World At War.

I ran home and grabbed my stuff after work, and went to the Paper Bicycle studio to work for a few hours. I did some drawing and it went well. After a while, Ryan came to check the place out, and we walked to Tum Rup Thai to get some food.

By the time I got home it was 10:30. I got Call of Duty: World at War in the mail. I bought it during a super-sale since Ryan, Chris C, Ben, Nic and just about everyone else I know has it. When I saw it on sale for 30 bucks, no shipping, I caved.

The general consensus online (from the usual sites, forums and nerd talk) is that Call of Duty 4 is better, but we've all been playing COD4 for a long time now, and the new maps and weapons are incentive enough to change it up, at least until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.

So I popped that in and gave it a whirl. And so far, it seems like the general consensus is right. The map design seems looser, the graphics don't shine with the same polish (it's more the art direction, I think, but maybe the COD engine just wasn't meant to do jungles and nature), the vehicles seem kind of lame, the sound design seems worse (if not in sound quality, then in the repetition and annoying nature of the voice work)...

But all that said, and it's still pretty great. Even less-than-perfect Call of Duty is still better than 95 percent of anything else out there...

And I've only played a couple hours. And although I don't think the maps seem as tight to keep the game flowing, they are complex and less focused, which seems like there's some room for sneaking and hiding, which I'm always a fan of. That's kind of exciting.

So far it's pretty good, if not great. It just looses some of it's luster when it's precursor was so fan-freaking-tastic.

I'm leaving for the weekend, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be itching to play it while I'm gone...