Did Nazi this coming

Discovering the secret horrors of COD: World At War

FORMAT PS3 / PUB ACTIVISION / DEV TREYARCH / RELEASED 2008 / SCORE 8/10

As soon as you finish World At War’s campaign, planting the Soviet flag at the top of the Reichstag, you may think that you’ve seen everything Treyarch will throw at you. This is a relatively straight historical WWII shooter, after all – it’s not like they have an entire demon horde of Nazi zombies just waiting in the… oh.

The groaning reward for reaching the finish line might not sound like much of a prize. You end up trying to survive endless waves of Nazi zombies stumbling towards – and then into – a small, grimy bunker. Each one you kill earns you points, which you then blow on weapons and ammo you find hanging off the walls, or on unlocking new rooms to broaden the playspace. Your best way to prolong the inevitable is to board up the windows the zombies try scurrying through, and to work with up to three friends to ensure you chalk up a respectable score.

As mad as the undeaddestroying premise is, it meshes perfectly with the whiplash speed of COD. The sheer pace of the game both empowers you against the onrushing corpses and eventually overwhelms (much like the flood of the undead), while the confined space you’re fighting in is just another part of the fantastic design. Opening up a new area feels liberating, if only because you have more corners to back into.

All this adds up to a mode that’s mildly terrifying and majorly addictive. Whenever your trigger finger isn’t quite fast enough or you forget about the one zombie slobbering on your ankles, there’s an instant compulsion to jump back in and rectify these mistakes. It’ll always end the same way, though. You become dinner. No.46