Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty: World at War (2008) brought the series back from modern warfare to World War II and became the first main installment created solely by studio Treyarch, after it had previously mainly worked on supplementary and console versions of earlier entries. The campaign offers two parallel storylines - the fighting of the US Marine Corps in the Pacific against the Japanese army, and the Soviet Red Army's campaign toward Berlin - and is known for its rawness and brutality, which at the time was among the harshest depictions of war in the series, including an unflinching portrayal of violence on both sides of the conflict. The game also introduced, for the first time, the cooperative Nazi Zombies mode, in which players face growing waves of undead Nazi soldiers on enclosed maps, and this mode later became one of the most popular and longest-surviving elements of the entire Call of Duty brand.

The multiplayer portion of the game built on the progression and weapon-unlocking system of previous entries, adding vehicles and new environments matching the Pacific and European battlefields.

The PlayStation 3 version launched on the same day as the Xbox 360 and PC versions and is entirely identical to them in content - the same campaign, the same multiplayer, and the same Zombies mode. Differences between the console versions were minimal and mainly concerned platform specifics, such as trophies on PlayStation Network versus achievements on Xbox Live, or minor differences in the menu interface. Technically, both consoles handled the game at a comparable level, without significant differences in performance or resolution that would affect gameplay. The PS3 version of World at War thus offered no unique advantage or disadvantage over the competing console, so players could choose their platform purely based on their own preference or on which console they already owned, without missing out on any of the game's content.

Why play it: Since it's identical in content and technically to the Xbox 360 and PC versions, choosing PlayStation 3 comes down purely to which console a player happens to prefer.