Call of Duty: Burning Stuff

I have a confession to make. Call of Duty: World at War is my very first World War 2 based shooter. In fact, my first foray into the world of testosterone fueled, realistically portrayed war games didn’t occur until I picked up Call of Duty 4 last year at the behest of a couple of friends who were addicted to its crack-laced multiplayer mode. To be honest, I had planned on allowing Call of Duty 4 to serve as both the beginning and the end to this chapter in my life.

Then, everything changed when Nazi Zombie mode was announced.

To say that I love zombies is a largely inaccurate statement. In fact, the very title of this article implies something not entirely true. If it were, perhaps, to read “The Things I Do for the Chance to Violently End the Second Lives of the Walking Dead,” the roots of my obsession might begin to show a little. But as things go, design standards stand between me and any potentially perfect title beyond thirty-five characters.

At any rate, the game promised to alleviate my insatiable desire to plug zombies in the skull with an assortment of projectile weapons – the added bonus of course being their previous occupation as nazis before succumbing to their own unending need for brains and such – and I was sold.

Having poured far more time into Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer mode than I had ever imagined I could, I started up a new game on “Hardened” difficulty, under the assumption that the second hardest difficulty setting would provide the challenge I needed to get through the single player campaign without getting bored so I could unlock sweet sweet Nazi Zombie mode.

Call of Duty: Sneaking Around

And so I began going through the motions under Corporal Kiefer Sutherland’s selfless leadership, shouting antiquated racial slurs each time I was sent back to my last checkpoint by a suspiciously well thrown grenade or a bullet that I could swear must have snaked around several corners in order to find me, but enjoying myself nonetheless. Sure, the difficulty would spike every once in a while, but it had an almost 8-bit era charm to it. Besides, zombies were waiting for me.

These spikes, however, became increasingly more difficult, and worse, more frequent. As my frustration with the game rose to new heights, its flaws became more prominent. Hearing the word “bonsai” began to cultivate a genocidal hatred of the virtual Japanese that populated the world of Call of Duty: World at War. I found myself comparing the game I was playing more and more to Call of Duty 4, really the only benchmark I had to compare it to. While it does share nearly all of its strengths (pretty, tight controls) and weaknesses (infinite respawns, uneven difficulty), it not only does little to improve upon the previous entry in the series, but also suffers from weaker level design and a considerably less compelling plot. But by the time this all began to set in, I felt I had invested too much time into the “Hardened” campaign to regress back to an easier difficulty*. It was a matter of pride. It was a matter of zombies.

*Incidentally, this is the same reason that I still watch Lost.

Call of Duty: Setting Japanese Relations Back Sixty Years

It’s easy to go on about Treyarch’s shortcomings in Call of Duty: World at War when compared to its critically acclaimed Infinity Ward developed older brother. So let’s talk about the things I did like. Like Call of Duty 4, the gimmick levels (sniping, vehicles) are a fun change of pace for the most part. Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman deliver unsurprisingly phenomenal vocal performances. I am in love with the gorgeous graphics and incredibly smooth frame rate that this engine is capable of. Burning trees, grass, and dudes never gets old. Having finally gotten around to it, I can tell you that mutiplayer is a blast too. It’s nearly identical to Call of Duty 4 in this respect, but with era-appropriate technology and the addition of limited use vehicles. But most importantly, there is the promise of zombies at the end of the game and you are soulless, likely a zombie yourself, if you cannot appreciate that.

Drawing near the end of the game I had so tirelessly trudged through, I began to reflect on the overall experience during one of the relative lulls in combat. I became maniacally ecstatic over the fact that wholesale zombie slaughter was right around the corner, my resolve stronger than ever. But as I fixed my bayonet and charged forth, died, tried to clear the same area with a sniper rifle, died, rocket launcher, died, molotov cocktail, died, machine gun, and died again, my conviction began to dissipate. The Reich was less than five scripted events away from falling, yet I found myself about to give up hope. I realized just how many times I had witnessed the same exact scene unfold before my virtual eyes, heard the same lines of recorded dialogue spewed on cue, and seen my same brothers in arms lose alarmingly large pieces of their bodies. For what? For zombies. And with that, I pushed on harder than ever before, determined to kill the relentlessly evil German fucks standing in my way with the thought of blasting apart their ambling reanimated corpses fueling the fire inside.

A graph depicting game completion vs fun and difficulty

In the end, my berserker rage paid off. Before I knew it, the credits were rolling and the game dumped me straight into Nazi Zombie mode as a reward. So was it worth it? Hell yes it was worth it. I could have played on a lower difficulty, but would I then be as prepared as I now was to deal with the undead? I am a zombie death machine thanks to my time in the trenches. Nazi Zombie mode could have shipped with more than one map, but the one that it does come with is so very well put together that I really can’t complain. Besides, Left 4 Dead is coming out soon, and once I sink my teeth into that, it’s likely that no one will ever hear from me again anyway.