Brief look @ "The Brave and the Bold" and "Iron Man: Armored Adventures"

When the comic genre exploded in the big screen some six years ago, it became customary for new cartoons to follow successful entries, in an effort to capitalize on the films' success with the kids and any related merchandise. Two films that dominated the box office this year and both belonged to this genre were "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight". And so this fall, kids have "Iron Man: Armored Adventures" and "Batman: The Brave and The Bold". And despite the obvious intend of these cartoons, neither is connected to their respective movies.

"Na na na na na na na! Batmaaaaaaan!"

Starting with Batman, "The Brave and The Bold" adapts conceptually a classic comic book of the same title (which, I believe, has returned to shelves recently). In the book, Batman collaborates with various DC heroes in various missions. The cartoon is fairly lighthearted, even more than "The Batman" (which started after "Batman Begins" and ran for five seasons), which already got flak for being light and gimmicky, unlike Timm's long-run with the character. In the first episode, we see a short team-up with Green Arrow, but the meat of the story lies with a team-up with Blue Beetle; of course, falling in line with the current DCU, we're talking about the Power-Rangers-lookalike new Beetle, Jaime and not the original, Tedd Cord.

"Batman ain't laughin' for no reason, fool! He's laughing at your suit!"

The show isn't awful and, if you've followed the news enough, you'll know what to expect. Having said that, it'll be hard to satisfy older viewers, as it adapts a *very* Silver Age feel in every aspect. Visually, while the animation is simplistic but effective, everything's a throwback to the '60s; the colors, Batman's costume, the Batmobile (which looks modern, but features red lines, very reminiscent of the Adam West shows), even the logo of the show. Writing-wise, Batman's dispensed every aspect of his darkness. He's a legend for the world (Jaime in particular thinks he's the coolest thing that ever happened in History), but he appears on TV (even if it's just him fighting a bad guy), he smiles (a bit too much, in fact), while there are these narrating segments, inner monologues that are pretty "preachy", in the classic "moral lesson for kids" sense. The dialogues are sharp enough, I can't say I found them awful, but unless you're 8 years old, you'll find it hard going back to this Batman, if you've experienced any version of the character since 1989 (B&R not included).

Doesn't "man" usually apply after high school?

On the other side, we have Marvel's attempt with "Iron Man: Armored Adventures". Things are even worse here. "Armored Aventures" goes out of its way to become appealing to children, by turning the story of Tony Stark to a high school action show. Tony and Rhodey are both teenagers (of sixteen summers, IIRC). Tony is a genious, who finds school unecessary and works alongside his loving (!) father Howard for his company, STARK International. Tony pitches in his scientific ideas and Howard makes them happen to make the world better. Until a plane "accident" kills Howard and leaves Tony with an artificial heart that needs recharging every hour. Tony moves in with Rhodey's family, goes to school, meets a Pepper Pots (and a Happy Hogan), all while Obadiah Stane, former employ and now president of SI (until Tony turns 18) is turning the company's focus to weapons production. Tony uses the last of his inventions, the armor, to do good and keep Stane in check.

"Robert Downey Jr., I'm your father!" Yeah, that's Howard, not Tony.

I'm not going to claim any sort of extensive knowledge on Iron Man's mythos. When I was a kid, my short forray into Marvel's world -being a DC fanboy- did focus my attention on Iron Man. I thought the armors were cool and, young though I might were, the backstory of the drunk with the heart problems intrigued me (yes, I was a pretty screwed up kid). I read a little back in the days when that whole storyline about the guys who had taken over Tony's body and he could only control himself in the armor. Fun stuff. Anyway, while I certainly can't claim expertise, I can't think how anyone even remotely familiar with Iron Man can find any of the above good ideas.

About the only shot of Iron Man that's somewhat decent.

Iron Man is boring. Ever read his original stories (the ones with the Golden and the early Classic armors)? Reason to put a gun in your mouth. What made Iron Man even remotely compelling was the backstory that they *finally* built for him after a while. Tony Stark; the drunk. The irresponsible. The unappreciated genious. The man who craved his father's acceptance, but never got it. The playboy that could only face any sort of responsibility after he started living in borrowed time. What do we have in this show instead? A well-balanced, overly joyful kid (he didn't even grieve his father's death; I kid you not). A celebrated genious. A son with a loving, caring father. And the complete and utter downplay of his heart condition.

Obadiah? Lex? Obadiah? Lex?

"Armored Adventures" is one of these shows that are conceptually bad. It's just a very bad idea to remove all that from Iron Man and turn him into a scrawny high school kid. Even the '90s Iron Man cartoon, which was hardly any good itself, at least tried to keep him as close to his story as possible (although the addiction was gone altogether). It's understandable that you can't have a drunk hero in a childrens cartoon, but everything in this idea is so damn underwhelming.

Oh, it's Lex. Hey Lex.

And while the concept is wrong from the get-go, the show itself doesn't fare much better. It's very formulaic, ridiculously dull and falls in every cliché in children cartoons. Tony doesn't come off as a tragic figure even when his heart's blown up, Rhodey is your token black sidekick (he's interfacing with Tony in the armor through his effin' home computer), Pepper Potts is on Prozac (I can't think of any other reason why she has the need to speak paragraphs in less than a second), the Mandarin is a teenager (I only *wish* I was making this up) and Obadiah Stane bears a striking resemblence (visually or otherwise) to Lex Luthor. The writing is basic, almost lazy (or just amateur; take your pick) and the whole show wholly uninteresting. So far, it's bad.

I'm not one to sit back and reminiscent the old days when Bruce Timm was setting the standard for superhero cartoons. I found some sort of pleasure in The Batman, I thought Legion of Superheroes (following 2006's "Superman Returns") was decent for its target audience and MTV's short-lived "Spider-Man" has (rightfully) received a sort of cult status among fans. I'm sure there are more cartoons out there since 2002, but these are the ones I've seen. But were I ever to start worrying about the future of superhero cartoons, these two would prove worthy reasons. The new Batman cartoon is sharp, but very age-specific, so while I wouldn't say it's something I'd follow, it's still not a bad example that will bring down the genre, but the new Iron Man is pretty awful. If you're interested in superhero cartoons, despite being ridiculously old, try Batman though don't expect much, but stay away from Iron Man. If you're also an Iron Man fan, just burn all your copies in protest. If you have kids, then Batman might prove essential viewing. Iron Man, not so much.

GAME REVIEW- "Silent Hill: Homecoming" (PC)

-- The westernization of Silent Hill

I'm not sure I'm the most suitable person to review this game, anymore. It ocured to me that, as of late, my taste in games has changed a lot. So while I once loved "Silent Hill", now I'm not too hot about, be it because I don't get the same kick out of shitting my pants or because I'm growing too old and cynical for stretched horror tales. I got the hint when two weeks ago, I found no drive to play more than ten minutes of Silent Hill 3 (to date, the only installment -other than PSP's Origins- that I haven't finished). "Homecoming" came to painfully confirm my fears.

Having said that, this change in taste also makes me the best person to review this game, because "Homecoming", while it does an admirable job at attempting to keep in line with the series' history, is a very new, very different beast than its predecessors. It's still all about disturbing imagery and a protagonist who seeks answers in a hellish -literally- world, but there are many distinct changes, directions and methods at which the world of "Silent Hill" is tackled, that make Homecoming an experience that differs a lot from the past. And all these can be summed up in one word: westernization.

Remember back in the late '80s and the '90s, those funny little people with the strange facial features, that came from the exotic land of the East? You know, those tiny creatures that kept the industry alive, when we were in the middle of some deep shit over here, because we couldn't realize gaming and its potential? I think we called them "Japanese". Not sure if that's the correct term. Joking aside, there is a very disturbing tendency as of late, to de-japanize games, even the ones that were successful under Japanese direction, because the West is currently holding the industry by the balls. So, like MGS4 suffered in several aspects, because they were trying to make it more appealing to a western audience, Homecoming is another fine example of a wholly Japanese title being ported to Western influence, cultural or other. And if you can't understand what's so wrong with that, I urge you to imagine Sub-Zero doing a Shinkuu-Haduken, Alpha style, in Mortal Kombat 2.

"Homecoming" puts us in the shoes of one Alex Shepherd, a soldier returning home from (what we can only assume is) Afghanistan or Iraq, only to find his hometown of "Shepherd's Glen" (nope, nothing strange there), nearly deserted and covered by a strange, thick fog. Worse yet, only minutes after a certain truck driver dropped him off on his way through the town, Alex comes to realize that the what was once a happy little town is now inhabited by hordes of strange creatures that won't hesitate to kill him on sight. Going back to the house he grew up, he finds his mother nearly catatonic and his brother and mother missing. So, he begins a hunt for his little brother, visiting location after location and dropping clues for the player to find out what's going on in this small town; a town that's bordering Silent Hill.

The fan-favorite street-fog returns in Homecoming

The story is the second thing in this game that's affected from this "de-japanization" (the first being the visuals). Now, don't get me wrong; despite it being fairly predictable at parts and reserving no shocks for the player, it's a decent horror story that certainly carries you through the game. It's engaging enough and despite having most of the details figured out more-or-less by the time the game ends, you will want to sit through it and find out exactly what went down in Shepherd's Glen that brought the nightmare of Silent Hill upon it.

Having said that, there's also something... "off" with the story. You can feel it from start to finish, that something doesn't quite fit. It's difficult to explain what's wrong without spoiling the whole thing; what I can say is that there is survival horror and then there is Silent Hill. And Homecoming, despite its attempts to stay consistent with the series' past, fits better into the former category. Yes, the story is disturbing and intriguing enough, yes it utilizes Silent Hill history (though mostly from the movie), but in the end it lacks that distinct taste its predecessors had. All in all, when you play, you can see it all unfolding to you in a standard Hollywood scary movie, which is not exactly fitting for the series.

A more western approach has been made toward gameplay as well. Basically, it follows the SH formula of combining action and adventure/riddles. But instead of being more like an adventure game with the occasional shooting segments, Homecoming reverses the formula and follows a more... dare I say... Tomb Raider logic. There is no actual platforming, besides button prompting moves, like ducking below garage doors, or climbing up ledges and ladders, but the rest of it is really all about taking down the monsters and on occasion solving a fairly simplistic puzzle to open a door or unlock a next area.

"Alex, try to remember some of the basics of CQC"

That's not necessarily a bad thing. It does pick up the pace a lot and the combat system is actually pretty decent; certainly less awkward than all the previous titles of the series. Whenever Alex wants to attack, he has to lock on his target/ready his weapon, much like in the previous titles. This time, however, the camera stays constantly behind Alex's back and readying your weapon brings the camera over Alex's shoulder (exact position depending on the weapon and the player model's position on-screen), which instantly means that for a change, you have some control over the battle. Not only do you get to see what you're shooting at -a major issue with previous Silent Hill games- but thanks to the dodge function, you can manipulate the battle's outcome in your favor. In fact, dodging at the right time is cruicial for your survival and thanks to the battle system, it's a lot more exciting and fairly easy to get familiar.

Turning the directional control (be it a mouse or an analog stick) will perform different moves and you can go as far as attempt short combos, thanks to Homecoming featuring two types of attack: light, which is faster and can stun enemies and heavy, which is slower, leaves you open to a counter from the enemy, but will finish off the target faster. By combining the two attacks, you can perform life-saving combos, which -when done right- might get you out of a fight entirely unharmed. Attacking after a successful dodge allows you to perform a counter-attack, which is quite useful, while in certain occasions that the enemy is stunned, Alex will show what the field taught him by performing some fairly impressive finishing moves.

Another interesting aspect of the battle system in Homecoming is that it actively utilizes every single weapon you pick up. There aren't many, admittedly; a knife, a steel pipe, an axe, a handgun, a shotgun and a rifle. You start off with the knife and that's the type you'll always be carrying, along with a gun; the rest you have to pick up and if you just choose to run on a straight line, there's a good chance you'll miss them (the rifle, in particular, requires a short "quest" that makes you wonder how much it's worth it, despite its stopping power). The guns, be it the pistol, the shotgun or the rifle, are undoubtedly the handiest weapons in the game and the only ones you could always use effectively. The shotgun and the rifle come with a great stopping power and the handgun, while weaker, can be very useful if you line up a headshot.


The developers, however, made sure you didn't cheat your way out of a struggle for survival by relying on your all-too-handy guns and so limited the number of ammo each of them carries- a lot. You will literally have to pick the battles that you'll draw a gun, otherwise when you meet one of the harder enemies, you might find progress frustrating. That's not to say that the melee weapons don't pack quite a punch, though. It's mostly an issue of knowing which weapon to use against which enemy. That means that there are enemies better suited to kill with the knife and not the much stronger axe and others that the knife won't do anything to, but a mere pipe will beat them into submission.

That shift toward action might make many believe that the game's too easy, compared to the awkward survival system of the previous titles. It's something several reviewers have brought up and the apparent lack of the gut-wrenching scare-factor that the series once featured seems to back up that opinion. But make no mistake; Homecoming is not an easy game. It's true that Alex is a lot more skilled in combat than Harry, James, Heather or Henry, but his enemies are a lot more aggressive too. You don't get much of a warning before you're attacked. No hilarious long stares between the character and a monster, before the latter actually makes a move. This time, the moment you're spotted, you're jumped. The monsters aren't very smart, but they know their attacks, they're fast, they're strong and they can dodge too. Once you've figured out all the attack patterns and gotten comfortable with the battle system, you should be able to win most battles unharmed, but that shouldn't happen for most of your first playthrough.

I don't care how movie-accurate-hot you are. Put the damn bag around
your face or this ain't gonna happen

The puzzles have taken a backseat. They're few and most of them are quite simple (first time in my life I didn't have to use a walkthrough at all in a Silent Hill game) and are just short obstacles in your path. In addition, there is an "objectives" menu that states what you have to do next. Ironically, this option is more useful than it should be, as the game isn't always clear about where you should go next and why.


All in all, this shift to combat isn't bad for the game itself, as it's well-designed, despite its simplistic philosophy, but it may alienate fans and gamers familiar with the series' usually slower pace. It's a move that's welcome, in general, but begs the question: why did refining the archaic battle system meant shifting the gameplay style so much? I can't think it's anything other than the standard western philosophy of "impatience" that's easily noticeable in most games out there.


"Silent Hill: Homecoming" doesn't look bad. The textures are mostly crispy and nice and the models, especially the monsters, animate nicely. Still, it doesn't look as well as a next-gen game should, either. The character model faces look awkward, especially in cut-scenes and while the overall quality is pleasing to the eye, it still falls short of the standards so many other titles have set. I also noticed a few tiny glitches here and there (wall-clipping being the most common) and some framerate drops, though neither are bad enough to ruin to experience.

Of course, a Silent Hill title's visuals are measured in things other than polygons and resolution. Silent Hill is one of the few games that the artistic direction and the photograpy dominate the visual aspect, as it's mostly up to them to create the necessary tension for the scares set to follow. Homecoming is reminiscent of the series' style. It's disturbing, it features the all-well known locations of rusty, industrial platforms in the Otherworld, corpses, blood and so on and so forth. Still, the westernization is most apparent in that department; hillariously so, too. Double Helix's game is visually inspired mostly from Chris Gans' 2006 "Silent Hill" movie. Now, I love that movie. I was thrilled that there was a video game movie that didn't suck and I was ecstatic with how well Gans caught the atmosphere of Silent Hill on-film. Having said that, the movie is still an adaptation. It's genuinely funny -and not in a good way- to adapt an adaptation.

It's not that it looks bad. There are some familiar faces there; nurses, skinned dogs and even Pyramid Head. They are designed after the movie. It's OK for the nurses, or even for Pyramid Head, because they stand as updated versions of the originals. But take these guys, the "Smogs", for example. These are the arm-less monsters that spit acid and smoke from the movie. The problem here is that the Smogs were adapted from the "stripper" monsters of SH2, only reworked to fit into the movie's script (in SH2, they stood for James' sexual issues, in the movie they fit the fire theme). So, Homecoming, adapts these creatures, which are an adaptation of the series own past monsters. They look good in-game, not complaining about that. But why not come up with something new that actually fits, instead of ripping a design that doesn't even make sense here?

Likewise, Silent Hill itself, as well as the Otherworld, are designed to indicate a blazing underground. Smoke, fire, even lava show up in the hellish town and the effect of switching to the Otherworld is identical to the "peel" or "flake" effect from the movie. Only there it made sense in the story; here there is no mention of Silent Hill ever suffering such a terrible blaze and thus it makes the look inconsistent with the story of the game series itself. Again, it looks good (there is even a filter of old, burnt-out film when you're in the Otherworld) and one could take the smoking holes on the ground as a symbolism for Hell and the forces of evil having taken over this town, but it still raises a valid question concerning the decision to visually adapt most aspects of the movie, even if that means contradicting what has been established in the series.

The graphics are adequate, but their faces look like they've been beaten
repeatedly with a baseball bat.

The sound department fairs better, generally. The voice acting is fair; nothing phenomenal. In fact, considering the series' tendency to have really bad, b-movie voice acting, the actors may be performing a little too well. The sound effects are decent and a few are recognisable throughout the series, but what shines once again is Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack, which is absolutely creepy and imposing. In fact, the music is usually more frightening than the game itself. On the flipside, I dealt with several technical issues in the PC version. Homecoming requires DirectX 9c and with my (admittedly experimental) 10 version, I couldn't hear sound. I eventually installed 9c, only to deal with a missing system file that the game required. Thanks to the Internet, that was solved too, but you realize that that's already too much work to play a game. In addition, in-game the sound isn't particularly solid. It's set to automatically identify the sound system (I have a 5.1), but splitting the sound between channels caused some very awkward sound glitches. Especially in intermissions that weren't pre-rendered, speech sounded all over the place, from all five speakers and with a distinct echo following. With the lack of any options to configure the sound (with the exception of volume), the problem stuck all throughout the game.

Speaking of problems, I have to once again mention the absolute stupidity behind whatever department's responsible for KONAMI's PC ports. I was at first reluctant to try the PC version of the game, because of the company's bad rep at ports and the fact that this genre is better suited to a console and a controller. Surprisingly, I found out that the standard keyboard/mouse controls were actually quite good and functional. But that didn't happen, before I ran into some unacceptable issues. Firstly, the game started by prompting me to tap the "X" button. Seriously. The first thing that the game asked me to do when I started was tap the X button. Of course, the problem is that there is no X button on the keyboard that corresponds to an actual game key. Needless to say that what was on display was a Playstation controller X button. Going past that, I attempted to use a gamepad myself, before I resorted to using the keyboard/mouse combo. I use the Logitech Rumblepad controller, which has the exact same button layout as the Playstation controller. When I went to the options screen to configure the keys, I was shocked to see a gazillion different options for every single action in the game. And, while not as blatant as the "X" tapping thing in the beginning, it was pretty obvious that the options screen was designed with the XBOX controller in mind. None of that would matter, of course, if the damn thing actually worked. I ran into a very disturbing bug, that essentially made my gamepad useless. I configured the controller to my liking, but the game crashed (due to my alt-tabbing another window), so I had to restart. I realized upon restarting the game, that the layout had reset to default, only when I tried to change it this time, I just couldn't. The options menu would say that I did, showing the buttons I assigned to the right action, but in-game, it would respond to the default function; no, worse, it would respond to both. Yes, the controller responded to two different, conflicting layouts at the same time. And not even consistently. The worse part of this was that the default layout hadn't assigned the camera function, which made the game impossible to play, making me go back to the keyboard. Whether it's bad design or just a bug, it's an unacceptable inconvenience.

Before closing, there is one last, very important matter to address: how scary is "Silent Hill: Homecoming"? Not much. That might be its biggest failure too. Now, the truth is that if it was truly scary, I might not had finished it (like I said, I no longer find any sort of pleasure in that), but Silent Hill's supposed to be scary. There was some obvious effort. There are disturbing images, the soundtrack is effective and there is a lot of gore (more than it should be in a Silent Hill title; another westernization, in fact). The new battle system detracts from that as well, not because it makes the game easier, but because it makes the pacing faster and doesn't let the player soak in the frightening aspects of the title. But in the end, what hurts the scare factor the most is probably the lack of any psychological impact; which has always been Silent Hill's first and foremost technique of instilling fear into gamers. The story's a little too clean and too straightforward. Alex doesn't even comment on the Otherworld, as if it's something ever so normal. There is not much mystery of wonder, there is no fear from invisible cats scratching empty lockers or rape scenes in front of a man who abused his now-dead wife. Homecoming depends purely on the gore and the aggressiveness of the enemy creatures to carry the fear over to the game and that doesn't quite work for this series. Out of everything else, it's this failure that makes Homecoming the worst Silent Hill game (maybe just above The Room). And it's a pity, because it's otherwise a decent game.

When all's said and done, what we have here is a mostly entertaining game. Double Helix had a tremendous mission; update the aging mechanics of the series, while keeping in tow with the series' brilliant sense of horror and mystery, all with tight gameplay. It didn't quite deliver on all these fronts, but it certainly tried to a point that at least a rental is worth it. Die-hard fans will already have bought; the rest might want to try it first or wait until the price has dropped. And I'd suggest staying away from the PC version, while you're at it.

GAME REVIEW: "Call of Duty: World at War" (PC)

-- Activision dropped the ball.

(Disclaimer: I am not covering the multiplayer segment of the game in this review.)

"Call of Duty" has come a long way, from its original, impressive installment, back when WWII shooters were all the rage in the industry. It's a franchise that is beloved by its fans for the solid gameplay and atmosphere and its insanely fun multiplayer -which upped the ante considerably with CoD4- and is at least (well)-liked by gamers in general. A little over than a year ago, Infinity Ward took a bold step forward and moved the setting from the massacre of the early '40s, to a fictional scenario of global terrorism taking place in the here and now. "Modern Warfare", as it was subtitled, was praised for its solid design on all three platforms (PC, PS3, XBOX360), the intriguing campaign that offered a few trully noteworthy moments and, most of all, the huge multiplayer option that is still very popular among gamers even today.

Originally, the step worried me; by no means a big fan of the franchise, CoD has been something I always enjoyed playing (the first remains my favorite in the series). In the post-9/11 world, the industry has been hammered by games with overly patriotic themes that... well... to put it simply, just turn me off, completely. Fortunately, not only did it not prove to feature one such theme, but it was an overly satisfying experience and put my original fears to rest. Regardless, I was happy to hear that the fifth installment in the series would return in World War II; the gaming world might have gotten sick of WWII-themed games, but I like having a series dedicated to it (MOH doesn't count; it should just die, before it dives into complete suck). "Call of Duty: World at War", ditching the "5" from its title, does exactly that; and playing it, like with the fourth installment, was full of surprises.

For this new installment, development passed from Infinity Wards to Treyarch, who have handled a good deal of Activision's Spider-Man titles, Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 3. Now, I haven't played COD3, yet, because the game never came out on PC and first person shooters on consoles give me herpes, but when I saw the developer's name, I should've expected that "World at War" would be oddly reminiscent of CoD2.

Going back to WWII pretty much kills the prospect of an actual storyline. There aren't many liberties you can take with a down-to-earth approach of the War, so you're pretty much left with random battles, taken from the History books and pompous dialogues from loud field commanders. That's not to say that there is nothing to see here; it's just that the few things you have to see, aren't particularly noteworthy. The game is told from the perspective of two privates, an American one and a Russian one. Per the series' habit, it gives them a number of missions, switching from one to the other seemingly at random. Eventually, these missions lead to the end of the War. And if you think there is nothing there to bitch about, you don't know me well enough.

It's dull. "Modern Warfare" aside, it has never been particularly interesting to sit through CoD's mission briefings or diary entries displayed prior to each mission, but WaW takes this to a whole new level of boredom. The problem starts alone from the fact that milking the 2nd World War can be done only so many times, when you stick to the safe basics. There is no diversity between viewpoints; it's battles for an American unit and battles for a Russian unit; both of which we've seen before, to an extend. Treyarch thought it wise to exclude even the Brits from this one, who had at least their piece of the pie on regular basis- and for good reason too. The problem with the narrative, which is done mainly through stylistic briefing sessions during loading screens, is that in the end, it gives off a very "been there, done that" feeling. Keep in mind -and this is by no means a spoiler- that the game ends with the Russians' victory in Berlin; but haven't we already done the Berlin gig in -I think- "Call of Duty 2" (might be wrong about that; been a few years since CoD2)?

Regardless, I didn't expect this installment to have a story. I wasn't even all that 'wow'ed by the story of CoD4 to demand one in WaW. But my point is that maybe Activision and whichever studio takes on the sixth CoD, might want to consider adding an Axis viewpoint. I realize the series wants to remain an ode to the Allied efforts, but there's *this* much you can do with the Second World War. It's either that, or try other Allies, too. Even from a dramatic standpoint, there's *this* much you can drain from the tragedy of that one war.

Wait, did I say tragedy? Oh, right, I was wrong. CoD5 is unique in one respect; it's not anti-war! Not sure if it's a series first, but certainly a principle idea behind the original, I think CoD2 and even CoD4, is to depict how ordinary people fought and died in the world's most gruesome bloodbath in recent history. WaW is a little too busy with stressing patriotism and two-bit heroism and ideals in both sides, flirting with glorifying War (especially the Russians justify any cruelty, no matter how severe). Gone are the war-related quotes of great men that popped up on every load. The ending cinematic of the A-Bomb on Hiroshima is open to interpretation as to whether it was put there as a glorious victory of the player for his "warring" efforts in the game, or as a despicable final action in a war full of despicable actions. I seriously hope it's the latter. The epilogue comes in four lines of text that flat out say that WWII was the worst disaster in recent History, but after the sloppiness of the game's attempted subtext, it's impactless.

It's not just my personal quirks that make the lack of impact knock a few points off the game. It really makes the characters and their dialogues a little too loud and, in the end, just unimportant. Did you remember how you cared about what happened to your characters in the earlier installments? How you got bummed when somebody shot down your comrades? The shock when that nuke went off in CoD4? Few tragic events do happen, but it'll be a miracle if you ever cared about them. People can die, your characters can die and you still won't care. Matter of fact, I'm not sure I remembered my own characters' names throughout the game. There were situations, in which it took me a while to realize my commander was talking to me. That, even with the lack of an actual story, is pretty bad for the narrative.

Crawl, you evil worm! You... deserve... it?

When all's said and done, all of the above take away a distinct flavor the series has carried for a while. But still, CoD is all about gameplay; even when a story does exist, its impact is wholly felt throughout actually playing the game. So, how does World At War fair in that department? CoD4 veterans, expect no surprises; WaW plays exactly like "Modern Warfare", only set some sixty years in the past. And not in a good way.

The mechanics are all entirely familiar. I don't think there are any significant changes; at least I didn't pick up any. As usual, you control a private, you're given two guns to switch between, you move ahead with your unit and you shoot down the bad guys. Every mechanic from the past has returned (wall-peaking, gun swapping, melee attacks, etc). You move from objective to objective and from checkpoint to checkpoint (one isn't necessarily the other as well), until the area is clear. There is some variety in missions, be it in pacing or gameplay. The first Russian mission, arguably the highlight of the game, starts with a slow sniping mission and explodes into a huge action-escape sequence. But, while enjoyable, it's neither as impressive or as memorable as the equivalent stages of CoD4 (who can forget the great Chrnobyl mission?). Likewise, you'll pilot a tank and you'll flank Japanese ships and air fighters from your aircraft. Despite these slight alterations, most of the game is about shooting down enemy soldiers, with the occasional "blow up the enemy tank/convoy/whatever" objective.

It's really hard to get into any more detail, because the gameplay itself is so ridiculously similar to that of COD4. There's nothing to say that hasn't already been said in-depth. What can be said is that, while CoD4 is revered for its gameplay, the option to simply replicate it in this installment is borderline disasterous, due to one and only thing: design.

First person shooters tend to be fairly linear (thank heavens for that, too). So, they tend to add scripted events to kick up the pace a bit and add a flavor and variety to the gameplay. All that is done through carefully designed levels that allow this linearity to shine and become distinctly unique for the game. CoD5 may incorporate every mechanic of its most recent predecessor, but it severely lacks in terms of well-played linearity and good level design. The scripted events are far too few and in-between and they don't offer much variety. The 'shoot everything' gameplay becomes repetitive after not too long. There are hordes of enemy soldiers (much like in CoD2); the game closes with mentioning how 60 million people died in the War and you'd think you killed every single one of them in this damn game alone. The levels are small, sometimes even annoyingly narrow. To proceed to the next objective, you usually have to clear the area and proceed safely, but in the long term it becomes so tedious, that you'll just find yourself running off ahead as carefully as possible to trigger the next event. So sloppy and basic is the design there, in fact, that I came across many enemy soldiers who came out of dead ends or just spawned right in front of my eyes, because I proceed earlier than the game expected me to. Invisible walls are never a good idea, so it was wise not to include any, but the "shoot all, proceed" logic is truly an archaic one.

The AI isn't particularly great. Friendly AIs do their share of fighting, no doubt and, if nothing else, they're good for drawing the enemy fire away from you on occasion. Still, it's usually up to you to take down a specific enemy even if you're not explicitly asked to (machine gun wielding soldiers are at the top of this list) and should you find yourself in the heat of battle, don't expect anyone to save you; you're pretty much on your own. But where the friendly AI is downright annoying is during movement. At times they're a bit too linear. I can't even begin to count the times I died from an exploding grenade, because a teammate blocked my escape, or the times I was pushed out of cover, because an AI was predetermined to occupy the same cover position. Neither are new issues in the series, but they haven't been dealt with yet either and I can only wonder why not. Good thing friendly fire is disabled too, because you'd end up killing a lot of your own people, the way they jump out of nowhere right in the middle of your aim.

Likewise, the enemy AI is pretty much at the same levels, only, you know, these guys are shooting at you. On first sight, it seems like the enemy AI is equally targeting your entire unit and, really, there's a lot of shooting between friendly and enemy AI that gives you a few seconds off. On occasion, you will find a few enemies gunning for you. They're not particularly smart, though; they take cover, they use different tactics, decide between shooting and melee, they even evade grenades (unlike your teammates, who ALWAYS get blown to smithereens- WTF?), but oftentimes you'll find your targets very eager to get shot. I didn't come across a cheating AI, fortunately, but be warned; none of the above mean you won't get killed. You will; a lot.

If there is one thing worse than a repetitive gameplay and unbalanced design, is design that allows you to get killed far easier than it should. Call of Duty was never about gung-ho shooting sequences; not much, anyway. You won't pull any Doom techniques here. It's by far not a tactical shooter either; you'll survive a lot more shots than you would in real life. The general idea is take cover and shoot as precisely as you can. The enemies may be stupid enough to be easy targets, but make no mistake; this is merely to counter the fact that they're so.freaking.many.

CoD2 had been very well received back in the day; one thing I realized when I played it (and therefor returned my rented copy and never bought the game) was that it had reduced the original's sense of realism and connection to standard-fps levels. That meant that the number of attacking Nazis were ridiculously high in comparison. Like with CoD2, Treyarch adds the same overwhelming number of enemies on-screen in WaW. Not only does it have the negative impact on the gameplay's lasting appeal, as I've already mentioned, but be ready to find yourselves shot from every angle in several occasions with practically no way to know what the hell's going on. You'll just crawl and hide, hoping that wherever your attacker was, he can't see you anymore. It's rather annoying and adds greatly to the difficulty of the game- not in the best way either. The grenades prove to be the most irritating common-used enemy weapon, as the narrow levels and the stupid teammates will cost you arms, legs and loading from a checkpoint, whenever a grenade blows up in your face.

The difficulty is also greatly increased for two extra reasons: key unresponsiveness and checkpoints. The first is a small hassle, but when it happens, it can send you for a trip to Hell and back. There are little counter moves, like throwing back an enemy grenade, if you position yourself properly and push "G" and counter melee attacks by pushing "V". The problem is that these two and especially the melee counter, are oftentimes unresponsive. It happened more than a few times to get stabbed by an enemy soldier or get my throat ripped out by a dog, despite pushing the button. It appears that it has to be properly synchronized, which during battle and game panic, is not the best idea. The most efficient way I got this to work was by tapping "V" whenever someone jumped me, but even then it sometimes failed. I'm sticking to this, because it's a problem that I had with CoD4 as well. The exact same thing; the counter melee was unresponsive. I didn't mention it back then, because in the grand scheme of things it seemed unimportant, but with the number of enemies here and the fact that this is the second time in a row that I deal with this problem, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The second factor, the one of checkpoints, came as a shock. A problem with CoD4 to a lesser extend, the game doesn't let you save by choice, but instead auto-saves on checkpoints for you. For one, I'll point out once again that WHEN YOU RELEASE A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER FOR THE PC, THE PLATFORM THAT SPAWNED THE GODDAMN GENRE, YOU ADD THE FUCKING QUICK SAVE FUNCTION. I'm usually willing to accept that they don't want to go into the bother of having to.... fuck this. Bioshock was ported from the freaking XBOX to the PC, offered RESPAWNING in-game, which made loading unecessary, AND STILL FEATURED QUICK SAVES AND QUICK LOADS. WHY THE HELL DOES THIS GAME NOT HAVE ANY? I let it pass with 4, but with the crapload of wrong things that get you killed every other minute in WaW, the lack of a quick save function for the PC is unforgivable. The checkpoints seem well-placed, between objectives usually, but they're in fact scarcer than they should, when one considers how long it takes for an objective to complete. There are so many enemies and so many things that can go wrong in the blink of an eye, that replaying the same section five or six times to proceed (especially if you die near your next checkpoint) is just not worth it.

On the subject of visuals, the game looks almost identical to "Modern Warfare". The faces are detailed (though noteably uglier than those of CoD4), the environments well-depicted and busy, the animations stand on top of everything else visually and there are some neat little details, like soldiers with their limbs blown off (result of your own handiwork, if you carry the right weapon).

The sound is more or less on the series' style and standards. The effects are distinct and have impact and the music varies from tense pieces of action to overblown instrumental themes, fitting of heroic war movies and national anthems. The highlight in the sound department is probably the fact that the solid voice acting is given further credibility, as popular (and much favorite, I might add) actors Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman lend their voices to the mission commanders of each side for most of the game. Needless to say their performances are every bit as good as their on-screen acting.

Treyarch's newest attempt at CoD isn't really a bad one. "World at War" is by no means a bad game; not even an average game. It's above that. But at the same time, it's much less than it should be. When all's said and done, what we have here is an decent expansion pack for CoD4, that takes place during WWII. The gameplay hasn't been enriched with new elements or refined for this new game. The design seems sloppy at parts and the story dangerously uninteresting. The biggest problem of the game is that it adapts the mechanics of CoD4 unchanged; that means it gets it good stuff and puts them in a differently-designed structure and still inherits all its problems, which nobody seemed interested in even attempting to correct. But most of all, where CoD5 fails is that in every big or little aspect, it fails to give motive. It fails to give insentive to keep playing. The campaign lasts for some six hours of non-stop shooting. Even if you like it, I doubt it's worth the purchase, not for the single player game, anyway. Rent on a slow afternoon, certainly. It's not a game that's seperated from the rest of the series, but it's a game that's dangerously walking the line of "milking" the franchise. Please, Activision, give the next one a couple of years time until you can do something more with it? Please?