This installment in the Call of Duty world nails the campaign like always, but the multiplayer? Not so much.
The campaign offers a great array of situations, ambushes, raids, stealth, etc. With the ambushes, you will never feel safe, looking at all body's laying on the ground in a different way.
Another great thing in the single player portion of World at War, are the videos in between missions. The video clips in between missions are tough, gruesome, and give you a feel for what it was like to be a soldier in WWII.
Now, for the multiplayer portion of the game. In my opinion, not it's strong point. If you were a fan of Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare, you will notice something about the layout right when you log onto Live play. It's a twin! The layout for the game is the same as Modern Warfare, but that's all good, we liked that layout.
Online uses pretty much the same ranking system as Modern Warfare, you gain new guns the higher levels you become, there are custom classes, and there are perks you can apply to your custom classes. Most of the perks are the same as Modern Warfare, but "WWII-ised', with a handful of original perks. There are also perks for when you jump into a vehicle, for instance, "Greased Berrings". With this perk, whenever you are in a turret of a tank, you can rotate around faster than you would normally be able to, a nice little addition.
Now, for the actual gameplay, it's tricky, are you ready? Think of Modern Warfare's online play, now, switch the guns to slower shooting WWII guns, the sounds and voices to those of a WWII setting, and the maps, to look like they would in WWII. YAY!! We have World at War! I know what you're thinking, "Well that's a good thing, right?" Wrong, yes, Modern Warfare's online play was past amazing, but when you switch it to a WWII style, it slows down and just isn't the same.
Overall, this game is a solid buy, if you do not have Xbox LIVE, it's still worth the purchase to enjoy the single player campaign, if you want, invite a friend over and play through it with him! It's fast-paced, edgy, and fun! Don't let the slower multiplayer play make you shy away from the game, it's still very fun and addicting! Always saying to yourself, "Just one more game...." will occur very often.
If you were like me, and thought that going modern, like they did in Call of Duty 4, was a brilliant idea and you loved it, then when you found the next installment was going back to WWII was a terrible idea, don't worry, it wasn't. I thought that WWII was dried out, not going to be any good, but I just had to get this game, I mean, I've owned every single Call of Duty game there has been, and I couldn't break the tradition. So I purchased the game, still thinking that it was going to be a distaster, being WWII and all. When I put it in my Xbox, and played for a couple hours, I noticed I got a nice warm feeling inside. WWII is back! :)