The Games of Christmas '08: GPU Performance Part II

Call of Duty: World at War

Ever since the release of the first of the series, the Call of Duty games have been known as some of the best first person shooters around. The first few were put up against the heavy competition of Medal of Honor but have since found their own fan base. As time progressed, the series dipped its toe into the modern terrorism aspect of things with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. They have now gone back to their World War II roots with the World at War title.


Instead of the usual Western Front shtick, World at War focuses mainly on the Pacific and Eastern European theatres of operation where you take the role of either a US Marine or Red Army soldier. All in all, this makes for a pretty interesting storyline, especially when you have Kiefer Sutherland (Corporal Roebuck) and Gary Oldman (Sergeant Reznov) backing things up with their stellar voice acting.


Gameplay-wise this is just another first person shooter but it is a pretty good looking one at that. World at War uses the same engine which was used in CoD4 but it has been updated with improved physics, lighting characteristics and other bangs and whistles. So, it will be interesting to see exactly what kind of framerates we can push with today’s GPUs.


Many people associate the Call of Duty franchise with developers Infinity Ward who began the franchise and went on to produce three highly successful titles since the first game’s depute back in 2003. Without a doubt, Call of Duty 4 was a popular title so it came as a bit of a surprise to many when Activision (the publisher of the CoD series) decided to go with Treyarch to develop the fifth iteration in this series. Whether or not this will turn out to be a good thing has yet to be seen.