The reason why I didn't write any articles lately (apart from the sheer amount of lazyness currently occupying my mind and body) is Treyarch's beta version of the upcoming new Call of Duty prequel sequel Call of Duty: World at War. As you already know the series has turned a complete 360° and switched from present day warfare to World War II, again. Even though Treyarch had promised that World at War will be the definitive World War II experience, you'll find that there's much more room for improvement left.
The beta build of the World at War's multiplayer consists of three maps (Roundhouse, Castle and Makin), the Create a class feature introduced in Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare and all of the achievements that will be in the finished product. So yeah, you're probably wondering how big the game's multiplayer is actually is, and I'll tell you - not nearly as much as it should be. The beta weighs in at a mere 845 megabytes which would explain the shoddy sound effects, the texture maps on weapons and probably even some of the graphical glitches seen mostly in maps rather than player models.

The first problem I encountered with the game are its errors. World at War is very strict on what kind of driver your hardware is operating on. Of course, your drivers have to be of the latest build for the game to work, but sometimes the up-to-date thing really goes out of control. For example, I have Far Cry 2 installed and I downloaded a driver hotfix made for ATI cards which apparently removed or rewrote a certain file World at War needed to run properly. Uninstalling the existing display driver and installing the latest one (again) has proven to be the solution for many beta testers and it continued to be one in my case.


But enough of these little errors which will surely be resolved in the finished product. Let's talk about the game. The graphics are great overall and the whole Call of Duty feel has a presence in this title as much as it had in the preceeding ones. But of course there are some minor graphical setbacks like foliage which remains rugged and "chunky" like in the previous title. This brings me to another issue present in the beta release which is optimizing. The game isn't very keen on adapting to your system, mind. Even if you have a killer CPU, a state-of-the-art GPU and a crapload of RAM memory you'll still experience lag at certain points in the game. Gameplay wise, World at War is a major disappointment so far. The spawn points and issues are reminiscent of the first Call of Duty game with enemies spawning right behind you and with no trace of spawn protection whatsoever. This can get especially annoying when the enemy team releases the dogs on your ass. It seems like the dogs love you so much they have to spawn right behind you, mauling your very testicles while you curse the gods of Treyarch to finally fix the issue at hand but with no avail. One more thing that bothers me are the weapons. Somehow a rifle generates more recoil than a machine gun. Weird, huh, but in such "little" mistakes details you can see that Treyarch basically completely relies on us using the available perks so we can play the game the way we want to - with an overpowered Thompson or with an immensely underpowered bolt-action rifle which's recoil can only help you take down the seagulls circling Makin.

Taking all this into account you can't really say that Call of Duty: World at War is a bad game. Surely it fits a certain pre-set Call of Duty standard but when you look at it a bit more closely you can see that every good side has a bad one (the sheer amount of problems the community has stumbled upon can be seen in a huge topic on Call of Duty's official website). Still, the fun is there even if it can be a bit frustrating at times. There are a ton of other issues dotting this game but keep in mind that it is only the beta build and the finished product. Then again with the official release coming nearer by the hour I would be concerned that Treyarch won't have enough time to wrap everything up and we, the players, will be left with an unfinished product.

I don't feel comfortable with rating Call of Duty: World at War just yet because it isn't quite polished up yet. But compared to other Call of Duty games in the series this one would get a decent
67%.

I liked: Vehicles, graphics, the strategic flow of the game, the overall experience.
I disliked: Graphical glitches, weapon bugs, spawn points and lack of spawn protection, dogs (but only because of the spawns).

Above average, but nothing to talk about just yet.