WiiHD's WaWii Hands On
12 Nov 2008 07:04
David MarseillesDavid Marseilles

WiiHD's WaWii Hands On

wawii.jpg
WiiHD's hands are all over Call of Duty: World at War for the Wii. There's a lot to like, but sadly there are some things to HATE passionately as well.

The Really, Really Bad

  • Friend Codes
  • Inability to choose a map or other settings in "Find a Match" games (likely the most common kind you'll play given how fraking long it takes to collect, enter, and get someone else to reciprocate with FCs)
  • Update: Invites from your Friends pop up a display that interferes with your gameplay even if you're in a game. It's almost as annoying as MoHH2's battery warning — the solution to both should have been the same — display a HUD icon to notify, but not interrupt your game. Once you're in a place to do so, you can pause and address the notice. As it is, you can pretty much count on Invites only coming JUST when you're in the middle of a serious and deadly dogfight.
    • Workaround: create a second profile for when you don't want to interrupted. Of course, your two profiles will have to unlock everything separately and rank up separately

The Bad

  • Voting to skip a map you don't like requires 50% + 1 (with a minimum of 3). Less would be better
  • No Comm
  • Some framerate drops
  • World War II. Again. If it were all European theatre, it'd be in the Really, really bad column.
  • Update: Only DM and TDM? Call of Duty should be better than that. Where's CTF and SaD?
  • Limited Control customization.
    • Presets for turning speed instead of a sensitivity slider
    • No bounding box (dead zone) resizing are with 4 presets
    • Honestly, this would have been acceptable in VERY early 2007. Now it's fraking criminal. Shame on you Treyarch, even beenox did better with QoS, to say nothing of what the PSP port MoHH2 did.
  • Update: Only a Host can invite to a Private match. If you're invited to one, you can't in turn invite someone else in to help fill it out. That makes Clan wars all that much harder, since the game host doesn't just need one enemy clan FC (and then just let that one player invite the rest), but ALL of them. And what happens with last minute substitutions? Massive game delay failures.
    • For clan wars, you can still have each clan form a party prior to the beginning of the game. One clan gets all their members into the party, then the game host invites that party host. Still, it's inconvenient.
    • For regular matches with Friends, it seems pretty inconvenient that invited users can't use their friend lists to supplement the hosts friend list and make there's always a full game going.

The Good

  • Nice look
  • The super-confusing single player campaign really captures that jungle warfare "where the frak is the enemy…. OH FRAK, THERE THEY ARE" feel
  • players blend in easily in multiplayer as well—forcing you to keep you're eyes very very peeled
  • Unlockables. Weapons, perks, upgrades, challenges…
  • Fresh FPS. Sadly, its networking lacks a lot of MoHH2's flexibility, but the maps, the weapons, the campaign… WaWii is the whole package, not one of the PSP/PS2 ports we're used to
  • Weapon selection is good, and their respective strengths are clear from the selection screen
  • Custom Classes rock and seem well balanced.
  • Streak bonuses rock. Yeah, they get used against you as much as for you, but they add a nice element to the game. I recommend relying heavily on melee to get the dogs. You can shoot them at a distance, but once they're in your face, pull that knife baby. Surveillance plane: 3 kills, Artillery strike (which can kill friendlies too): 5 kills, Dogs: 7 kills.
  • You can jump. I spent a good 5 minutes looking for the jump button when I first bought MoHH2 before finally (*gasp*) opening the manual, only to discover that in EA's book, apparently man had not learned to jump yet in the World War 2 era. Activision and my grandpa disagree.
  • Update: Spawning in TDMs starts you with your team and tends to put you close to your team on respawn. A welcome system.
  • Update: I never have to use the accelerometer. I do toss poison gas grenades, but I suspect Treyarch used the IR light orientation for the twist feedback rather than the accelerometer, like MoHH2 did with scope zooming. Bad motion controls can really screw an experience, but Treyarch wisely limited them.

The Neutral

  • You can change button layouts between several preset layouts. This would be in the good column if there were one custom layout option.
  • No ammo pickups online. You can pick up the weapons of the dead, but even if it's the same weapon you already have, you don't get to combine ammo.

Expect a few updates tomorrow, and feel free to flame my list in the comments.

2 Wii Screens (yes, only two):

2 DS Screens

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