Alright, Treyarch didn't totally butcher this game. There are; however, a handful of mistakes made in the creation of this game. Here are my top 3 problems with this game.1. Rifles sound like you're firing a BB gun.
Probably the greatest pitfall keeping this game from greatness amongst Call of Duty 2 and Modern Warfare is the removal of the hard crack of an M1 Garand or the audible thump of a russian Tokarev SVT-40. being fired. These battle-worthy sounds have been replaced by less interesting and audible BB gun-esque noises.
2. The replacement of the original-looking guns from the first three Call of Duty games with new ones.
This is what annoys me the most about Call of Duty: WaW. They changed the format of what the original guns looked like. Instead of battle-hardened and battered weaponry, the user is confronted with shiny looking plastic toys to play with. It's sad that the advance of graphics technology should come at this price.
3. The campaign has a lousy Pacific front and backstory.
I loved the Russian front in this game. The story there was interesting, compelling, and overall perfect. To contrast this, one is confronted with the absolutely pitiful Pacific campaign that tried very hard to have a compelling story, but in the end failed miserably. The characters didn't have much depth to them and really the only interesting thing that happened was a couple of the main characters died. Other than that, the only part of the Pacific campaign that made it worth playing was you needed to beat it to play some of the Russian missions.
Treyarch did do some things right with this Call of Duty as well, for instance the introduction of flamethrowers and new sniper weaponry (such as the Japanese sniper rifle). The Russian aspect of the campaign was terrific. Multiplayer is as superb as it was in Call of Duty 4.
Review: 6.5 out of 10
Pros: Excellent graphics carried over from the 4th Call of Duty installment.
Terrific Russian campaign.
Ability to mount light machine guns like the MG-42 is a great addition.
Black Cats and Russian sniping missions are a hell of a lot of fun.
Cons: Unexciting Pacific campaign.
Too much change from the original call of duty games.
Didn't feel like a Call of Duty game, at times felt more like a Medal of Honor type game, that was less professional and/or realistic.
I wouldn't really recommend this game to my friends.
Final: The reasons mentioned above keep this game from having a great score. What keeps the score from being sub-6 (or 5 for that matter) is the excellent Russian campaign and online multiplayer action. Overall, this was an attempt at making yet another great Call of Duty game, nothing more. I except better in the next one, Activision (get Infinity Ward back!).
