Reviews

Just when you think you've played all the first-person World War 2 shoot 'em ups, along comes a game that looks and plays much better than anything you've seen before. World at War is set in the final stages of a feud that involved America, Japan, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, with you taking control of characters on either side of these kerfuffles.

There aren't a lot of mission choices - it's either a campaign mission or a multi-player game - but the potential is limitless if you're hooked up to the internet. The multi-player option involves the usual death-match and capture-the-flag games, but if you're not online you can at least have some two-player split-screen squad-mate co-op fun (bit of a tongue-twister, that).

Once more into the breach we go

You are Private Miller, a US Marine who escapes a Japanese prison camp. You fight your way out and bounce, seemingly at random, through the WW2 time line. One moment you're a US Marine, the next you're a member of the Soviet Red Army being taught to be a sniper. And obviously this story is narrated by Comrade Reznov and Sergeant Roebuck, aka Gary Oldman and Kiefer Sutherland. Chuh-ching!!!

The usual difficulty options apply: recruit, veteran, etc, but a new feature on the campaign missions lets a second player enter the battle at any point. This is also the most adult game of the series with swearing, burning people alive, bayoneting soldiers in the throat and some rather distasteful use of archive footage showing real corpses. But if you're willing to view this purely as a blood-thirsty game instead of a morally reprehensible war-death simulation, there's no doubting W.A.W is the best of its kind.

Can anyone else smell burning?