CoD: World at War thoughts / opinions

Have only briefly played SP so I won't really pass judgment on that but it does seem good.

MP is quite excellent, especially in the maps on the Eastern Front. They look spectacular.

The only thing horribly broken in the game is the spawning system - quite literally every 2nd spawn whenever I'm playing plonks me right in the middle of a group of enemies, it's so incredibly frustrating.

Played a lot of MP tonight. I have the say the game is brilliant, much better then COD2 ever was. I don't see the point comparing it to COD4 as they're different genres (I much prefer the WW2 theme) and I honestly think World at War has a distinctly different feel despite a lot of people saying it's only a skin job. It has a genuinely gritty feel to it, COD4 is decidedly arcade in comparison. The levels are awesome, playing the maps based on Battle for Seelow Heights and the fighting around the Reichstag are exceptionally impressive in my opinion. A lot of work has gone into this game and I honestly think it's an out and out winner for the franchise, not just Treyarch.

That said I love my WW2 shooters so maybe I'm a bit biased, I did love playing COD4 but I rather wished it was set in the traditional era as well. I have to give the SP a proper go yet, but to be honest I'm not pushed. I thought the SP in COD4 was pretty crap apart from a few select missions in Eastern Europe, I buy FPS titles for their MP and judge them on that. If I had to criticize anything, after playing the game extensively online the last 2 days, it would be:

1) The spawning at certain times
2) The Sound is good, but weapon sounds are a little tinny and small for my liking. The worst is the STG44, it sounds like a Scorpion gun...
3) I don't like the Dogs, they're just annoying, nor do I like Martyrdom, I wish they'd left it out. Instead of the dogs, something like a blanket bombing like in Company of Heroes would be cool, and infinitely more realistic. Even something like a platoon of CPU controlled soldiers to fight on your side until their death and briefly make the sides totally uneven would be more fun to both use and fight against.

I don't particularly care much for the Pacific side of things either but that's more because of my personal interest in European military history and a relative disinterest in the war in the Pacific.

As for the comment earlier about the graphics being unbelievably bad, that's the most blatant bit of treyarch-bangwagon-hating I've seen yet. This shot doesn't do it justice but I took it in the middle of an MP game, I was astounded by how dark, atmospheric and convincing the map/backdrop was.

All in all a top notch game, I love it.