Call of Duty: World at War Comments by Alec Meer

I hope we don't get a polarized conflict where the western dudes are all heroes and the Japanese are horrible evil people, when everyone was shitty against everyone in WW2. I'd rather have a game where we can play both sides.

We have killed German & Japanese effigies already, cant we play as the Japanese & Germans killing us or the Yanks so we can see things from the other side for a change.

I would also like to shoot some Muslim suicide bomber effigies too, Chechen scum to shoot would also be good; the ones who killed all those children in the Beslan school siege.

Afghan Poppy farmers & Taliban scum would be good for a laugh we could defend the poppy fields against UK soldiers & do the heroin donkey run to Pakistan while being chased by an unmanned drone.

We gamers are generally an OK lot but we enjoy playing at being aggressive bastards more than any other game type.
I often ask myself why but I still enjoy it.

^ Makes me afraid.

Alrighty: you want massed armies in frontal assaults plus guerilla warfare? Plenty of shooting? Bored of 'terrorists' and the inevitable 'Saving Private Ryan' cliches?

How about... Korea?

An unambiguously nasty enemy (no-one loves North Korea). Massed assaults by Chinese troops with desperate defences fought by the UN forces. General McArthur's long deep assault into the North that ended so badly. Classic weapons and vehicles and the start of the jet age. Napalm runs. Naval artillery barrages. Chaotic bulletfests by the light of parachute flares. A war that at least wasn't a total disaster for all concerned like Vietnam. And you've still got the Yanks in there to guarantee sales in the US.

Where the F**K are the Korean War games? The last decent Korean War game was 'Mig Alley' by Rowan (fantasy modern-day bullshit like 'Mercenaries' doesn't count). I suspect that the main reason is that with WW2, lazy developers can just rent 'Band of Brothers' and count that as all the research they need. They'd actually have to read some books to learn about Korea.

+1 to WillyWanka re. a game from the German perspective (watch 'Cross of Iron' and tell me it couldn't be done). After all we already have Silent Hunter III where you get to sink Allied shipping, thus murdering plenty of virtual allied sailors, so it's not like a shooter would be breaking any new moral ground - it's not like you'd be playing as the Einsatzgruppen after all....

"Yes, we're back in World War II - a revelation that's seen some sniffing from those COD4 players who think every war's irrelevant unless it's the one on terror."

Actually, it's not that they're "irrelevant" it's that a lot of us are just a little sick of WWII games. They're a dime a dozen. Nice strawman though.

Just because this one is "mature" (i.e. featuring specific and unpleasant acts of cruelty, over and above shooting people, obviously) doesn't change that. Or are we all supposed to fall over ourselves because of that cut scene where the US guy is blinded by the cigar? OMG teh maturityness! Terrible abuse of the word mature really.

@Stiluz
"I hope we don't get a polarized conflict where the western dudes are all heroes and the Japanese are horrible evil people, when everyone was shitty against everyone in WW2. I'd rather have a game where we can play both sides. "

Never happen, although they will shine less in this game no matter how far they go in showing that in war all sides do despicable things you can be sure the western allies will be redeemed somehow at the end. The russians and japanese? Probably not.

"It's easy to forget but Cloud was an unvoiced protagonist. Throughout Final Fantasy VII his reactions and attitudes were conveyed by way of simple gestures and the reactions of others."

Cloud speaks for fuck's sake. The to me most memorable quote is from him.

And Cloud is nothing like Chrono, since he is a character and not a shell.

Wrong thread, dude.

Also cyber_nicco, what the hell is wrong with you?

I read the preview and just can't shake the foreboding feeling of another cut-down, half arsed, gimped, shitty PSP-like Wii version of a big name multi platform release. It'll be Alone in the Dark all over again I bet :(

This is not a whole new Call of Duty.

This is not Call of Duty at all.

Call of Duty would be if it came from Infinity Ward.

@Laika - I think he means if those two nukes hadn't ended the war there and then, it could have become a long drawn out campaign involving numerous local countries to that region, that may well have resulted in more lives lost over the extended course of the war - albeit probably soldiers lives rather than women and children too.

I know - he's wrong.

Japan was on the point of surrender before Hiroshima.

In other news, I wonder why there were no serious WWI european theatre FPS games yet. Surely, trench warfare, gas attacks, charges across artillery-wasted fields against entrenched machinegun emplacements are first class material for oversimplified effigy-shootout game. I guess it's not discernable enough from the WWII setting.

I can see they are trying hard with this, but im still unconvinced after buying CoD 3 and thinking WTF? they cashed in on my love for CoD2 and pointed and laughed - like 'Nelson' from the Simpsons :/

If they want to be taken seriously and stand on their own two feet... then have the balls to drop the 'Call of Duty' name. Their past games have been COD in name only anyway.
'Generic Manly Name for a War Game' 1, instead of trying to cash in on people who loved COD4.

"The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan saved many, many Japanese and American lives. "

Or so people always say. Apparently history and what would have been are clear waters.

I can think of several reasons why one would nuke a city, none of them to save lives. But hey, that's just me.

"I can think of several reasons why one would nuke a city, none of them to save lives. But hey, that's just me."

From what I understand (and I'm no expert on this , believe me) an amphibious invasion of Japan would have killed a million allied soldiers and ten million Japanese (many of those through starvation). Japan wasn't going to capitulate, thus dropping the bomb ended the war before an invasion was required and saved millions of lives.

Japan wasn't going to capitulate, thus dropping the bomb ended the war before an invasion was required and saved millions of lives.

And killed 220 000 civilians the minute the bombs dropped, and thousands more through radiation poisoning, children and women among them. The number seems small if you compare it to, as you said, millions of possible casualties, but can you really tell whether deaths of those civillians were really better than deaths of soldiers, who, after all, knew what they are signing up for when they joined the army? Cause I can't. The numbers seem small anyway when you compare them to some 73 odd million of total deaths, of which only around 25 mil were military...

What the f... Russian soldier on final Berlin assault? We already had that in CoD...ffs.

Can we have a Call of Duty: IRA edition, where the IRA are planting bombs and stuff around London, have gained a foothold and we're taking it back?

Can we have a Call of Duty: IRA edition, where the IRA are planting bombs and stuff around London, have gained a foothold and we're taking it back?

As a fan of the Lewis Collins mastepiece Who Dares Wins, I think this is an absolutely spiffing idea.

P.S. When will people stop riding the dicks of IW and cut Treyarch some slack? These people work all the hours to make these bloody games - often for crappy wages, in the cases of the footsoldiers - so I think they deserve their dues.

They can shove this game. After COD3 I'm not touching another Treyarch title.

@local_celebrity

^That would be a no then...just as you mention it another doofus comes along to slag them off! I agree with you, give them some slack, they've had two years to produce this game, rather than eight months for CoD3 which was still a good effort for the time they were given.

Anyone who enjoyed CoD3 should rejoice that it wont be as popular as CoD4, it will probably reduce the number of cesspool bottom-feeders that you come across...the ones that make CoD4 such a 'pleasure' to play. Thats why I'm hoping GoW2 is a gaming masterpiece, not so I can play it, so it acts as a distraction to the societal dregs.

"Japan wasn't going to capitulate, thus dropping the bomb ended the war before an invasion was required and saved millions of lives. "

This is simply wrong, and a commonly propagated US idea. In 1945 Japan was one step short of simply imploding. The beaches of the country were going to be defended, in the event of an invasion in large part, by women and children, many armed with weapons like sharpened bamboo stakes. The Japanese government knew this, peace negotiations were already underway. It was only a matter of days or weeks before the war simply stopped when Japan surrendered. Then the US dropped the first bomb. Then, days later, the second. Japan surrendered. What was achieved? The difference was in the nature of the peace treaty. If Japan had managed to negotiate a settlement before the bombs were dropped, the surrender would not have been unconditional, and consequently the peace would not have been as financially advantageous to the US. So, the bombs were dropped, and the US cleaned up in the Pacific. Of course there is never any point to *any* war other than financial advantage but in this case the US protestations of morality were always weak, and are getting really threadbare.

"Japan was on the point of surrender before Hiroshima."

Bull$hit.

That is all.