World at War Makes Me Rage Quit

I bought World at War last October-ish (2009) and it was actually my step back in to gaming after a long hiatus. By the time I got it it was already coming to the end of its commercial life with the release of Modern Warfare 2. I wasn’t particularly interested in the game itself as it was the zombies mode that attracted me to it (yes, I’m shallow).

Playing the multiplayer game types was a major pain in the ass as I didn’t have the map packs so spent most of my time in the lobby getting kicked. There was also no way that I was going to fork out for content for a game that I wasn’t interested in. So my multiplayer experience was pretty much limited to the co-op modes – campaign and zombies. Pretty linear. In the end, I traded in World at War to get BFBC2.

Recently, through the medium of peer pressure, I re-purchased World at War. It was only a tenner, and who knows, maybe playing it with a group of online friends would make a decent game to play. That’s a great thought, but no. The multiplayer experience leaves me wanting to simultaneously throw my controller at the TV and kick the dog.

Here’s my problem(s):

1 – YOU CAN’T MUTE PEOPLE IN THE LOBBY! Oh, for the love of god….why!? Why did Treyarch decide that you had to endure whistling, singing, and various other flavours of mic abuse until you actually got in to the game itself before you could mute anyone…… only to have them unmuted at the end of the game? If you could send a slap over the internet my connection would have melted last night. I’m sorry, but being able to mute people is the most basic of options. Having to take my earthingy off until the game starts does not bode well.

2 – It’s lagtastic. Even when I’ve apparently got four bars this happens. I turn a corner, a head pops up, there is a SINGLE flash and I’m dead. The killcam shows this sequence of events though. The player runs around a corner and I’m sauntering along without a care in the world. I bend down to smell the sweet scent of some wild flowers that are growing nearby. As the player takes aim at me with their MP40 a bluebird lands on my shoulder. Just as I’m about to break in to song the other player opens fire, initially shooting everywhere but me finally filling me full of hot Nazi lead. Funny, from my perspective he only fired one shot…..

3 – Spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die, dogs, artillery banana bullets. Okay, the spawn/die thing could be resolved by “stop QQing and get better” – but let’s be realistic here: I’m not going to spend a million hours on this laggy mess of a game just so that I don’t get owned. My e-peen is big enough that I don’t need to be good at a game to feel good about myself, because frankly, I’m awesome with sauce on top (I’m just crap at video games). There’s things that you can change and things you can’t. I could learn the maps, find all the spots for pwning teh noobs, but that’s not going to change the fact that World at War is a game that I am never going to enjoy.

I’m a ping whore, I always have been and one of the hardest things for me to come to terms with when I changed from PC to console gaming was not knowing what my ping is. The four bar setup means nothing. But chances are that the developers decided to use that instead of showing actual ping because of the amount of gamers who would disconnect as soon as their connection showed more than 60-70ms. Connection based games are great – if the connection is in your favour (and so far that has not happened in a single game of World at War).

Nazi Zombies and co-op mode – fine. I’m down with that, but I won’t be playing multiplayer. I play games to have fun, not have my ears bleed in the lobby and then spend more time watching the kill cam than actually playing.

Yes, this is just a massive whinge because I’m no good at the game. But chances are, I’m not going to be playing many connection dependent games – especially those that have such a simple attitude towards the physics of things like bullet travel time (MW2 compared to BFBC2 – MW2: whoever fires first gets the hit, BFBC2: all bullets count, even after death). I’ll be happy to join in on a game, but I won’t be going out of my way to play them.

Peas and loaves

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