Call of Duty: World at War, also referred to as Call of Duty 5, is the latest installment of the ever-popular Call of Duty series. The prequel to World at War, Modern Warfare, was one of the best selling games of all time. CoD 4 made game of the year, as well as many other awards.

With the success of Modern Warfare, there were a lot of high hopes for World at War. However, there were also a lot of doubts, because World at War was to be produced by Treyarch, who did NOT make Modern Warfare. Treyarch is famous for the notoriously under-average Call of Duty 3. Most people thought that Treyarch would mess up big time and ruin CoD’s reputation.

Well, I am here to tell you that Treyarch did a pretty good job. World at War is definitely not the best game ever made, but it is certainly fun to play. It is essentially a clone of CoD4, because they used the same basic game engine. If you have played CoD4 before, you will notice immediately the similarities. The designers made very few changes to the actual engine, and instead, focused on improving the graphics.

The graphics in World at War are phenomenal. They are by far the #1 reason to buy this game. The game, mostly because of its realistic graphics, has a very real feel to it. If you play it on a big screen TV with surround sound, it literally feels like you are standing in the middle of a war; a World at War if you will.

Well, like I said, World at War strongly resembles CoD4. If you own Modern Warfare, picking up World at War may be useless. Even the guns are similar, though they are from a completely different time period. You can see easily which guns in World at War match which guns in Modern Warfare, and the game is played almost identically.

The only really big change is the introduction of vehicles. I think Treyarch designed the vehicles very well. As of right now there are only tanks available for use, and they are not available in every map. In fact, there are only a few maps that DO have tanks. I was dreading my first Xbox Live match on World at War because I figured I would get continuously owned by a tank. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The tanks are neither overpowered nor underpowered. They do enough damage to kill in one hit, but they are slow enough that avoiding them is pretty easy. I have played many games where the vehicles completely ruined the experience, by being overpowered and dominating everyone else.

In the end, it really comes down to what time period you enjoy. Obviously World at War is based around World War 2, so if you like the older style game play, choose World at War. However, I really do think that Modern Warfare is a better game overall, so if you are not a huge fan of WW2 games, or just don’t care, I encourage you to try CoD4.