Call of Duty: World at War

Here it is: my very first Call of Duty game. I own Modern Warfare but I opted to play this one first because I heard it wasn't as good and, well, why not save the best for last? (Or at least, for later.) I only started playing this game last night, so you could definitely call it a short one. There are fifteen missions that range from fifteen to forty-five minutes in length, mostly depending on how often you die, so I'd estimate the total time requirement to be eight hours (on the normal difficulty setting). It was often frustrating, but more often, fun. I actually can't think of another World War II shooter that I've played through, so it's tough for me to draw comparisons, but I'll still call this a "generic" WWII shooter. At times it was innovative, and there were certainly different levels meant to cater to different skillsets and gametypes. For example, one level consists almost entirely of sniping Germans. Another can be beaten using nothing but a flamethrower. A third unique level is mostly rail-shooter, putting you in the gunner seat of an airplane. Another mission takes place from start to finish inside a tank. I'm glad there was such a constant shake-up, because otherwise the game would have gotten very stale very fast. Another key to keeping things fresh was alternating theatres and characters; half the game is spent as an American in the Pacific and the other half is spent as a Soviet on the European front. I actually much preferred the Russian half of the game - the characters were more memorable, the levels more interesting, and the enemies less frustrating. Far too much of the American campaign was spent hiding in tall grass and chasing suicidal Japanese soldiers through tunnels and flushing them out of bunkers with explosives. I guess that's pretty realistic, and I give kudos to the game makers for the historical accuracy I saw in a lot of places. Still, it was just so much more fun gunning down Nazi tanks for the Motherland than it was radioing in air strike coordinates on obscure Japanese islands. Especially since the Russian guy's commander was hilariously over-the-top - always rambling on with his Russian accent about how awesome it was to annihilate the Nazis with no mercy - while the American commander was voiced by Kiefer Sutherland and, as such, got pretty annoying after a while. You can only hear so many orders given in a Jack Bauer voice before you start to feel a little bit like a useless CTU scrub. At any rate, the game was at least alright, and probably worthy of more praise than I've allowed it here. Whatever; I'm tired. Good night.