Call of Duty: World at War (Wii) Review

Call of Duty: World at War for the Nintendo Wii is an excellent first-person shooter that delivers a quality experience on the Wii that has largely been lacking from third-party publishers. It features excellent storytelling, impressive graphics and sound, great controls, and a technical production that rivals the best of third-party efforts on other consoles. The attention to quality shows a serious effort has been made to create the best possible experience on the Wii, rather than just a cheap and easy port. Above anything else, Call of Duty: World at War shows that the Wii is perfectly capable of hosting games that can satisfy even the most critical of hardcore gamers.

Call of Duty: World at War follows on from the critically acclaimed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but takes players back to a more traditional (for the CoD series) World War II setting. This time the focus is on two of the less explored theatres of the conflict, the Pacific and the Eastern front.

The Pacific campaign focuses on the story of Private Miller, a U.S. Marine who is captured by the Japanese while scouting Makin Island. The player takes control of Private Miller just as he is about to be executed by the Japanese. In the quite brutal opening scene, Miller is rescued by a group of Marine Raiders who then enlist him to help them in a series of missions into Japanese controlled territory. The other campaign focuses on Private Dimitri Petrenko, a Russian soldier in the Red Army. Dimitri’s campaign takes in the Eastern front from Stalingrad to the Soviet march towards Berlin in the closing stages of the European campaign.

Both campaigns attempt to recreate the historical events as accurately as possible and do a good job of making the stories seem believable. The storytelling is raw, confronting and often very brutal, but at the same time filled with emotion and the gravity of the struggles of the men involved. There is quite a lot of character building throughout the campaigns and squad members are clearly not designed to just be nameless and faceless walking guns. While the game does fail to elicit the same emotional investment that great war films like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon can from their audiences, for a game, it does a great job of at least making the player feel something for the lives of the characters. There are highs and lows and it is mostly one-dimensional, but clearly the story has received some close attention during the development process.

The audio and visual production is also an area that has received plenty of attention and does a great job of creating a believable setting and atmosphere for the game. Environments and characters look the part and the soundtrack and effects rival those used in big budget war films. Character voices are provided by professional actors, including Kiefer Sutherland, and the quality really helps with immersing the player into not only the action, but also the lives of the characters.

The technical aspects of the game are also highly impressive with well modelled characters, expansive and detailed environments, and intelligent allies and enemies all running at a swift frame-rate that only slows on a rare occasion. The game engine also pushes some impressive special effects that show the serious effort that has gone into developing the title.

Control is handled with what has become the default Wii first-person shooter setup. Movement is handled with the nunchuck, aiming with the Wii-remote IR pointer and a few simple gesture controls for things like grenades, hand-to-hand combat and other interactive elements. The aiming is precise, movement feels natural and the gestures are responsive, making it a very intuitive control scheme to use and one that works exceptionally well. The controls can be adjusted to suit the individual play style of most players and can be adapted to produce a scheme very close to the mouse and keyboard style PC first-person shooter players have become familiar with over the years.

There is also plenty of value packed into the game with entertaining local and online multiplayer modes and a decent single player experience sure to keep even the most frequent players busy for quite a while. The local multiplayer is a simple co-operative mode where player two can assist player one by providing a second shooter. Player one controls all movement and player two is limited to shooting only. While not a proper co-operative mode, it does allow for some fun to be had rather when more than one person wishes to play. The online multiplayer on the other hand is quite a bit more complex and features a good range of modes and options to keep players entertained. Sadly it is missing quite a few features compared to other versions of the game, but it runs well, with very little lag. It is a fun but flawed online experience.

Call of Duty: World at War brings a game experience to the Nintendo Wii that has rarely been seen this far into the console’s life-cycle. An intelligent, well-made third party game that will appeal to hardcore gamers. It has solid, well thought out controls that bring something unique to the experience and it tells a story that, while simple, is effective at eliciting some emotional response from the player. It is not the first-person shooter experience that will sway PC or console gamers away from the traditional mouse and keyboard or dual analogue control setup (that game has yet to be made). But it is certainly an indication that developers, given the right resources, can make a first-person shooter for the Wii that can be better than anything that has been developed for any other system so far.

Personal thoughts

I really liked Call of Duty: World at War. In all areas it is as a game on the Wii should be, not what the developers have had the time and money to rush out the door. The controls are excellent, but it still isn’t the game that will convince anyone that the Wii-Remote is the best control scheme for first-person shooters. It is close though, and I believe there will be a game that proves this within the Wii’s life-cycle.

The game does have its small negatives, but that is not to say that it is not a superb game, because it is one of the best I have played in a long time. I am so happy to see a third party actually take the time and effort to produce a good game for the Wii and am even more happy to actually play it.

I believe all hardcore gamers should at least play Call of Duty: World at War on the Wii. There are so many positives it might go a long way to convincing some of the bigger critics of the console that it is capable of handling a complicated, hardcore game, and handling it in a way that is unique and adds something to the genre. Casual gamers will still be as baffled as they would be if playing with a traditional controller, but this is not a game that will appeal to casual gamers at all. This is a game for the hardcore, so if you consider yourself a hardcore gamer and only own a Wii, you should definitely pick this up or quit whinging about a lack of real games for the Wii.