Unleash the Hounds! World at War Beta Impressions

All the memories flood back so quickly. That heart palpitating rush of loading bullets into a foe, checking the leaderboard to make sure you’re still the king, getting your seven kill streak, calling in the chopper… uh… I mean a pack of bloodthirsty dogs.

I adored Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer. No other online shooter gets me so energized and intensely focused where I can’t take my eyes off the screen until the match is over. It’s simply due to the game’s purity, the fact that game doesn’t rely on ridiculous gimmicks or overpowered weapons and vehicles. It’s just a phenomenal shooter, and Infinity Ward’s engine is robust, refined and extremely enjoyable.

Treyarch doesn’t want to mess with the quintessential multiplayer experience one bit, and makes little attempt to shake things up. The icons are the same, the class creation system is identical and just about every perk, every gun and every mechanic has been transported back to the forties. Except helicopters… World War II was a bit early for that.

World at War’s take is almost a carbon copy of its Middle Eastern predecessor, and thankfully so. Guns aim with perfect fluidity and the intense rush to grab a substantial kill streak is retained; the same radar for three, with mortar strikes and dogs for five and seven respectively.
The use of period weaponry does provide a few problems: while any machine gun and a red-dot scope can provide lethal, ranged fire in 4, the unstable arsenal of the second world war are equipped with shoddy scopes and judder uncontrollably with each shot. Most machine guns just won’t perform as well over long ranges. It seems that the versatility of modern weapons is lost, and players will have to take this into consideration when building classes.

World at War introduces vehicles to the series, last seen in Treyarch’s Call of Duty 3 but skipped in 4.
In one of the beta’s stages, two players can jump in a tank; a driver who can fire the canon, and a gunner. Despite their apparent unbalance, with extremely powerful weapons and almost invincible exterior (even with the rocket launcher perk), they do provide a nice change of pace.

Most of Modern Warfare’s perks remain intact, yet suitably exchanged for their early forties doppelganger. There’s little to discern a claymore from a “Bouncing Betty” and pre-death grenade drops, more stamina and deeper bullet penetration are just a few of the many perks that appear in this fifth iteration unchanged. The Flamethrower perk is definitely a spanner in the works though, and only accessible to high ranking players.

The beta is a far cry from 4’s slick and polished pre-release showing. While that Xbox 360 download blew gamers away with its near perfect presentation and performance, World at War shows numerous bugs. Audio and graphical hitches aside; one map has exploiters floating beneath the ground, invisibly picking off players. Also, significant updates that COD4 saw as patches (most importantly, host migration, to avoid kicking players back to the menu when the designated host drops) are not in the game yet.

Going back to Modern Warfare after a few matches definitely takes a shine off the Beta – Infinity Ward are without a doubt better designers than Treyarch and show it in everything from map layout to polish and shine, but the developers do an amicable job of taking what worked from Call of Duty 4.
World at War is a creative take on a phenomenal product that will no doubt bring back some good memories and get you straight back into the fray.