Let the guitar riff of freedom ring.

I’ve let it linger on my coffee table for over a week now, untouched, and I think it’s time to slip it back into the sleeve and send Call of Duty: World at War back to Gamefly.  What a bust.

Oh shit, ASIAN WITH KNIFE!

I don’t know where I am in the campaign, and I don’t really care.  I think the last thing I did was drive a tank around, shooting other German tanks.  This game had to have to done something colossally wrong to warrant getting the early return.  I marathoned all of Band of Brothers over the holidays and put the game in my rental queue immediately.  I was looking for a Band of Brothers game, and World of War is so far from it, it’s frankly offensive.

KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Everything about World at War strikes a tone that overall I find inappropriate for the material and the setting.  And it’s not in the way one would expect, given the early crying foul a number of people did over the portrayal of the Japanese.  They are demonized, yes, but that’s expected with the genre.  It’s the modern, graphical cutscenes that feed into every mission, whipping a camera over a vectorized, animated map with MTV bravado.  It’s the casualness with which you can run around a level with a flamethrower, panzerfaust or radio to call in rocket strikes whenever you feel like.  It’s the totally discordant heavy metal guitar licks that kick in during the middle of a firefight in 1940s Russia.  It’s all just. . . wrong.

FIRE, motherfucker. . . DO YOU SHOOT IT?

And I don’t understand why it was neccessary.  World War 2 isn’t exactly inaccessible material when it comes to video games.  Treating the setting with respect still gives you the “Oorah!  Get some!” attitude that caters to the lowest common denominator.  Putting in something like a rock soundtrack just smacks of making it cool, making it extreme.  And since I just finished up Generation Kill today, I don’t think I’ll be looking for a way to experience the cool side of war anytime soon.

Watch this show.

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