Being a WW2 and CoD gamer since the start, I dont really know what to tell you..
Gameplay: Its basic world war two.
We have seen this countless times before and its not really that different. If you are a long time CoD player, you know what to expect. In this game you fight as one of two people, the Russians in Germany and U.S in Japan. With the exception of the Japanese front, this is all old news. On the Russian side, you spend most of your time making your way and advance to Germany as history has it. This is your mission and this is what you fight for. House to house combat with some undergronud railway gameplay is what you can expect. In Japan, you fight in the jungles. A new element is given to you with the flamethrower. Enemies will hide in trees and shoot from anywhere and everywhere. Once you get the flametrhower, its game over. There isnt much variation in the missions themselves as you find yourself in many of the same missions as we have seen from previous CoD games. With the exception of some bombing gameplay, you are mainly on foot killing either Germans or Japanese. There is a good variation of WW2 weapons in the game resembling and sounding like they should. While the recoil may be harder to handle due to their era, they are quite satisfying. The gameplay is like other CoD and WW2 fps games. Its linear, been there done that, and average at best. This game does not do anything drastic to change those measures. The ending of the game is satisfying if you know your history however.
Graphics: The graphics are like many other modern gen games. The characters, lighting, and overall design look good. Up close however, they are terrible. If one were to compare this to its predecessor, I think it would be a downgrade in graphics. Much of this game is gritty and brown to say the least. Color wise, there isnt much going on besides the jungles in Japan. Expect the same old in single player, brown and green with a tad bit of blue.
Sound: The sound is one of the strong suites of this game. The voice acting, music and gun fire all contribute to a well mixed sounding game. The characters throughout the single player have fairly good dialogue and rarely repeat things twice. The music adds to the overall effect of the game as it rises and lowers during certain battles and sequences. Gun fire is very good as it sounds extremely realistic to its counterparts. With 5.1 surround sound, the experience is complete.
Online: If you're looking for an online like CoD4, do not look here. The online features big maps, camping and a lot of recoil. The recoil is manageable, the other two are not. CoD4 featured a good variety of both big and small maps. This game tends to focus entirely on large maps, its very boring. With the addition of tanks, moving from one side to another on the map can take ages. Finding people is often a problem as it leads to camping. Again, the online colors aren't really much of a change from single player, quite monotonous. This makes it hard to see an enemy as much of the soldiers are covered in brown. They often just blend right in. The prestige system is much the same as CoD4 except now you get to go 10 more levels up. You also get 5 more classes as you prestige the max amount of times. This is the only good part of online if you are comparing to CoD4 and others. Much of the online is boring, repetitive and dull otherwise.
This game is worth it if you are a hardcore CoD fan. I somehow managed to find something good about it being such. I have played CoD since day one and I had a hard time with this one. CoD4 left a big impression on me and many other players. CoD WaW did not match up to it in any way despite the similar characteristics.
If you can, buy it for cheaper than full price. Its a good game, just not the best. It takes one step forward but a couple back.