When many people are killed
We feel sorrow and grief
A great victory
Is a funeral ceremony

Laozi - Daodejing (Addis & Lombardo translation)

Call of Duty: World at War is the first WWII shooter that does justice to the brutality and scale of the conflict. It might not be very subtle about it, but I'd argue there's no place for subtlety in a commercial AAA blockbuster since it flies over people's heads anyway. One thing you can't criticize it for is going too far. If you think the depiction of the WWII in this game is too dark or fucked up, you don't know enough about WWII. In fact, they could've taken it much further and portrayed child-soldiers, Japanese troops forcing the civilians to kill themselves, the Unit 731 (look it up), and of course the Holocaust. WWII was hell, and games had never truly conveyed it prior to this. It's not enough to just show dead bodies, because a corpse in real life is different from a corpse in a video game. But make the player wake up in a pile of corpses that ravens are pecking on and see the dark skies above, and the player will understand.

But WaW doesn't try to just depict the war. It makes a statement. How the circle of violence can hardly be broken. How triumphant patriotic chants and propaganda posters hide a cruel reality; one where all our previously-held values dissolve in the face of man-made horrors. How all beliefs get cast aside in that sweet rush of vengeance as it becomes the only thing that still makes sense after you've lost everything you ever held dear. How victory doesn't truly exist.

In a lot of ways this is a sort of deconstruction of a traditional WWII shooter. Because it takes the familiar template of a fun, triumphant action game and then dips your face in the blood and gore. As if to tell you: "look, this is what you've been having fun with". Essentially, this game is an anti-Call of Duty 2.

This is probably the first Call of Duty game where I actually watched the cutscenes and remembered the names of my fellow comrades. You know that thing that people usually say about the original CoD and CoD 2, how your comrades mean something because they have name tags? Well, in this game they actually mean something, but not because of the name tags. Rather because they're actually well-written characters. There is an actual story in this game. It's very subtle, but it's there, and it works really well.

In terms of gameplay, however, it's still a Call of Duty. It's still a heavily-scripted linear shooter with dumb AI and little to no physics. But, for what it is, it works about as well as Call of Duty 2 did. The scripting only failed me twice. As for the AI and the linearity, you barely notice these problems as the game keeps you moving forward and locks your attention on the gorgeous art-design and the shocking scenarios it presents. And though the level-design is more linear than CoD 2, it does something different. CoD 2 had these slightly open, sandboxy sections where you could maneuver between houses and flank your enemies. WaW keeps you going down a straight line, but it presents two or more lines at a time. I believe this was designed for a co-op, but it still works in single-player to add some variety and replayability. It also will often give you a bit of freedom within those corridors. For example, there might be a house in front of you with only one entrance, but it'll also have windows on the sides through which you can shoot. Or there might be an MG-nest and there'll be a panzerschreck nearby and a corridor that leads to the enemy rear, and the game allows you to pick your option.

It's still essentially linear, but again you barely notice this because the game is focused on the continuous movement forward. In this it kinda reinforces the main theme of the game. You're on a vengeance mission, and you're pushing your enemies back the entire time.

The thing that separates this from other Call of Duty titles is how the Pacific Front missions play. While having practically the same core gameplay mechanics, just the introduction of the Japanese banzai charges and their camouflage tactics, completely changes the gameplay. These are simple additions, but they make you always stay on alert. When staying in cover, you need to pay attention to your surroundings, so as not to get killed by a surprise melee attack. When walking down trenches or corridors, you have to be careful not to rush forward mindlessly. And whenever you're fighting in the jungles, you have to mind the trees. This creates a feeling of it being a different kind of warfare.

Other minor details I liked about the gameplay were the new weapons and how they worked. All the deployable machine guns you get to carry, and of course the flamethrower. And I also enjoyed some of the old Soviet weapons more. I used to always discard PPSh-41 and SVT-40 in the previous games, but here they are somehow more fun to use. Occasionally the game gives you a shotgun, and it's a blast to use. Partially because of the newly-implemented gore system. And man, the gore goes a long way in making the game feel realer. You can actually feel the difference between different-caliber weapons now because they deal different damage. Using a shotgun or a machine gun is vastly different from using an assault rifle.

As I've pointed out in some of my other reviews, my ratings are very subjective, and of course this game isn't without its flaws. After all, this is still a big-budget AAA title for mass audience. At its core it still feels like a Call of Duty. It still has those moments of infinitely-respawning enemies, or those moments where you shoot an enemy soldier and he doesn't die because he's locked in a scripted scene animation. These are minor annoyances, and I would pay them no heed. But two things I still genuinely hated about this game were the tank mission and the turret mission. The former is done worse than in CoD 2 because we're back to slow and clunky tanks. The latter might just be the best turret mission I've ever played, but it's still a turret mission.

That being said, what's more important to me is that this game is a work of art, and that makes me easily overlook its few flaws. The ending to the game, unlike CoD 1 and 2 is actually climactic. And the bittersweet cutscene after that leaves you with a sense of melancholy, as it contrasts your achievements with the total loses of the war, making you feel small and insignificant.