Opening words: MOTHER F’N FLAMETHROWERs and NAZI ZOMBIES!! I am so sick of first person shooters now. In all seriously, how many world war 2 games do we actually need? Another one? I wanted to hate this game so bad. I was lamenting playing it. The trailers made me at least rent it. So I did and, um. I wasn’t expecting this.

Multiplayer: 9.5
Ok ok ok ok ok ok. So did you like Call of Duty 4? If you did, you will love this. I have read and watched so many reviews on the net that say COD4 is better and has more to offer. WRONG. This game has so many guns, way more than cod4. This game has artillery raids, and a pack of dogs that replaces the helicopter in cod4. This has most all the modes of cod4 and then some. The nazi zombie game is so cool(you are in a house, where you have to keep the windows covered up with boards and shoot all the zombies that try to get in, ton of fun with friends online), you unlock it once you beat the single player game alone. I cannot say it enough. I wanted to hate this. But honestly, the multiplayer maps are so neat, so much nicer than the ones in cod4. Especially some of the japanese locations, with the violet leaved trees. WOW. You have the same upgrade system like in cod4, where you have to play games and get experience to unlock modes, game play types, weapons and perks. Yes the dreaded martyrdom grenade crap comes back for more lame cheap kills, oh well. In all fairness, I was so sick of cod4, because I played it so much when there was next to nothing out for the ps3 back then. I never want to play cod4 again. So i’m a little biased by that. Multiplayer offers a lot more than cod4 in my opinion. This is a great step up. Sure it lacks modern guns and all the upgrades, no night vision and other things as well. It doesn’t matter. The guns work great and feel really varied and interesting. Also, you can play most of the single player missions with 2 friends online(for free on psn and pc). You miss out on a couple of the missions, but you get to play most. This made the game super cool because you get experience points for it that transfer into the other online matches. It is like a mini game to see who can string the most kills together and get multipliers for doing so. I played it with krztov, and by myself.

Single Player: 9.0
This is way better than the single player on cod4, because for starters you can play most of the single player game with 2 of your friends online. Sure, cod4 made you feel more like you were a character. Sure it had some amazing moments. This does as well. The Air plane missions in this are great. This game has tanks, you can drive as well. I give this high marks, because it really makes you feel like you are in the damn war. They really capture the period all most perfectly. You get to play as the U.S. vs Japan. I have never seen a game that lets you fight the japanese in this era. So this is a very welcome change. The run at you bonzai style. Never have I experienced this in a game before. It is really intense. You also play as a russian invading germany. This is so damn cool, when I was a teen, I wanted to be russian so bad. I was such a communist then. I grew out of that phase though. lol. So the single player game really offers up a new ww2 experience. It pulls it off amazingly well.

Presentation: 7.5
The intros to the levels are pretty, um, unspectacular. Cod4 really beats it on the presentation for sure. But it was fictional. This is real stuff. They do an ok job setting up the levels though. The menus are pretty much a re-skin of cod4. The look and feel of the game is really well done for sure.

Visuals: 7.8
GORE, GORE, GORE. The thing that was missing in cod4. Blood. Guts. Decapitations, losing limbs. I was just playing and hit a trip mine and lost my legs and watched my torso bounce off the ground with stumps. LOL. I love the gore, Watching hands and arms go flying off with a trail of blood. The kills in this are so much better. After I found out that cod4 ran below 720p, its 600p. Here too I can tell it’s not running at true 720p resolution. This makes textures up close look blockier. I think socom looks way better than this. The texture detail in that game is way better. This is how they get it to run at 60 frames a second though, and it runs really fast because of it. Some of my friends say that the grass in the game looks better, but when i lay down in it, it looks just like the same low resolution blocky crap i got in cod4. The graphics don’t suck, but go look at some killzone 2 beta videos. That is a graphical 10 out of 10. That makes this look pretty bad. It still looks good enough. It just seems dated. You think they would of taken advantage of the ps3 horse power by now, but this feels like a re-skin. Like it is running the same way that cod4 did. The thing that does look better in this is the flamethrower. Things burn in this game. That looks really cool.

Audio: 7.9
Gore, Gore, Gore, the dying sounds are amazing. If you really mess someone up bad you will hear them gurgling. This is so much more visceral and realistic vs COD4. The voice acting is really good. The sound fx are really well done. I bet they really test fired these old guns to get all the sounds, It really is authentic sounding. I am really impressed with the sound fx and spoken dialogue. The music is, um. err. Really out of place at some points. Metal drums and guitars in a WW2 shooter? I guess it kind of makes it meaner. But honestly, it’s kind of hokey and really out of place in some parts.

Game Mechanics: 9.0:
The controls are dead on, just like in cod4. What really sets this apart is the fact that you can drive tanks. I think they control pretty crappy in all honesty. It’s all about the weapons in this game. So many exotic ones. The weapons from each country involved are all here. The jap guns are really cool, as are the russian guns. So much different than any of the stuff I have played in a game before. There is this one jap gun where the clip is on top of the gun and kind of obscures the view. I love it though, It’s a bad ass heavy machine gun. I just love the authentic weapons. I honestly prefer these vintage guns and the flamethrower over the cod4 guns. It just feels better to me for some reason. Old school! I really loved the mission where you are the gunner on a plane. This was so cool as well. The AI is kind of hit and miss. Sometimes really good, Some times as dumb as dumb gets. The game is really challenging though, you cannot rambo through this. You will get killed. You have to keep down, take your time, and use your brains on when to reload and advance. One thing that still really pisses me off is the fucking lag on the multiplayer online modes, its just like cod4 here. Like on my screen I will shoot a guy in the face then die and I’m like WTF, then the kill cam shows something completely different, like me not shooting at all and dying. WTF(like I was dreaming I killed him, then I end up dead). This is really annoying still.

Replay: 9.8:
To unlock everything, you will be playing for a lot of hours. I played cod4 for hundreds of hours. This is even deeper. So you will get a lot of game play out of this title, even though the single player story is about 8 hrs long. The fact that you can play those levels with friends online really makes running through the game more fun than ever. It’s all about Nazi Zombie time.

Total Score: 9.4 out of 10:
Final Words: Treyarch hit this out of the park. I’m not kidding. The gore, the vehicles, the flamethrower, all the weird new old weapons, the japanese levels, and the nazi zombie mini game really made me love this game a hell of a lot more than COD4. I love hearing BONZAI and panicking while 3 jap soldiers come running at me with the bayonet’s. Sell COD4 and buy this. I prefer this a lot more. Its a lot more of a game in many ways. To Hell with all the nay sayers. This game is amazing. Beyond my expectations.Click Here to buy Call of Duty: World at War for the playstation 3.