Review of Call of Duty: World at War - Final Fronts

Rebellion takes on the CoD franchise with surprising results... though not exactly in the way we'd hoped.

Following in the footsteps of a game that's sold 10 million copies single-handedly is no small feat, but with Activision's tireless march of yearly releases, someone had to step up and tackle things while Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward worked on the next proper sequel in the franchise. Following the success of a game that took place in modern times by pulling the series back to the World War II setting is even more daunting, given the general malaise that's come over most first-person shooter fans -- but that's precisely what developer Treyarch is doing with the current-gen systems and Call of Duty: World at War.

On the PS2, however, things are a little different. Instead of having the folks at Treyarch work on yet another SKU or making them port things down to the PS2, development tasks were handed off to UK-based developer Rebellion. The 2000AD publisher is certainly skilled enough to handle the task, having cut its teeth on the brilliantly creepy Aliens vs. Predator and having crafted its own in-house Asura Engine that pumped some impressive visuals out of both the PS2 (with games like Rogue Trooper) and the PSP (with Miami Vice and GUN: Showdown).

Clearly the boys and girls at Rebellion know how to make a good looking, fun, and nicely varied little game -- Rogue Trooper in particular was fantastic -- but in making a new Call of Duty game that runs in parallel with the regular World at Wars, at some point the decision came down to just crank out a paint-by-numbers Call of Duty. Mounted turrets? Check. Constantly spawning enemies that magically disappear once you've pushed past a certain point? Bingo. Taking out a tank with a rocket launcher? Oh yes, of course. Planting explosives to blow up AA cannons? Yep. I was amazed that there wasn't an on-rails shooting section within the first five minutes of firing the game up.

Even still, all these things are part of Call of Duty for a reason: they were quite fun when they were first introduced, but the emphasis is on were. One of the reasons people bemoaned the return to World War II was the over-familiarity with the weapons, setting and mechanics. The setting may have changed, and Rebellion was all too eager to put that fancy-pants new flamethrower front and center right from the start, but the rest of the game is rote COD (right down to the intro tutorial that walks you through doing stuff like firing a gun, changing stance, using grenades, running, jumping and melee attacks) with little in the way of attempts to push things forward from a gameplay standpoint.

In fact, one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this game and any of Treyarch's PS2 COD titles. It's such a cookie cutter effort that rather than feeling like a sequel, it feels more like an expansion of the other games. The PS2 is obviously not the beast it used to be, but that doesn't mean gameplay innovations have to take a back seat to the tried-and-true stuff seen in the other games. As a result, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu and a feeling of just going through the same motions as before permeates every part of the game's rather short little run -- and without any form of online multiplayer, there's nothing to distract you from the sense of sameness.

One of the biggest issues that crops up right from the start (beyond the game's rather painful visuals) is the absolutely brain-dead AI for both enemies and squadmates alike. Enemies can often be found just standing around waiting to get shot -- some even facing the opposite direction of the full squad assault pouring in through the only entrance to their dug-in position. Squadmates, on the other hand, are constantly running into your line of fire, and since you can't actually shoot once they've crossed directly into your sight line, it makes hitting enemies a pain. To make things worse, at times they'll actually push you out of the way while blindly running to their next waypoint, shoving you out of cover and into enemy fire.

It's a little weird, too, because the rest of the game is weirdly easy, going as far as offering a quick-snap function when pulling up iron sights that usually will lock onto an enemy near their head. Some weapons have a ridiculous amount of ammo despite weapons being dropped everywhere in the level (150+ shotgun -- sorry, trenchgun -- shells? Really?). Most enemies don't offer much in the way of resistance, and it's usually an errant grenade or the aforementioned dumb strength of your squadmates that push you into the open that leads to the game's most common deaths. That's not to say you won't be killed by enemy fire, and since the game doesn't do a great job of indicating how much damage you've taken, you can sometimes wade through a fight in the open and walk through it unscathed while other times you'll be dropped to the dirt after popping up out of cover for a second.

I mentioned it before, but Rebellion's Asura Engine is actually quite adept at pumping out some slick visuals on the PS2. I hate to keep bringing up Rogue Trooper, but that was actually a rather impressive looking game. Final Fronts, however, is not; it hitches when loading up the next section of a level, the framerate chugs during explosions or particularly populated areas, character models are fairly low-res, and their hands are a meat fist with an index finger sticking out (so it can wrap around triggers and pull them, assumedly).

The game can look nice enough in some of the daytime outdoor environments, and the pre-level intros with their slick little flybys and footage from WWII are fantastic, but by and large the visuals are rather drab. Destruction is kept to a minimum, the scripted events don't have the kind of impact and bombast of the earlier PS2 CODs (and can't hold a candle to the current-gen ones, though that's not Rebellion's fault). There are also plenty of odd animation bugs, and little annoyances that pull you out of things even more, stuff like clipping (hands through guns, AI troops running right through enemies in the throes of their death animation), flickering lighting and stiff, popping animations all drag things down further. I'm not expecting a PS3-level experience here, but the PS2 and indeed Rebellion can do far better than this.

The audio, too -- one of the core parts of the COD games' immersion -- feels limp. The weapons don't have any oomph to them, orders barked by your commanders almost sound cartoonish, explosions don't pop like they used to... If nothing else, though, at least the music stands out. It's not quite as stirring as previous games' soundtracks, but nonetheless manages to evoke the odd bit off bravado and motivation from time to time.
The Verdict

The Call of Duty games have moved beyond the stuff established in the PS2 era, both in terms of setting and in how they're presented. A lack of online multiplayer or co-op and an overpowering sense that you've done all this before -- multiple times, in fact -- dilutes any of the impact that Final Fronts could have had. There are moments where it's fun, sure, but does it come close to the advancements to the series in recent years? Hardly, and thus it's really not worth your time.