Like any Call of Duty, your national role is divided between each mission – you begin the single-player campaign as American soldier Private Miller, embarking on the Pacific side of the battle against a kamikaze-happy Japanese army. Here, you're introduced to the delightfully-grotesque flame-thrower weapon, granting the ability to quickly burn enemy snipers from their perch in trees, or clear a close-knit group hiding in trenches with a few sprays of scorching flame. It's kind of sickly watching the Japanese soldiers' animations as they struggle and deteriorate to the floor in pain, although the infinite-ammo benefits of the weapon make for horrific yet satisfying action.

The Red Army also features alongside the Americans in which you play as Private Dimitri Petrenko fighting off the Nazi invasion of Stalingrad, though this is the weaker of the two campaigns, given a seriously flawed sniping section and general set-pieces that pale in comparison to that of last year's game. Online co-operative play for up to four players helps boost the enjoyment of the campaign mode, allowing for competitive score-based matches as well as just barrelling through each mission with friends. Whether playing with allies or on your lonesome, if you enjoy the Call of Duty staple of intense shootouts married to a very tight control scheme, you'll enjoy the single-player's competency if nothing else.

What Modern Warfare inarguably sunk its teeth into everyone last year however was its perennial multiplayer component. Retaining the same basic structure of levelling up, obtaining new perks and weapons and several available game modes to play, the experience is largely the same. Though the 7-kill streak bonus has been replaced from helicopters to a pack of persistent and vicious dogs, little has ultimately been altered or added, even with the inclusion of tanks and larger maps only proving to be a simple "love it or hate it" affair. Even with the disparity regarding combat between both eras, a lot is masked to match the features fans of Modern Warfare have now come to expect from the adversarial side of things. For example, old push-down remote charges basically act as C4 and the devastation bestowed to artillery strikes has been negated, essentially to maintain some degree of historical accuracy. Certainly, your mileage will vary depending on how strongly you value the era's weapons and map design over Modern Warfare's.

The gritty realism that Modern Warfare set a precedent for is obvious inspiration for World at War, taking it one step further with graphic dismemberment and violent scenes, a height that the series has never undertaken before. That said, it's not as visually shocking as say Gears of War 2, but does an appropriate and long overdue job in creating an effect that is more impactful as opposed to just gross and gratuitous.

Both Modern Warfare's retail success and community popularity throughout the last year had clear significance on the development of World at War – it's hard to ignore the notion that from the very beginning it was designed to copy the formula set rather than reconsider it. A solid campaign and consistently addictive multiplayer confirm this to be no bad thing, however the only difference is a specific je ne sais quoi that fails to make World at War as memorable as last year's entry.