Call of Duty: World at War Comments by Dan Whitehead

Just a brief skim through but nice to see the map structure questioned. I thought the COD4 map setups were a bit suspect and forgettable at best.

1st Comment!!! Plays the same as COD4 which is no bad thing....

The spawn points really do need some work as it's no fun respawning and dying instantly, compounded even more by the constant dog and artillery attackes.

If you like COD4 (and you should if you are a FPS playing gamer with any taste) you will like this. The only down side is that this was not on my, already enormous, must buy list before i played it and now it is . .

Anyone got spare keyz .. will trade for sexual favourz..

Unless dogs are replaced or seriously rebalanced it's a no sale for me. Weapons also need a seriousl rebalance.

The beta felt exactly like that, a beta. It did not feel like a product ready for release. The question is whether anything will change before it is released.

As it is, CoD4 is the better game by far.

This game is not for me, it got old very fast (4 hours before I switched it off and haven't returned), not surprising as I've been playing COD4 for the past year, and this is exactly the same. I can see how some people will love it though, being so similar to the last game.

Its a shit mod.

Nothing more.

Think this sums it up really.
I was really dissapointed, absolutely zero innovation in this title.

It genuinly is COD4 reskinned. A mod community could do the same job.
The only thing that I will possibly buy this title for is the co-op, I am hoping that holds up well and is much fun! :)

World at War should at least hold Modern Warfare's trajectory, even if taken in isolation it does little to dispel fears that Infinity Ward innovates and Treyarch fills in afterwards.

That sums it up well, Dan. There's nothing "wrong" with the beta as such, but it was disappointing for me to see how little had changed, considering it's a different developer - particularly when you consider the vast difference between the multis of COD2 and COD3.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I suppose.

Its a reskin of CoD4 for sure...right down to the crappy networking code. It will still select crappy hosts for you, even when using the local matchmaking option. It still has shitty hit detection...that will be those "WTF!?" moments. It still has no in-game host migration, so you are at the behest of little Timmy and his "Mommy, they keep killing me!" strops. And it still has the "You would like to play Team Deathmatch, but I, the game, will now put you in a Hardcore SnD match" bug.

If you are going to reuse a previous game, at least have the effing decency to improve it a little bit.

On a much brighter note. That sweary 14 year old may soon be a thing of the past as Microsoft have patented realtime audio filtering software that is specifically designed to remove swearing and offensive words at the sever end.

So now you'll just get

"Mother BEEEEP ShBEEP NigBEEEPPP" or better yet THEY will get a message saying their account has just been banned for breaking the terms of use!

Due to my personal interest of the setting and era i already prefer this to COD4, Agree with bodypopper regarding the problems with spawning and the dogs can be irratating but i still think they are no better or worse than attack chopper, best addition so far is fixing points awarded for assists as i seem to be the assist master, very interested to see how they address issues from beta and how final experience turns out and much like COD4 i expect to do a few runs through the prestige mode. woohoo

The biggest issues were the dogs and the rifle / machine gun distance imbalance. It's a no buy from me unless these are addressed. Combined together they get worse too - if you have a rifle and there is a dog attack you are generally screwed. The dogs take a ridiculous number of shots to kill with a rifle such that a reload is required if there are more than one and that means death.

I'm not getting this. I must have spent a total of about 1 hour on this, didn't impress me at all. The weapons not being fairly balanced, the spwaning and don't get me started on the dogs thing.

Treyarch are also making the new James Bond game which is also using the COD4 engine, well after playing this beta it has put me right off buying the new Bond game.

Sorry Treyarch, it's a thumbs down from me.

@ Dan

"the old-fashioned machine-guns are far more precise than you'd expect" and

"There's still no indication as to which player is the host of a match."

1. The RPD in CoD4 is my weapon of choice, simply because I often use it to take out annoying snipers from a distance, in much the same way you described Dan. And then use it to clean out whole corridors of people.

2. Guessing you could do what you do in CoD4, which is get straight into the game and press 'Back' to bring up the player list - the one with all four bars at the top of either of the team lists is the host - there's usually a brief second or two as all the clients join when everyone has four bars, then everyone bar the host has one bar. Once you've established that, feel free to change class.

Clunky, but it works.

I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of different perks, but those dogs do sound interesting! And I personally can't wait to see how the addition of vehicles affects things.

Keep up Eurogamer. Level cap on the beta is at 24 now, as of yesterday.

as of sunday?

The 2 perks that need getting rid of are juggernaut and martyrdom, juggernaut I hate that it lets you survive a sniper round to the head and martyrdom is the epitome of cheap.

"with bolt-action rifles proving less accurate and powerful as you'd imagine"

That was my very first complaint....

Also, the maps are too on-top of each other. They need more open spaces, like in CoD3, as well as jeeps and bikes. In fact, just go back and patch CoD3 to hell and make it work. That'd satisfy me to no end!

"World at War should at least hold Modern Warfare's trajectory, even if taken in isolation it does little to dispel fears that Infinity Ward innovates and Treyarch fills in afterwards."

And ain't that the truth! LOL

I'm not bothered about World at War's online features at all but I am semi-interested in seeing how the campaign mode plays, especially as Call of Duty 3 was a bit of a mess, being somewhat generic and also very buggy! I'm keen to see how this fares review-wise because I'm not willing to pre-order what might be a second-rate Call of Duty from an, IMO, inferior developer otherwise. I've heard that Treyarch have spent more time on this game than Call of Duty 3 so hopefully it'll at least be less glitchy...

Shame it's gone back to WWII though, Modern Warfare was a breath of fresh air for the series with modern weapons and more interesting settings.

So none of my frustrations with COD4 have been fixed. Pity. They won't get me again this time.

Getting this game out as a sequel to COD4 was going to be an impossible job.

Firstly nobody wants to buy it as it's developed by treyarch. Then its set in the WW era and no one wants it. Now the beta is out and it's almost exactly the same as cod4 in every way people are comlplaining about that too! If they would have changed any "fundemental" aspects of play the fans would kick off and i'm sure this game was being heavily watched by activision as it is a huge money maker for them and they want to keep the fan base.

Ultimately the dogs are not a problem. They're designed to kill as many characters as possible. At least you can kill them alot easier than the dogs in cod4, and i'll tell you now, i'd rather have that than just slightly move into the open to be hit by a helicopter which you can't do a single thing about.

where are all the people who said "cod3 didnt suck, treyarch had to rush it...........they have had 2 years to dev this!"?

I played for 2 hours twice, and havent been back since last thursday. the dogs are ridiculously over effective. the weapon balance is very poor. if a bolt action rifle needs 2 shots minimum to kill (certainly with juggernaut on) then you might as well not bother, cos the reload time counts you out of a sniff at a second shot. maps are ok, castle and roundhouse both being quite nice. makin is a bit boring.

Haven't played this, but sounds strange that this'd been in dev for 2 years, yet it's a carbon copy of CoD4?

Also re:
I sniped an enemy in the back with a rifle from a distant high window, only for them to turn around and kill me instantly with a few shots from a machine-gun.

This has something to do with how the network code works, but those "few shots" are often actually a long, sustained, spray-and-pray burst. It just doesn't show up in the killcam.

@antmusic. you can do something about the helicopters. you can easily shoot them down with an rpg.it does tend to annoy the person who got the chopper though.

CoD3 didnt suck, it was one of the most enjoyable multiplayers I have played. I hated CoD4, so that's why I am disappointed...its just a clone of CoD4, with all the shitty 'features' that it brought to the CoD franchise.

Treyarch seem to have been strong-armed into making CoD4(v2.0) by Activision...and it just doesnt work in a WW2 setting. The aperture sights and silencers on period weapons, just to appease the RDS kiddies of CoD4, is a joke. The bolt-actions are only a one-shot kill when you get a headshot, and with Juggernaut, that's not even guaranteed. Yet, if you stick a scope on the very same rifle, it mysteriously becomes a one-shot kill again. Activision should just make a fucking sniper game and be done with it.

As I said earlier, my main gripes are with the netcode. It hasnt been touched. Its the core component of a multiplayer shooter, and its been forgotten about, like some retarded cousin, in favour of the much 'prettier and popular' perks/kill streak rewards....whoop-dee-fucking-doo!!

If you cant fucking trust the server in a client/server model, then dont fucking use one, and I'm afraid, putting the 'hosting' in the control of a typical 360 owner, is like putting Tokyo Metro in the hands of Li Hongzhi.

The dogs didn't really bother me after I learned to knife them instead of shooting them. The WAR mode is not Domination by another name - they are subtlety different, but the difference has a big impact on gameplay ( At least it did in COD3 - where the multiplayer was seriously underrated ). The flags in WAR mode must be capped in order, in domination any flag can be capped at any time. WAR mode concentrates the fight and generates something like a frontline.

The dogs are a complete joke - although I've found it's easier to knife them, than shoot them. See a dog approach (if you're lucky), runs backwards, swing knife early. I've killed 3 or 4 in a row like this, although it is possible to be overwhelmed on several sides at times. I can't help but feel that their inclusion is a kind of design-by-fan-committee, since I remember lots of speculation and rumour-mongering on the COD4 boards about packs of the dogs as a 10 or 15 kill streak reward.

Not only do they piss pretty much everyone off and ruin the balance of the game, they look like shit too.

I loved CoD3 multi, it was brilliant fun.

@ pinkpanzer

Or, indeed, open up with machine guns on the chopper. It's now at the stage whereby me and at least one of my clan mates always just let rip straight away - almost like Ghostbusters and proton packs, with the amount of bullets flying up in the sky. And it's always funny listening to people back in the lobby moan about how their choppers did absolutely sod all before getting brought down.

Therefore, I can imagine the dogs being a bit more of an issue.

I agree with Boddypopper the spawn points seem to need a lot more work as you will often kill someone and they end up spawning directly behind you or you end up spawning right in the path of an artillery shell which can be very annoying.
I don't agree with the article when regards to the hounds. I think this is a great feature and most lobbies that i have been in have all impersonated the barking of the hounds in anticipation of their own death which is a given as it sometimes is quite difficult to kill the dogs. RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!! is often heard through out the lobby hilarious. COD WAW has been nothing but fun for me apart from Makin which is a real pain in the ass. A really unnerving and dark map as enemies can and will appear from anywhere. Fantastic beta bring on the full relase! Any chance of it being moved forward??? Please Treyarch!!!! :o)

I'm enjoying this and I think it's sufficiently different to warrant a purchase.
Maps are much more elaborate and do not have a very limited number of choke points.

I'm finding the guns are different and all have small clips so force people to stick in squads a lot more.

Also the dogs are great.. it's really funny watching you entire team huddled together in a hut trying to mount a defense from the dogs and the other team following them in to mop up.
You can defend pretty well against them if you stick together and don't ignore them. Some people seem to want to keep playing and hope to ignore them.
Dog kills do not start your streak again ... do they? People keep saying this but I don't think so.

I will say i'm dissapointed they haven't fixed the migrating host issue and the hit detection is still a bit off alright. All in all though I thought the hands on was a overly negative.

Personally I think the dogs are a lot better than the helicopter from COD4. If you stand in the sights of a chopper, you die. If you don't have a machine gun or RPG, you don't stand a chance of taking it out. It takes the whole team. Worse still, you get no points for taking it out.

The dogs on the other hand, on an individual basis, you stand a chance of surviving and killing a few, AND you get points for killing them! What's all this whinging?

And people complaining that this is just a reskin of COD4... not being funny guys, but do you not realise that COD4 was just a reskin of the previous games with a clever online levelling system?

I'd rather be chased by some dogs and get points for it than get mullered by a UAV + Gunship combo thanks.

People will moan no matter what with CoD5. If it's like CoD4 they'll moan that it's like CoD4. If it's not like CoD4 they'll moan that it's not like CoD4. Personally, getting rid of these moaners makes the game more attractive to me so I'll see how it pans out after I've finished with L4D/LBP/Fable2.

CoD4 was not a reskin of any of the previous CoD games. It had a new engine; a new matchmaking system; a new perk system (rather than loadouts related to a specific gun/class). It removed the ability to play non-ranked public games and catered for people who couldnt aim to save their life.

I like COD5 (although I'm more wary of dogs in the street now!), day one purchase for me \o/

i don't see why anybody would bother playing this if they already have COD4. all this is a rehash of that admittedly awesome game, but now in the same tired old WW2 setting. its just a way for them to make money until COD5.

OldRed - I thought Cod3 multiplayer was a lot better than IW's Cod2 effort also, I think they get an unfair amount of flack.

Yes it was but that's because the 360 version of COD2 was released prematurely with an unfinished online mode that was as laggy as f*** until they patched it four or five months later. A really poor effort really but at least IW rightly focused on the campaign mode which was up to scratch. The PC version of COD2 was infinitely superior and supported more than 8 players online from day one. It was also a better online experience than COD3 IMO.

COD4's was pretty decent from my brief play but I just don't have the time to devote to online gaming, not when there's half a dozen other single player games begging to be played.

When I was a kid we didn't pay full price for TC's

It's not a bad game, it's just that COD 4 multiplayer wise, is just so much more superior in almost every department.

CoD 1 will remain the best online CoD for some time :D No pointless perk system, no stupid recharging health, doesn't play like Unreal Tournament...

Looking at the beta this seems more like it should be an expansion pack for COD4. I was hoping for Treyarch to push things more, e.g. destructible terrain, more open levels etc. As it stands the single player campaign has gotta be something really special if its going to take my cash on release day, otherwise i'll wait for a post Christmas bargin.

Added: I like the perk system and I never had any trouble competing. I got into COD4 online quite late, and still held my own against lv55 Prestige when I was at low levels. (am still only level 33)

I wonder how it feels like working at Treyarch? Everyone's always going "Oh no, CoD X is being done by Treyarch, I'll wait for CoD X+1 made by Infinity Ward instead".

"I wonder how it feels like working at Treyarch? Everyone's always going "Oh no, CoD X is being done by Treyarch, I'll wait for CoD X+1 made by Infinity Ward instead"."

Hehe, well if they are reading and if it makes them feel any better I am really looking forward to Quantum of Solace. ;)

I like it and think the weapons will make it a little tougher for people to pwn as easily as they once did. I find the dogs no more annoying than a chopper floating above your head for a half hour, because your teammates refuse to help shoot it down.

My problems so far are with balance, hit detection and the horrible, horrible maps. These maps lend themselves to zero strategy and are only a huge clusterfeck of people running around in circles. The ONLY positive thing about that is there aren't many places for snipers to camp and pick people off w/o fear of reprisal. ;)

Is there going to be a version of search and destroy in the game? This will mean no dogs if it plays as COD 4.

search and destroy is already in the Beta

Overall I found the beta pretty enjoyable, but there're a lot of little quirks that put me off buying the full thing when it comes out.

Firstly, yeah, the dugs. Not quite the gamebreaking arsebiscuit that a few folks have labelled it as, but usually it spells guaranteed death for everybody at least twice unless you're handy with the knife or you've got a machine gun. There's just something I don't like about rewarding a streak of kills with even more kills, it just goes to create an unassailable gap between the leaders and the cack-handers like myself.

Concerning the maps, I read somebody earlier saying that castle and roundhouse were decent, but makin is a bit of a dirge. Well, I think it's the other way around - castle and roundhouse have a bit too much 'width' for my liking, which equates to few running battles and a whole lot of creeping about, paranoid that you're going to expose yourself. Makin, on the other hand, is a lot more condensed, with the wooden shacks and walls providing enough cover to make it interesting but the odd tower or elevated hut providing a height (thus, viewpoint) advantage worth scrapping over; that makes Makin my favourite of the three. Castle's lovely scenery and terraced-style layout makes for a half-decent second, but roundhouse doesn't appeal to me much (not least because of the 'underground' glitch). I'd like to see 'narrower' maps, which can provide more tangible moving fronts than the wide-open roundhouse.

Gun-wise, I'm pretty pleased. I like the idea of being able to have the Springfield, Mosin Nagant etc. with or without scope, but their lack of power is crippling. On the whole, though, the weapon choice sees most combat niches filled. The only problem I have with it (one that bugged me in CoD4 as well) is that Marines can use Japanese and Russian weapons and vice-vice versa. I preferred it when each team only had their own weapons at their disposal, it lended more individuality to each side and it makes more sense that way (although, a Marine could ostensibly be using a captured MP40 or whatever, but I digress). Finally, that f***ing hideous 1-hit kill auto-aim knife is back again. Sooner they revert back to good 'ol bash the better.

I did hate when id pull off good shots with a bolt action rifle, with the stopping power perk, and anything but a headshot STILL required 2 shots. The machineguns were way too accurate (and the bipods didnt seem to do anything :S).

Just like cod4, everyone ends up using combinations of juggernaut/stopping power and steady aim/deep impact.
And once its unlocked i bet bandolier/bouncing betties (claymores) will be the first perk.
Also, shotgun with a grip and steady aim is an insanely accurate death-machine.