The first part of that title is purely subjective, but according to the article in the upcoming issue of GamePro that reader Mobius0077 posted in our Community Discussions area, it is entirely true. That’s right, the subheader of the article claims that from the time they spent with Call of Duty: World at War it is actually better than Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. After reading the article and pretending it wasn’t a total fluff piece I can see where they’re coming from. I mean, it does seem like World at War is going to have everything that CoD4 did, but with more. It is running on the CoD4 engine, features a similar multiplayer and sounds like it took some lessons from CoD4’s story. I’m just a little skeptical since the current track record for Call of Duty games is that Infinity Ward makes the good ones and Treyarch makes the ones in between the good ones.

It does look like they’re adding some potentially awesome stuff into the game though. We all saw the flamethrower in the trailer, but finding out that it’ll be a nice little perk upgrade (one of 15 new ones) in the RPG-like multiplayer makes me happy, especially when GamePro says that the flamethrower is the best they’ve ever experienced. That is just a personal favorite really, I think more people will be looking forward to being able to send out attack dogs to slaughter their enemies. Yup, now those pesky dogs from CoD4 can be on your side, like some sort of horrible air strike of fur and teeth. The dogs are multiplayer reward, along with a recon plane and an artillery strike, that players receive for killing a certain number of people in a row without dying. Death by dog is going to have to be one of the most embarrassing ways to go in gaming ever.

Finally, it looks like the game is just going to be full of a lot more explosions and killing: the opening paragraph is about crawling through a bloody field of bodies and then an air strike blowing up some buildings, the rocket launchers are going to do way more damage, and the weapons are basically described as devastating at every turn. We don’t have images of the whole article so this might be a bit premature, but it doesn’t sound like the stealthy gameplay of the SAS troops in CoD4 will be making a comeback, at least not in the multiplayer. Kind of dissapointing to me, but who needs stealth when you can drive a massive tank around. Yup, driveable tanks are confirmed.

Update: Oh, and I totally missed that GamePro is holding a contest for the multiplayer beta of the game. I doubt anyone doesn’t want to get into that. They say all you have to do is head over to win.gamepro.com/callofduty, but the site isn’t up yet. Most likely because the magazine is just out, but it’s always good to get a heads up on these things. Pre-orders may also get you into the beta too.