9th August 2009 - JustAnotherGamingBlog.com's Shannon Hodgkin guest writes for All Age Gaming and brings us his impressions of the newly released Map Pack 3 for Call of Duty: World At War. Read his impressions below.
Map Pack 3 is obviously the 3rd map pack available now for Call Of Duty World at War, the downloadable content includes 3 multiplayer maps as well as the 4th zombie mode/map. World at War's multiplayer has a lot of problems, more often than not the key to being a good player isn't having the best shot, or being in the best team, it's knowing the maps faults, and exploiting them to your advantage. Nothing has changed in Map Pack 3's multiplayer, the spawns are still questionable with underpowered artillery's and over powered dogs. These flaws aside, the 3 multiplayer maps are what we've grown to expect from Treyarch, they're nothing game changing, but they look good and have that feeling of depth where you'll be fighting on all different levels at different heights.
Treyarch has become really great at providing for all types of playing styles, the map Breach is especially good at this, there are plenty of ledges and balconies for snipers to lay down and pick people off, but enough buildings for the regular folk to run around and not be in plain sight. This closed edges and open center game design unfortunately forces players to make their way around the outer sides of the maps, so out of a huge map, only 20% will actually be useful unless your suicidal. The maps locations are diverse, ranging from an armored island surrounded by mines, a Berlin city beaten and bombed to a Russian artillery factory.
Treyarch's main focus in their trailers has without a doubt been their new Nazi Zombie mode, which builds on the mechanics of the previous nazi zombie maps and makes this new addition a stand out piece of content. It's called Der Riese (Zombie Factory) and takes place in a secret nazi research facility. The big new feature to come to this zombie map is the inclusion of teleportation, the map has 3 different teleports that you must activate and you'll need 1000 points racked up before you can teleport anywhere, though when your in a jam with a swarm of rotting nazi's trying to sink their teeth into you, being able to slip away can definitely come in handy. Upgrading your weapons is also a welcomed inclusion to Der Riese, players are given a machine called the Pack A Punch which for 5000 points can upgrade you're existing weapon into a crazy lazar shooting machine gun, the damage bonus of upgrading your weapon isn't noticeably improved, but your given almost twice as much ammo to a clip which is great, less reloading when your in the middle of the 18th zombie wave is a huge plus. One of the completely new weapons in this zombie map is the inclusion of a monkey bomb, if your familiar with left for dead's pipe bomb you'll know how this works, you basically get a little bomb disguised as a dancing monkey which will attract all the zombies, after a few seconds by which time 6 or 7 zombies have been lured to its charms, it blows everything in a 4 meter radius apart, pretty cool.
Paying 800 ms points for Map Pack 3 is a fair price, even if only for the Nazi Zombie map, which is a true stand out. You could easily lose hours from your day, the replay-ability is huge, especially if you can find a group of friends to play with, plus if your into achievement points there are another 10 achievements for you to work at. If your interested in this map pack for the multiplayer maps only you may be a little disappointed, although they are good looking maps, they are still a lot of the same old thing, you wouldn't be missing too much if you where to hold off buying them.