Date:
Monday , January 12, 2009
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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CoD: World at War Gameplay Performance and IQ

The fifth installment in the Call of Duty series is here, and we've got it under the microscope. We look at performance and IQ on six of today's most popular video cards to tell you which is the best buy for you.

Introduction

Call of Duty: World at War is the fifth game in the Call of Duty Franchise, and the second in the series to be developed by Treyarch. It was announced in December of 2007 and released on November 11th, 2008. Unlike its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World at War was not an immediate smash hit. Since its release, however, sales have steadily improved, and in December of 2008 it rose to the number three spot on game sales charts.

The Game

World at War returns the Call of Duty series to the World War II era, and takes place in the Pacific theater and Eastern front. The Pacific theater shows the war from the perspective of a United States Marine, and the Eastern front from the perspective of a Red Army soldier. The individual skirmishes depicted in the game form anonymous parts of larger famous battles, such as the Makin Atoll raid and the Battle of Stalingrad, among others. Like the other games in the series, Call of Duty: World at War is a linear, point to point first person shooter. Each scenario begins with a brief cinematic sequence, after which you accompany various computer-controlled soldiers through each level. Occasionally, you will decide on a particular action which can influence the direction of the battle, but either path you choose is still as linear as a roller-coaster ride.

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World at War features online multiplayer and a ranking system which allows players to progress through multiplayer games and unlock new weapons and equipment. It also features a cooperative (or co-op) multiplayer mode, which allows players to team up to tackle the campaign. Co-op mode allows up to four players to play together online, or two players offline. There is also a zombie fighting mode in which players battle never-ending waves of Nazi zombies, which can be unlocked by completing the single player campaign.

The Game Technology

Call of Duty: Word at War uses the same game engine as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and it shows in every respect. Not only is the game engine’s rendering performance very efficient from a graphical perspective, but much of the time it even feels like you are playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but with different weapons. The Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare engine is a proprietary engine, developed specifically for the Call of Duty series. It features HDR lighting, depth of field blurring, dynamic lighting, and some physics calculations. The engine is based on the DirectX 9 API with no current or planned support for DX10 with this game.

Death sequences are based on a strange combination of static animations and ragdoll physics, which can cause some interesting effects. Bodies and body parts will fly through the air realistically, but they can come to rest in amusing positions on top of small objects or clipping planes, making them appear to float. It also features shoot-through-cover physics, allowing certain types of cover (such as wooden fences) to be penetrated by bullets, rendering them ineffective as cover locations.

The Competition

For this gameplay evaluation, we are using six video cards from AMD and NVIDIA. From AMD, we will look at a Radeon HD 4870 X2, a 1GB Radeon HD 4870, a 512MB Radeon HD 4870, and a 512MB Radeon HD 4850. From NVIDIA, we have a GeForce GTX 280, and a GeForce GTX 260. Please note that the 192-shader GeForce GTX 260 has been dropped from our evaluation procedure. The GeForce GTX 260 in this evaluation is the newer model with 216 shader cores. All video cards are operating at stock NVIDIA reference frequencies for this evaluation.