42 out of 44 people found the following review helpful:
*** May contain spoilers ***
Better Than The Amazing CoD4
A Customer from Bury St. Edmunds,
15th November, 2008
I have had this game since wednesday and have completed the story. It is a very in-depth story focusing on the gruesome and gory parts of war. It goes where no other FPS has gone before (Apart from BIA:HH, apparently that focuses on dark parts of war too) and does it so well. You will be amazed at how historically correct it is yet it still makes a very good game. American story There are two paralell story lines. One is played as an American soldier, Private Miller, fighting the Japanese across the Pacific. This starts off with you as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp where you watch one of your fellow Americans getting tortured with a cigarette shoved into his eye. This story line has you fighting Kamikaze soldiers who run at you with knives and bayonets, if they reach you the situation turns to one similar to when the dogs got to you in COD4, press on the right stick or die. This story also uses the flamethrower a lot and has you invading Japanese camps. Russian story The Russian story has you playing as Dimitri, who is in Stalingrad at the start of the game. The first mission has you following Sergant Rezanov with a sniper rifle picking off Nazis. This particular mission involves stealth to a certain degree but for the most of the game it has all out gun fights. It has a good storyline as you are fighting to take control of Germany for the Red Army. The use of machine guns is needed for this. The later missions have you eliminating a lot of Nazis in order to get to your objective. Multiplayer The multiplayer is filled with depth and fun. As I have been doing the story I haven't played the online much but there are 13 maps, some big and some small. All filled with detail, good sniping spots and some have tanks. Most of them take places from the story and turn them into maps, as with COD4. The maps feature detailed rubble, open warfare spaces and enclosed corridors. This takes the very popular multiplayer from COD4 adding a few more things to improve it; ten extra ranks taking the total to 65 per prestige, added vechile perks to use in tanks and five extra custom classes slots awarded for prestiging. Anyone who liked COD4 multiplayer is going to love this. For those people who can't get online there is the classic split screen matches for playing with friends. Controls The controls are nearly exactly the same as COD4, as they say, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. The left stick controls your movement with the right stick used for aiming/looking. In tanks R2/RB is used for the mounted flamethrower whilst the primary fire is used for the cannon. This is no bad thing that the controls are similar though as it works very well as it has done in the past. Gameplay The gameplay is often linear but with several ways to approach each task. For example, if the objective is to destroy a turret then you could; throw grenades towards it and hope for the best, take out the surrounding enemies with a sniper from a far or use a machine gun or shotgun and storm the objective. It plays smoothly and I can't think of any ways to improve it. It is just like the COD gameplay we all love. Mission structure The missions often start with the player arriving somewhere, such as a beach, and then it moves on to moving through the battlefield and then usually destroying something or capturing a few places. This can get repetitive but with the different ways of approaching the objective it never gets boring. The ending of the level often contains a shoot out in an open space, this lets you let rip with your most powerful weapons. Co-op The game features co-op modes online and offline. Split-screen can be played with two people and online can be played with four players. In the split screen the two halves merge into one for the cutscenes which is a nice feature. There are two types of co-op, cooperative-playing through the story with more than one person to complete it and competetive-playing through the story to see who can get more points. This has never been done in a Call Of Duty game before and works suprisingly well for a brand new feature. Summary In conclusion, even though this is a step back in time from COD4 it is a step foward in quality. Treyarch have taken the best parts of COD4 and added some more things. The inclusion of driveable vechiles is good and allows multiplayer maps to be bigger. This is a bigger and better COD than ever. Infinity Ward have to learn something from this, Treyarch now make COD well. +Excellent campaign mode +Great co-op feature +Amazing online multiplayer experience +Additions to a winning formula that make it even better -Could be too short for some 10/10