If you like Call of Duty 4 enough to play it again with 1940's paint.
Call of Duty: World at War is COD 4 exactly. It has the same arcs in the story, the same types of sequences, the same skeleton. But with new characters, environments, and oh yeah, its World War II.
If thats fine with you, you'll love it. If you wanted a step forward in the Call of Duty franchise, this isnt it. Its more refined, maybe more polished, it has better voice work including Keifer Sutherland and the great Gary Oldman.
The online multiplayer is what you'd expect, with some nice tweaks. Instead of calling in a helicopter, you'll bring in a pack of German Shepherds. You still level up in rank and gain new guns, all fun for stat/RPG nerds like myself.
But the surprise to me; is this game seems like the developers wanted to tackle Vietnam, but didnt quite have the guts yet. You'll stalk through rivers while being ambushed, enemies will play dead and trap your allies bodies with explosives. And this side of the campaign seems like the main draw, the focus, and the Russian campaign is twice as good.
Gary Oldman is amazing as your friend and leader Reznov. You'll crawl through marshes of dead Russians, snipe enemies while planes fly overhead, you'll storm through subways. All good fun. But I couldnt help but notice the sniping portion is directly stolen from Enemy At The Gates. Oh well; it was the best part of the game. I also thought the two man sniping portion from COD 4 was the best part of that game; so maybe there's a pattern.
Well, if you like Call of Duty, buy this game. But dont expect too much new. This could be viewed as a WWII expansion pack of Modern Warfare.