kickings than I would prefer, I am definitely enjoying the game a lot more. As a keen student of World War Two, I was eager to play a quality and detailed multiplayer game from that era and was initially disappointed but now I am slowly finding myself drawn back to the game. Its still not perfect but its a lot of fun to play. I have even started looking more at the construction of the maps and they really are stunningly put together, the bombed villages and towns of Germany look absolutely fantastic and detailed and this is my favoured theatre to play in, I just need to convince the rest of my clan to step into the time machine for a bot of World War Two action.
 
As an aside, I feel I have to mention the dogs. I don't know whether this was for a touch of comic relief but I cannot take this seriously at all. Every time I hear “They have released the hounds” or any other variant of this I start laughing. I wasn't quite so mirthful when a dog managed to kill me through a wall on Airfield but like I said its not exactly perfect........