They were certainly inspired by many of the invasions in WWII and seemed to greatly resemble the Omaha beach landings, as other members have noted.
Watch the Episode Commentary and you'll find that's the feel they were going for with the battle scenes.
Agreed...
There was a lot more than "just shooting" there IMO.
First, there was strategy... a surprisingly large ammount of it. We're shown from the onset that there was a set goal, and that the Jedi were trying to learn from past experiences on Geonosis by trying a 3-pronged attack led by 3 Jedi to break the first goal. It's a lot like WW2 beach landings, and a lot went wrong (I think that's why Palps has his cameo obviously).
We're taken into that world of strategy early on but they kept it surprisingly cohesive throughout then. I was shocked! Anakin's down first, his collapsed wave forces the next one into chaos and so on. Kenobi finally makes it in the last wave, and is the most hurt and in need of support. The other two are left to "wade in" from further back and chaos ensues amidst all 3 waves of a plan that was relatively simple at first.
I like that they walked through the entire thing in holo-form first and actually showed the plan.
Second there's a certain parallel being drawn between the Geonosians, and the dedication an enemy can have... They were pretty feirce. They were superior to droids for certain. The Clones were meeting their match in some sense, I thought. They were showing a lot of fear throughout the episode. I got an "Imperial Japanese" feeling from the Geonosians... Loyal and deadly. The droids are played up as borderline retarded every episode but the Geonosians were definitely shown to be the opposite.
Third, I really felt there was story there on a subtle level... Anakin's anger for instance, at Obi-Wan not being there to support him. Anakin's blaming Obi-Wan, he's getting pissed, and it's not Obi's fault. He's clearly showing signs though that he's quick to judge, blame, and mistrust when he gets upset.
Also the "game"... Obi-Wan doesn't view war as a joke, or a game. He busts balls with Anakin a lot, but he clearly doesn't approve of he and Ahsoka devaluing the war into a game between the two of them. To Anakin it's like sport (killing), and I think that subconsciously disturbs Obi-Wan a little bit. It's perhaps an early warning sign they should've acknowledged. The series overall is pretty good about showing subtle things Anakin does that make him ultimately who he is. CW is really doing well in establishing Anakin's bad side. It's there but the war almost masks it. Obi bemoans it dragging on, Anakin turns it into a game and has "fun" during it. That's pretty good story telling really, I think.
I'm also digging Yularren's prickish side. He's gone from a random putz to a ruthless military leader with little concern for the men who do the fighting. Very Imperial. It's easy to see how he's promoted into the ISB later in his career.
If I had some complaints about the episode...
-I thought it was odd the Flamethrowers weren't brought up sooner in the tunnels, but that could've been to protect them too of course. There's easy enough explanations but flamethrowers are good for clearing out tunnels.
-The "wall" thing... I thought this was somewhat poorly designed. It looked like a damn without anything to hold back. ALmost like it was an afterthought, and just didn't get much effort put into its design.
-The final push... The rush into the shielded portion of their objective makes sense but it would've been neat had we seen them make that push into the shield with small walkers like AT-RT's helping the rush in or something. A bunch of guys running on foot almost seemed too easy, and again it seemed like they rushed this bit and something got cut out possibly explaining why they did it this way... I can buy it, I just thought it could've been spiffed up slightly. Maybe if episodes were longer.
This episode definitely was the antithesis of the last episode though... Last episode was all story, all development, and this episode was a lot of clone action. I like the attempt to balance though. And overall I really feel the story was there but a lot more subtle and more attuned to future events. This episode was kind of like the Rising Malevolence one in that it's clearly setting up larger things for next week. I really wish they'd do some hour-long ones sometime. I think they've got the tools to work with. It'd be real neat to see them incorporate an existing EU story of the CW into the storyline too, at some point.