Call of Duty: World at War – PC – Preview 2

When GameZone was last invited to an
Activision event to see the next Call of Duty title,
World at
War, we were treated to a single-player experience that was expansive,
entertaining and very well paced.

Activision held another event
recently in Santa Monica to show off other game modes – the co-op and
multiplayer. If you enjoyed CoD before, you are going to go ape for it now.
While the multiplayer features the deathmatches, is quick paced and has the
pick-ups familiar to most players, it can be competitive – meaning that players
vie for stats ratings in the matches.

The 360 was employed for multiplayer
and the game falls into the lines normally associated with online matches of the
sort. There were two types of deathmatches available – team and free for all. The
only one available in the time allowed was free for all. Ok, it did not go so
well.

Reflexive at its core, deathmatch
was played out on a city-type map, with players running through and killing
anything that moved. Part of the idea behind this type of game is to find a
target before another hunter finds you. Kill and move, it’s that basic. Those
with the fastest fingers usually win.

The co-operative gameplay on the PC, on the
other hand, is new and more strategic in nature. Yes, there will be voice
available through the client (according to a Treyarch rep overseeing the
action). In the co-op game, four players play the allies. The setting for the
two maps were in the Pacific Theater. The scenarios were within the campaign
setting and yes, in co-op the difficulty is ramped up measurably.

You will fall in with some
AI-controlled NPCs, and they work fine, but most of the combat has to be handled
by the real players. There are no real roles to play, but coordinating points of
attack is vital. Also vital is the ability to revive a comrade who is taken
down.

At one point in a huge battle to the
coast to take out Japanese artillery that was battering navy, the team was down
to one player. Three needed to be revived. Resuscitating is on a timer. Run out
of time and the mission fails. It was frantic trying to get to all the players
to get them back up, but it was accomplished.

Treyarch’s Dan Bunting stated that
“the team has been excited to bring co-op to the Call of Duty universe for the
first time. It’s hard to express how much content we are packaging into one
title.”

That is certainly true.

Bunting went on to state that
Treyarch is “bringing two different types of co-op – campaign and competitive
(play for high score).” Adding into the mix is something new in the form of death
cards. “Death cards are modifiers that allow you to customize your matches in private
co-op games,” he said.

On the multiplayer side, David
Vonderhaar outlines the different modes that will be available to players. There
will be war momentum, capture the flag, top secret, plus all other game modes
(like search and destroy) that players have come to know and enjoy. In addition,
during his rapid fire presentation, he said there would be lots of guns as well
as primary and secondary grenades, classic perks and new perks with maps that
come in all sizes and shapes, improvements to the party system (can set party
privacy, and can take your party and leave the lobby), party and search options,
heavily armored tanks with destructible parts and a secondary gunner, more
create-a-mode slots, plus an increased number of leaderboards.

The game is very visceral and the
accompanying sound is Call of Duty magnificent.

Mark Lamia, head of Treyarch, summed
it up best when he said: “It’s been one heck of a year for us. Many of you have
seen the single-player … the team that set out to do this set out to make a
different World War II game. Expectations couldn’t be higher and the team really
delivered on all fronts. It really is a new experience.”

Call of Duty: World at War is slated
for release in early November.