MacHouse game rating: 8.5/10
Video game publisher Activision Blizzard has recently released the PC version of this year’s one of the most anticipated games Call of Duty: World at War. Call of Duty: World at War was developed by Treyarch. In Call of Duty: World at War, players are back to the scenes of World War II battlegrounds. The game comes with three different game modes: solo, co-op and multiplayer. This game review is only concerned with the solo game mode – single-player campaign.
Our game machine is iMac 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro and 256 MB VRAM. It’s full resolution is 1920 x 1200 pixels. We have played several PC games that were released this year with this machine. Such games include Sins of a Solar Empire, Pure, Crysis Warhead, Farcry 2, Dead Space and Fallout 3. Call of Duty: World at War is the first game where we have trouble playing it at the full resolution.
What are system requirements for this game, by the way? I spent some 20 minutes at Call of Duty Headquarters a few days ago. But I couldn’t find out what system requirements are for this game. The only useful information that we found on the Internet is an article posted by GameSpot in September 24 where Treyarch’s project leader Cesar Statsny mentions that they have achieved high graphics performance for Call of Duty: World at War under the same system requirements for Modern Warfare. Such minimum system requirements are shown as
Processor: AMD 64 3200+/Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz or better
Memory: 512MB RAM (XP)/1GB RAM (Vista)
Graphics: 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6600GT/ATI Radeon 1600XT or better
The lowest resolution supported by this game is 640 x 480 pixels. We are not able to play this game smoothly at 1920 x 1200 pixels. In fact, if we lower the resolution to 1280 x 1024 pixels, the game lags a bit. So we’ve eventually lowered the resolution to 800 x 600 pixels to play single-player missions.
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One minor problem that we’ve run across with this game is key control. Personally, I use arrow keys for character movement. Unfortunately, Call of Duty: World at War doesn’t let you use number buttons on the key pad. The game does support at least five buttons and the Mouse wheel. Also, you can use in (insert), home, delete, end, page up and page down keys. Call of Duty: World at War requires you to control many keys. (See Screenshot 02-4) In a mission called Vendetta, you need to have keys for Stand, Crouch or Prone and Hold Breath. In another mission called Burn ’em Out, you will face a machine gun hill ahead. So you may have to use a different key to throw smoke-nades other than the one for grenades. (See Screenshot 05-6.) The point is that if you decide to use arrow keys for character movement as I do, it won’t be easy to accommodate keys for all game functions at the same time without number buttons on the key pad. Continue reading →
