I thought World at War had a lot of potential, but it felt too much like Treyarch felt that they had to stick to CoD4's formula instead of thinking of their own. I like the fact that it was a gritty, somewhat realistic portrayal of WW2, though I disliked the way they handled the story as if it was just some bad-ass Schwarzanegger movie. Also, the upgrade system from CoD4 felt so out of place, and leveling up was boring and took forever.

This is gonna suck so bad. Treyarch have tried their hands at creating Hollywood-style action games, and they've all been so cheesy, they're almost vomit-inducing. Their earlier WW2 games were too similar to those cheesy '50s war films, while World at War tried to be too edgy. I have a feeling they're going to just try to do Apocalypse Now sans the meaningfulness and replace it with some jingoistic overtones and "bad-ass" main characters.

What I've realized thanks to games like World at War is that gamers aren't sick of WW2 games, they're sick of bland WW2 games. They're sick of having the southerner, the city-boy, and the stoic, gravelly sarge, and whichever one of them dies saying something inspiring or witty. World at War was good in spite of itself because it at times portrayed the gritty horror of war instead of sugar-coating it so that we'd feel the flags wave in our hearts. I always liked the Brothers in Arms games because the emphasis was on the characters and the futility of war, not on thinking that killing was awesome. Infinity Ward is going to inspire a million crappy modern warfare games, Treyarch will inspire a bunch of crappy Vietnam games, and a bunch of gamers will be sitting around scratching their heads wondering why all the games aren't good just because they're not set in WW2 anymore.