Call of Duty: World at War/Camo Black Ice

Game: Call of Duty: World at War, Activision, 2008, PC
Beer: Camo Black Ice, 24 fl. oz., 10.5% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: About halfway through...I think.
Level of Intoxication: Three Sheets to the Wind

Game
The Call of Duty franchise burst onto the scene back in 2003 when the World War II sub-genre of FPS games was just getting hot. To the delight of gamers, it gave us an avatar, a bunch of guns, and an assload of Nazis to test said guns accuracies on. A couple games in the linup faltered oh-so-slightly, mostly CoD3, but with Modern Warfare and now World at War, the series is right back on track.

Gameplay
After five iterations, you would think the gameplay would be honed to a razor's edge, and you would be right...mostly. This title has reaped the benefits of testing and tweaking of a previous four games, all of which enjoyed varying degrees of high acclaim from the masses of unwashed, unforgiving computer FPS gamers such as myself. When you plunk cold hard cash down for a t-shirt that has a WASD graphic on it, you tend to get a bit nit-picky with your genre of choice. In this regard, Call of Duty: World at War (hereafter referred to as CODWAW, damn you) has truly done right by the mouse and keyboard crowd. If you are still trying to figure out the significance of the term WASD, and why it would be on a t-shirt, it's okay, Halo was good too...

The game does fall into a predictable pattern of "skirmish, skirmish, move-forward", and the enemies now take cover and pop out like ducks in a carnival side-show more than ever before. Thankfully, such conventions are broken up by suicide attackers, who seem to pick the exact moment your Garand M1 has run out of ammo to charge at you, and grenade tossers, who will flush you out with deadly accuracy with grenades which take you from crouching and looking down your iron-sights to running away from the grenade indicator and leapfrogging like a rabbit overdosed on PCP. These little moments, along with the fact that your ammo has been strategically limited in this game, creates tense moments where no matter how skilled you are, survival isn't guaranteed and preventing a checkpoint restart weighs heavily on your ability to adapt to the situation.
In addition to the "run-shoot-kill" dynamic inherent to most FPS games, CODWAW also has you take on what I like to call gravy missions, where you are put in command of some intensely powerful piece of machinery and are given license to destroy anything that even vaguely resembles a hostile. Such levels include a Russian tank and an American gunship which sound awesome now, but reach an unprecedented level of intensity and frightening realism when you've just powered through a cheap beer and have all the lights off and suddenly a kamikaze fighter comes barreling down towards you and your gun is overheating. Your wife doesn't understand, but CODWAW certainly does.

Graphics/Sound
Being a next-gen game certainly helps in this region. The graphics are all very pretty, even on a lower-end system, with normal mapping, specular mapping, HDR lighting, realistic physics, beautiful particle and shader effects and great shadows. The animations are fluid and well done and the scripted events are intended for maximum wow-factor. The tropical foliage looks lush and claustrophobic, at least until you burn it all down with a flamethrower, and in a similar vein, enemies who have just found themselves alight burn and flail in such a way as to awaken the ephemeral war veteran inside you and make him chuckle in dark-hearted glee. The levels are all built upon the ideal that you are always moving up to a goal and twist and turn to suit the action. Thanks to the level design, you will always be looking ahead at that next MG nest or burned out tenement in your quest for victory.

Headshots are accompanied by an ultimately satisfying "pink mist" effect and lighting and shadows are always rendered to maximum effect, even on the lower graphical settings.
The sound is another example of game designers who get paid well, as all the sounds seem to fit very well. Explosions are nice and punchy, NPC voices are clear and authoritative, and the "big names" such as Keifer Sutherland really seem to be into their parts as opposed to just phoning it in because it's just a game. Gun sounds are authentic and if you have 5.1, you will be treated to such a deep level of aural immersion, you may just have shell-shock upon completing this game.

Bullets will whizz from all directions, yells and screams of your comrades can be heard from all around, and ambient noises will make you feel as if you are truly in the heart of an intense battle. No sounds seem out of place or mismatched to the experience in its entirety, and for that, the game as a whole is elevated.

Story
Well, if you stayed awake in high school, you should know the story pretty much, Hitler has decided Germany is a bit too confining for his tastes and has decided owning the entire world would have a bit more legroom. The rest of the world disagrees, bullets fly...et cetera, et cetera.

In this game, you are either filling the blood-soaked boots of Private Miller or Russian Private Dimitri Petrenko. Through the fictional eyes of these characters, you will see the horrors of war unfold and learn just how Goddamn hard it was to kill WWII soldiers. Bits of story are handed out either in between-level pre-rendered cut scenes, or during in-game dialogue with NPCs.
The cut-scenes are stylish and combine CG graphics with shockingly frank stock footage of the actual war, which create a synergy that drives the player to greater and greater exploits. The game will flip-flop every few levels to the other character which will give a nice, disjointed feeling of progression as you advance through the game. One of my biggest gripes in this regard is that when a particular campaign has ended, it won't be patently obvious until you realize there are no more levels for that particular character, which won't occur until you see the end credits. Still, the game does a nice job of telling the war from two different sides, and demonstrating in high fashion the series' thesis, that in war, you do not fight alone.

Beer
I love this beer. I really do, and not because of those really important things like taste, smell and a healthy clean intoxication. No, I love Camo because if this stuff can be freely sold over the counter, then I know my constitutional right to poison myself to death has not yet been infringed. This beer affirms all that is right with a country that allows any yahoo with brewing equipment to toss some grain in water, wait a few weeks and then put it in a can covered with words printed in stencil and sell it for a buck-fiddy. I was shocked when I got to the register and the little green numbers declared $1.50 even. I mused for a short while on how 24 ounces of 10.5% abv beer can go for so little, and then it dawned on me...the brewery saved costs by getting rid of their quality assurance division and passed the savings onto the consumer! I kid you not...this beer ranks in the top three of all time worst tasting beers. I might as well just be filling my champagne glass with lighter fluid. I took my first sip and it burned my throat. Can a beer get any more hardcore than that? I mean, seriously...even Earthquake, which tipped the scales at 12% alcohol didn't burn my soft tissues when it went down. I truly believe Camo was brewed specifically as a test of manhood, nothing more. I envision a bunch of old longtime winos serving this up to the up-and-coming young winos as some form of initiation. Drink Camo, make it to the bottom of the can, you get your own cardboard box, if you don't you have to get a job.

So, aside from colorful musings on the inner workings of homeless rank and file, how does this taste? Well, looking past my chemically seared tastebuds for a moment, this beer seems to have the distinct taste of hate. That's really the only flavor I can equate to this travesty, no culinary equivalent exists to parallel this stuff. If I said corn it would disgrace all corn in the world, if I said grain, all wheat farmers would take such commentary as an affront. So other than "chemical fire" and "liquid plague" I'm really at a loss of how to describe the actual taste of this drink.

The smell similarly defies convention. While a quick whiff will display many of the same odors as many high gravity lagers, a slower, more painstaking sample will reveal the hidden pain contained deep within this brew. Scents of grain and corn will give way to the stringent smell of pure alcohol, which also serves only as a mask for the deeper hints of brimstone and eternal damnation. Concentrate hard enough and you can most certainly pick out bouquets such as "Left for Dead in Mexico" and "Devil's Taint."

The intoxication is an unadulterated sequel to the throat burning. The stomach aches with the volatility of homemade napalm, and I'm sure if this stuff had been tested on lab rats, they all would have come down with acute perforated ulcers and severe belligerence. This is less a review of a terrible beer and more of a warning to others: drink this stuff at your own peril.

Matchup
While the game is great and a worthy distraction until the much-anticipated Modern Warfare 2 drops, the beer is downright hideous. The only thing that saves it is that it tastes so much like something we would drop on our enemies on a battlefield that if nothing else, in addition to getting you pretty damn blitzed, it also immerses you in the action. That said, if you happen to take this game online to play multiplayer or even better, co-op with some doodz, be sure to drink something that won't cause you to vomit all over your keyboard.

Cheers/Game on.