With the web-rumour mill churning away about the possibility of a COD VI being developed by Infinity Ward (COD IV’s developers), it seems that Treyarch really had to be good to get COD V noticed, especially after the disappointing COD III. As a primarily single player purist I’ve completed both campaigns, and the truth is, they are surprisingly similar.

I ought to say at this point that most of this article won’t interest the 50% of COD 4 players who never even completed the campaign’s tutorial.

You could in fact be forgiven for thinking that COD 5 is just a reskinned COD 4. After all, they use the same game engine, the same control system, the same spawn-enemies-until-player-runs-to-an-arbitrary-point method of enemy supply, the same smoke grenades… And Treyarch can be forgiven for doing so, after all, if a formula works so well, why change it?

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, after COD III, the franchise needed a fresh angle. Too many games have had the same rehashed Normandy beach landings. Too many games have had the same trench style bunker attacking warfare. COD IV was a welcome relief from the tired European theatre of war, by taking us into a theoretical future and updating the weapons, tactics, and support to things that modern day gamers are familiar with hearing about in the news.

COD V went back to the Second World War, but took us (finally!) to a different theatre: to the savage Pacific theatre. These aren’t the “gung ho” American soldiers of COD IV, they’re conscripted teenagers, far from home and far from welcome. Their enemy are the aggressive and zealous Japanese soldiers who hide in trees, murder holes, and the dense jungle to ambush the invaders with vicious bayonet charges. As an American soldier you pilot gun turrets in aeroplanes, attack fortified positions, and support tank advances. The gameplay here is visceral and exciting. The Pacific theatre is an ideal setting for a balls-to-the-wall shooter, and Treyarch should be proud of finalling lifting us out of the trenches in such a perfect way.

COD V followed COD IV’s formula of switching between two countries’ soldiers. As well as the Americans, you play as a member of the Russian army on the march to Berlin. Sadly, these bits aren’t anything that we haven’t seen before. These parts are set in cities, corridors, and subway stations (other than when you drive a tank towards Berlin). And while the levels are impressive there are too many occasions when you have to progress to an arbitrary point, under exceptionally heay fire, while destroying wave after wave of the same enemy troops. However, the storyline is one of pride and sacrifice, and strikes the right balance. But it’s not new, unlike the Pacific Theatre levels. Those are nothing short of amazing. If more of the game had been set there, I would most likely be complaining that the game on the whole didn’t have enough variety. But I feel that more effort could have been put into the European part just to make it different to everything we’ve seen before.

The most remarkable level of the European theatre set is when you play as one of a pair of snipers attacking specific targets while evading capture. Sound familiar? Almost everything about this level was reminiscient of the Pripriyat level (“Ghillies in the Mist”) in COD 4. Except it was far more clear what you were meant to do, and how to do it. It was also far less tense, I rarely felt in real danger.

It would be possible to write a review that did a tit for tat analysis of which parts were better in which game and ignore the major point that the games are so similar that it’s pointless arguing about it: COD 5′s opening was far better (it got you straight into the action, rather than making you shoot targets), and it’s got flamethrowers, but COD 4 has better variety of levels, weaponry, and characterisation… but I won’t do that. I recommend both games. If I had to pick one of the two it’d probably be…

I’ll get back to you on that.

- John

You can get back to INX first! Either post in the comments below or cast your vote in our forums!

Also considering Call of Duty 4 gameservers have dropped off recently (as Call of Duty 5 WAW was released!) What does that tell you about COD5 servers? Or the lack of!

Please sir, let us run COD5 servers

It might suggest that some gaming clans wanting to run COD5 servers can’t, because it’s only available on Windows right now. A kind member on the linux COD mailing list recently published a tutorial on running COD5 on Linux, using a program called Wine. That’s great, but two problems with running servers through Wine:

• It’s not the most stable of solutions
• It increases CPU usage drastically

It’s not the answer. More worryingly, was after what was published – COD5 linux servers would be available, why are they not, over a month since the release of the game?

The problem is, no-one really knows. No-one knows when COD5 servers will be available to run on Linux. No-one knows whether it might be the 1.1 and upcoming 1.2 patches that are causing the delay. No-one knows!

We’ve ended up setting up a Windows platform to run Call of Duty 5 servers on. We didn’t want to, like the many clans and communities.

It just seems odd, because surely financially, more COD5 servers = more games sold. More money for the developers and publishers.

The server stats speak for themselves. I wonder if the developers will listen to the community for the release of Call of Duty 6? I don’t hold up much hope.

Well it’s been out less than 24 hours and I’ve spent a bit of time on it (ranked up to Corporal – level 7). I’ve had a play on some different gametypes, tried the 3 different maps (Makin, Roundhouse and Castle) and also had a look around some clan sites to see what the general “take” is.

Just a little background on some bits before the review.

Infinity Ward produced CoD4 Modern Warfare with a new game engine and it was generally well received. Activision, who own the franchise, have this policy of alternating software houses to produce each new version to CoD5 fell to Treyarch who had done the well received Call of Duty: United Offensive (CoDUO) and the not-so-well-received Call of Duty 3 (which was console only). Most hardened CoD players were looking forward to the release of CoD5 by Treyarch as it was hoped there would be a return to old-style CoD gameplay and feel overall. The game engine though is the same as that used by CoD4.

Well CoD5:WaW returns us to the WWII scenario though based in the Pacific Basin. The beta maps are Makin (sort of jungle/swamp on edge of some water), Castle (Japanese Pagoda type setting) and Roundhouse (ruined city around a train yard). In general, my view was that the maps recaptured something of the CoD2 feel though this may have been due more to the WWII setting than anything to do with design or gameplay.

Some PC gamer requests have been dealt with (you can now add a Clan tag) but many of the items that have been requested since CoD4 came out still appear to be lacking (no colours for in-game names). Irritatingly, it seems as if the PC version is trying to be converted to a console type game. Your player name must be unique on the worlwide master servers (which will undoubtedly irritate many CoD Clans) and they have added a setting to easily add friends ( a console type feature when most PC gamers will probably use things like Xfire). The server browser for the beta did, however, seem fast, well populated and allow for some decent filtering options.

As with any new release, wheter beta or full, there have been the usual complaints about installing not working, graphics not looking good, jerky movement etc. All I can say is that, apart from having to re-install DirectX 9.0c (specifically) the game plays fine on my Xp Pro, 8800gtx, quad core system. It runs smoothly and the graphics (to me) seem as comparable as with CoD4. The sound is a little disappointing and grenades definitely seem to sound muffled.

 In terms of gameplay we have all the usual gametypes – team deathmatch, deathmatch, capture the flag, search and destroy etc. Vehicles are back (as per CoDUO) so you can drive around in tanks and there are also attacks by dogs. I’m not sure I like having to repeatedly shoot an animal in-game and listen to the yelping (but then I am an animal lover having had my own Labrador and several cats).

Comments I have seen are varied and are probably 50% for it and 50% against it. However, the most pertinent comment seems to be that it does, unfortunately, feel like a WWII mod for CoD4. Whether the full release can overcome this and give it it’s own true identity remains to be seen. Long-term CoD players may well respond well to the change back to WWII whilst the console type players will probably just run with it for a while and move on to whatever the next great new release happens to be.

For it to have longevity on the PC it remains to be seen what will happen about things like the release of mod tools, mapping tools and how these additions can be added to the game. After the fiasco of CoD4 in terms of how easy it was to add custom maps and mods, PC gamers will be looking for something a bit more like previous CoD incarnations in this respect. The folder structure of the beta on your hard drive alludes to this but we will have to see when the full game is released.

The game release is scheduled for mid November (11th or 14th depending on where you read it) and Treyarch have already said they will not be making any alterations to the beta. That seems to imply that patches will be released quite quickly once the game goes on sale and we can only hope also that files for Linux based servers are also available sooner than with CoD4 (which took around 3 weeks).

 So after all this, will I buy it and play it ?

Yes, as I love the Call of Duty series. I’ll probably play it more than CoD4 as I prefer the WWII setting.

Will I ever still play CoD, CoDUO and CoD2 – you bet ! I don’t want or need the frilly ranks/perks of the more modern games and still think there is something to be said for the older versions – but then if you gave me the original Space Invaders to play I’d be happy too !