With the ultra-successful 2007 release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, you could be forgiven for wondering whether Activision had left the WW2 battlegrounds behind them, finally moving on to a different conflict. These thoughts were somewhat dashed when Call of Duty: World at War was announced, which takes gamers right back in time to another historical setting. It’s not another dose of familiar locale and scenario however, as World at War takes gamers where they’ve never been before in a CoD title. The inclusion of the Pacific Theatre has been widely publicised, but the game also covers, in a parallel storyline, the Russians’ last desperate rush to Berlin in the closing days of the war.

Now - it’s impossible to talk about World at War without addressing the gorilla in the room - the involvement of Treyarch Studios. Responsible for 2006’s console-exclusive Call of Duty 3 which received very mixed reviews, the developers have come to this release with something to prove.

Many of the problems with the earlier game were caused due to lack of time on the project - it’s been widely acknowledged that Treyarch were given a mere eight months, start to finish, on their earlier title, which does go a long way to explain some of the game’s shortcomings. This time around, they’ve had a full two years to play with, and it looks like they used their time wisely.

Now that’s out the way, we recently spent some time with Noah Heller, World at War’s senior producer, and played a few rounds of the game, as well as asking him a few questions.

Download the Games On Net - Call of Duty: World at War Developer Interview

Noah told us that he and his team wanted to make the game “as realistic as possible”, to the point where developers sat down with war veterans, to learn about what really happened on the battlefield. The main lesson they learned early on was that the Japanese did not fight like any other enemy anyone had ever faced before - which provided some problems when creating the AI. Suddenly, the developers had to create enemies which would simply not surrender, and who used totally different attack techniques than any enemy in the past. These aggressive Japanese soldiers would fight well beyond what seemed humanly possible, and soldiers with burns to 90% of their body would still pull out a pistol if an enemy walked past at the wrong time.

Noah summed it up:

“Americans were fighting for the president ...but the Japanese were fighting for their honour.”

As has been well-publicised, this is the first time that any Call of Duty game has featured co-op multiplayer, and that’s what we were itching to see. They even had a trick up their sleeve - in addition to the standard gameplay mode, Treyarch have introduced another option - Competitive Co-op - which adds a little something extra to the game.

Essentially, it’s up to four players head-to-head, working together but also competing against each other. While you all want the same end result, points are awarded to each of you separately, for kills, assists, streaks and other tricky manoeuvres. At the end of each round, a scoreboard will reveal who scored more points, and who won the match. The trick with this is - of course - that all of you need to stay alive, but there are only so many points available, so how can you stop your partner from bagging your kill? ...maybe you should hold off on reviving them for a few moments, fire off a few more rounds, rack up a bigger score, and then bring them back to life... it’s a gamble though, if you let them die and then die yourself, the round will reset and you’ll both lose all of your accumulated points.

To put it simply, if you’re a fan of any of the other Call of Duty titles, this one will be right up your alley. It’s got all the classic gameplay you’ve come to expect, plus some enhancements courtesy of the new AI designed for the Japanese. We’ll see a return of Perks, multiplayer for up to 18 gamers (and we’re promised that PCs won’t miss out on split-screen modes), and a wide variety of achievements/trophies, many of which are single-player only. Using the fantastic Call of Duty 4 engine, with some considerable tweaks, any hesitations you may still have can be shelved - this game plays as good as it looks, and it looks very shiny indeed.

Part of this shiny is the dense vegetation that smothers certain areas in the Pacific Theatre. It’s all got a level of deformation added to it - so while your path may be blocked by a tree, a grenade blast will reduce it to toothpicks, easily passable. If you’d prefer a slightly more creative method of minimising the greenery, the new flamethrowers are also available - with Noah explaining that the technology behind the in-game fire is a step above what they’d hoped for. Flames will spread based on wind and other in-game factors, to the point where you could almost light up a tree at the beginning of a map and stand back, watching the fire leap across, burning everything in its path.


Also enhanced in this game is the level of swearing. Even multiplayer levels feature a hefty dose of “atmospheric bad language”, which adds to the level of immersion of the game. It’s also as fast-paced as you’d expect for the new theatres, with both the Japanese and German armies responding with tactics that vary from game to game.

The guys at Treyarch sat down and looked at CoD4, to see what worked and what didn’t. Obviously, multiplayer was a highlight of the previous game, so they took elements of that, and enhanced and improved on them for inclusion in World at War, adding variety as they went. One element of this new variety is of course the inclusion of vehicles, introducing an all new level of gameplay. The various tanks include up to 17 different pieces of armour, meaning that taking one out is not a simple matter of firing aimlessly until it explodes - you’ll have to aim carefully at specific, less-armoured parts, and be persistent in your attack.

They also looked a little further back, re-introducing elements of CoD3 multiplayer that worked - including War mode. For those who don’t remember, this is similar to the Capture the Flag style of gaming - the map includes five control points (two for each team when the game starts, and a spare), and the teams must acquire these in a certain pattern. To pick up a control point, it’s a simple matter of standing near one for a certain amount of time. Initially, this time is fairly lengthy, but as you claim more control points, your team will gain momentum - which increases how quickly you can capture more points, and increases your attack speed. While the straight-forward method of winning this map is simply to go all out and grab things as quickly as you can, Noah revealed that a surprisingly effective strategy is for a team to hang back, defending one flag, and then to rush out, gaining momentum, and picking up the others in a few swift movements.

While we tried to trip him up into speaking about unreleased game elements, Noah remained tight-lipped on really interesting new inclusions in the game. He did however, hint that gamers should look into the story of Death Cards, as they will be introduced to the game, as a way of modifying and adding challenges to co-op mode, similar to the Skulls system in Halo 3. For those who aren’t familiar with the real Death Cards, the story goes that American soldiers in Vietnam would leave a playing card, traditionally the ace of spades, on the body of a dead Viet Cong, as a combination signature/warning - a sign that the enemy had been killed by an American, and they’d be back.


Many gamers are tired of World War 2, and are looking forward to something new. It’s no coincidence that Call of Duty: World at War is set at the end of the conflict - it looks like Activision is ready to move on, with this looking like being the last CoD title set in the era. From what we’ve seen, World at War provides a fitting conclusion to this chapter of the franchise, while also paving the way for future releases in different settings. It’s due out in a little over a week, with Australian audiences lining up for their copies on November 12th.