It's a long map, with the open space of the platforms in the centre broken up by abandoned railway carriages. Station is the smallest of the three, a medium-sized Berlin subway station ruined by Allied bombs. The good news for those players is that this trio of new multiplayer maps is a bit of a belter, boasting compelling environments and balanced design that will take even expert players hours of action to fully exploit.
While the game hasn't quite unseated its direct predecessor Modern Warfare in the online gaming stakes, there are still plenty of people - around a quarter of a million at any time if our experience is anything to go by - all happy to keep racking up the XP back in World War II. There's a tangible value to an expanded map list, and when you're a series as established as Call of Duty there's a very real need to feed the hunger of your fanbase in order to stay at the head of the pack.Īll of which brings us to the prosaically titled Map Pack 1, the first such offering for World at War. That's where the oft-maligned DLC comes into play, with the FPS being one of the few genres where such additional material isn't automatically viewed as the devil's baked beans. Of course, eventually familiarity breeds contempt and you start to grow weary of the same old scenarios. Only, you know, chess players with automatic weapons and foul-mouthed headset banter. It's then that the strategic elements of even the most meatheaded fragfest come to the fore, as balanced teams move and counter-move like chess players. One of the joys of a great multiplayer shooter is the equilibrium you find once you know the maps inside out the confidence that comes from knowing all the angles, and knowing that your opponents know them as well.