The Call of Duty series is no stranger to the Big One, and though you’ve slugged through the Bulge and across the dunes of Africa, participating in the Pacific front of the war is an entirely different animal. World at War is the first game in the series to put you against Japanese forces and it plays markedly different than the series norm.

In the campaign you play as two different soldiers, a U.S. Marine involved in the island hopping campaign in the Pacific and as a Russian soldier on the East Front pushing the Nazis back to Berlin. The Russian levels are a traditional Call of Duty experience and take place in a variety of bombed cities, with a mix of some open field and tank combat thrown in for good measure. The Russian and Pacific levels are interwoven with each other, which keeps both of their gameplay elements fresh at the expense of the story narrative.

The marquee campaign is the Pacific front, which is a massive contrast in gameplay from earlier games in the series. Japanese forces can rush you from spider holes concealed in the earth, take cover in the thick jungle growth or snipe from trees, and rush at you with bayonets at the ready. Walking into a smoke screen is almost as deadly for you as it is for the enemy as it easily allows for you to get thrown down and stabbed if you don’t quickly counter by deflecting their attack and stabbing them in the throat. Flamethrowers can be used to deny the enemy of cover, or used to sweep a room and incinerate anyone inside. Where the Russian campaign has cover a plenty due to the buildings and rubble the Pacific island terrain has much less to take cover behind, making movement a careful affair of scanning the brush for threats before cautiously moving up.

The single player falls a bit flat however in that it is apparent that you aren’t really fighting alongside anything more than cardboard cutouts with guns. Your allies only move up and enemies stop spawning once you advance to a certain point in the level; it’s more of a game of finding the hidden trigger point and nearly ignoring enemies rather than tactically fighting them off. Of course, oftentimes the result of trying to find said trigger is going to the wrong place, getting yourself pinned down and killed while your brainless brothers in arms are way down field. Since your allies rarely make kills and more often than not cannot actually be killed it makes the whole experience underwhelming. When you look across the battlefield and see your allies spray fire from cover fruitlessly you have just as much trouble in taking them as real soldiers as you would taking the animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese as a real band.

Other gameplay flaws such as enemies who are always aware of your position and who immediately begin firing when you pop out behind them are less than charming. Enemy grenades are rarely thrown without a punishing degree of accuracy, so even while you are in cover trying to figure out where the next trigger point is you have a grenade thrown into your lap from a long distance. The single player does have moments that are absolutely epic, such as calling in rocket strikes or playing as a gunner in a Navy search and rescue aircraft, but the mortar in between these bricks of enjoyment is sheer frustration with a touch of disappointment. It is the starkest contrast of the game that while the graphics and presentation are so cutting edge the gameplay itself feels incredibly dated.