History VideoGame / CallOfDutyWorldAtWar

* AmericaSavesTheDay: {{Subverted|Trope}}. The game presents the American Marine Raiders as dying constantly and being ground down by the Japanese troops' tactics despite the eventual progress of their forces. Miller and his battle group are eventually sent home after taking a castle -- but the war is not presented as being over by their hands; the Russians' have the final missions in the game and take the Reichstag. However, the missions are presented in AnachronicOrder, the Reichstag fell a month before the events of the final Marine missions, meaning the war [[DoubleSubvertedTrope technically really]] ''did'' end with the Marine Campaign — especially that [[https://youtu.be/5Z4UkYI93Y8?t=1m13s the final cutscene]] after "Downfall" moves fluently from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-go1cuzgE Harry S. Truman's announcement of the surrender of Germany from May the 8th, 1945]] to the nuclear bombing on Japan, followed by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EqRTWMVqMY General MacArthur's speech from the Japanese surrender ceremony from September the 2nd, 1945]], after which the credits are rolled and the campaign is finished.

''Call of Duty: World at War'' is the fifth entry in the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' series, developed by Treyarch and released in November 2008 for UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, UsefulNotes/Xbox360, UsefulNotes/Playstation3 and UsefulNotes/NintendoWii.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''World at War'' is the last game in the ''Call of Duty'' series to do anything particularly odd in multiplayer before the series' gameplay style settled into the now-familiar style with ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2 Modern Warfare 2]]''. Most of these are [[TheArtifact carried over from]] ''Call of Duty 4'' since Treyarch was at the time still just a "side" developer without much room to innovate the series, like the first perk always granting players extra equipment, with a few being attempts to innovate made by bringing back concepts that had been abandoned since the first game's expansion ''United Offensive'', like the multiplayer mode including drivable vehicles (including a fourth perk dedicated to improving some aspect of their functionality) and eschewing pre-placed machine guns in favor of a bipod attachment to mount your handheld machine gun where you need it. Also, in addition to the now-famous Nazi Zombies mode, it also featured full campaign co-op - something which only ever returned for ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'', because when given the option between campaign co-op and Zombies, everyone only ever picked Zombies. Later attempts at co-op in the series would either take the form of [[RemixedLevel repurposing singleplayer maps]] for almost-contextless instant action with ''Modern Warfare 2'' and ''3''[='=]s Spec Ops mode, or just getting Treyarch to do another Zombies mode from ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts Ghosts]]'' onward. As a result there are also far less scripted sequences that railroad the player, in order to compensate for co-op functionality, and even then two levels are unavailable in co-op because of the heavy amount of scripted sequences.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''World at War'' is the last game in the ''Call of Duty'' series to do anything particularly odd in multiplayer before the series' gameplay style evolved to what it is today. Most of these are [[TheArtifact carried over from]] ''Call of Duty 4'' since Treyarch was at the time still just a "side" developer without much room to innovate the series, like the first perk always granting players extra equipment, with a few being attempts to innovate made by bringing back concepts that had been abandoned since the first game's expansion ''United Offensive'', like the multiplayer mode including driveable vehicles (including a fourth perk dedicated to improving some aspect of their functionality) and eschewing pre-placed machine guns in favor of a bipod attachment to mount your handheld machine gun where you need it. Also, in addition to the now-famous Nazi Zombies mode, it also featured full campaign co-op - something which only ever returned for ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'', because when given the option between campaign co-op and Zombies, everyone only ever picked Zombies. Later attempts at co-op in the series would either take the form of [[RemixedLevel repurposing singleplayer maps]] for almost-contextless instant action with ''Modern Warfare 2'' and ''3''[='=]s Spec Ops mode, or just ripping off Zombies from ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts Ghosts]]'' onward. As a result there are also far less scripted sequences that railroad the player, in order to compensate for co-op functionality, and even then two levels are unavailable in co-op because of the heavy amount of scripted sequences.

''Call of Duty: World at War'' is the fifth entry in the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' series, developed by Treyarch and released in November 2008 for UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, UsefulNotes/Xbox360, UsefulNotes/Playstation3 and UsefulNotes/NintendoWii. Unlike it's predecessor, ''[[VideoGame/ModernWarfare Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare]]'', ''World at War'' brings the series back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. And unlike previous World War II ''Call of Duty'' titles, this one features only two campaigns, one American, and one Russian, set in the Asia-Pacific Theater from 1942-45 and Stalingrad and Berlin in 1942 and 45, respectively. For the American campaign, players go as Private C. Miller, a [[SemperFi US Marine]] fighting in Peleliu and later, Okinawa, as well as for one level, Petty Officer Locke, a [[GuyInBack machine gunner]] on board a US Navy PBY Catalina. Meanwhile, the Russian campaign stars Pvt. Dimitri Petrenko, a veteran of the Battle of Stalingrad who later fights in the Battle of Berlin.

Of special note is that this is the first Treyarch ''Call of Duty'' game to feature the famous ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyZombies Nazi Zombies]]'' mode.

The one that emphasised that WarIsHell. Alternatively, the one with NaziZombies.

[[caption-width-right:350: WarIsHell: TheGame]]

** In addition, during the capture of Berlin, the narration points out that many of the soldiers you're fighting against, though [[YouALLLookFamiliar identical in appearance]], are old men, young boys and the mentally ill forced into battle at gunpoint.

* RareGuns: Aside from the usual Gewehr 43, STG 44, and FG 42 for the Germans, there's the Type 92 Heavy Machine Gun and Type 100 submachine gun for the Japanese, which saw respectively a maximum of about 45,000 and 27,000 units.