The raid of Makin Island, one of the first levels, starts with you tied to a chair, faced with a smug Japanese general. He puffs cigar smoke in your face, before turning to one of your comrades and shouting appropriately phrased Japanese at him. The scene is set, and trust me, you'll be focused. World at War throws out the rulebook of war to transform WWII combat through a new enemy, new tactics and an uncensored experience of the climatic battles that gripped a generation. As U.S. Marines and Russian soldiers, players will employ new features like cooperative gameplay, and weapons such as the flamethrower in the most chaotic and cinematically intense experience to date.

The good news is that Call of Duty World of War uses the exact same 3D engine as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It does has some new graphics tweaks. We have chosen the level most badass on the GPU, which boils down to the Blood and Iron Tank level. It's a really fun level where you get to drive around in a tank armed with heavy ammunition and a flame thrower.

Besides that it is a pleasurable level to play, there's a lot going on. When the level loads up you immediately notice dense vegetation, a decent amount of complex shaders, volumetric smoke, heaps of objects. All in all one of the most heavy on the GPU levels. In fact the rest of the levels would get you 20-25% more performance on average, this one is just more complex to render.

Our image quality settings are the most complex you can set in-game. 4x AA, heavy Anisotropic Filtering, the best textures, everything is enabled as any decent graphics card can run the game, it's that simple. There's no need to give in to lower quality settings.

Image Quality setting:

• 4x Anti Aliasing
• 16x Anisotropic Filtering
• All settings maxed out

Now we see something interesting here. Up to 1600x1200 we see the 1 GB 4870 have a diminutive advantage, yet in the end the GeForce GTX 260 core 216 takes over that advantage and flexes some more muscle.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Hell's Highway, another WWII shooter some might say. But in reality the setting of war is really just a vehicle for Gearbox to tell the storyline of a Band of Brothers which is led by you, Sergeant Matt Baker, as they deal with the madness and consequences of war. The game tells the story of Operation Market Garden in the country where yours truly lives, in the Netherlands (aka Holland). It's about the besieged journey from Eindhoven to Arnhem where tremendous battles were fought.

Exactly that road, Highway 69; the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was later nicknamed: Hell's Highway.

One of the most impressive details is that the area of Operation Market Garden was completely reconstructed using historical documents and images. It's uncanny to see and experience the design of 1944 Holland. Even now in 2008 you can still see striking similarities from our country. Street signs, building structures, clothing and even the clinker bricks on the roads dispense a true authentic mood. This reviewer is Dutch, so what level would be more appropriate than one of the starting levels, in a field in the Netherlands, moving towards a large windmill ahead of us. Lots of geometry is to be found here, and in fact one of the more complex scenes to render for the GPU. Yes, welcome to Holland.

• Texture Quality HIGH
• Shadow Texture Quality HIGH
• Shadow Detail HIGH
• Vsync OFF

Again we have all eye candy enabled in BIA. Now BIA was the second title where the newer Catalyst drivers seem to make a difference. It results in roughly a 10% difference in favor for ATI's Radeon HD 4870 with 1024MB GDDR5 memory.