This past weekend saw the Open Beta for Infinity Wards new upcoming Call of Duty game due for release at the end of October. If you pre-purchased the game you would have received early access from Thursday already across all platforms. Lets hop in and discuss what the Beta had on offer!
One of the biggest features to this Beta and upcoming game is the cross play function allowing Xbox, PS4 and PC to all play together. I was really happy to see that this feature was up running perfectly at launch of the Beta and finding games was made a lot easier compared to just being restricted to your given platform in the past. This was featured at the World Reveal on the 1st August, but to experience it first hand was totally awesome.
There was 30 player level progress system in place to allow players to unlock a good portion of the games weapons, lethal equipment, tactical equipment, perks and the returning killstreaks. There was a lot to choose from and I felt like there was plenty of time to try out everything depending on if you wanted to explore in general or stick with a specific type of class setup. The Operators were just different characters that you could choose to represent yourself, but they did not have any specific special abilities or anything. There was specific field equipment that you could try, for example you got a deployment shield that you could use in a tactical situation during the match or if you wanted to use a ammo box for yourself and team.
The customization seemed rather straight forward and this was a big highlighted point for me because I felt that Call of Duty over the years has really tried to get overly complicated with their customization aspects in game. I enjoyed the boots on the ground, with operators that did not posse weird and wonderful abilities. The weapons felt good, the sounds have changed a lot in terms of each weapons you use. The environment has changed in the way your foot steps sound and all the way to the way the bullets sound as they come zinging past your head.
The game modes were limited to Team Deathmatch, Domination and Headquarters. There were also larger than 12 players matches for domination and Headquarters on a different map. This was interesting to experience as you had to counter a lot more players, over seeing buildings, so capturing objects had to be team effort and careful decisions. The maps have also taken a slightly different angel in terms of their layout which I did enjoy as they don't just follow the normal "3 lane" route, but they have incorporated different paths inside the map run, buildings overhead and Doors in buildings. This really does shack up the game play from the regular map design that we are usually exposed to. There was a also the "Groundwar" game mode which was the new 32vs32 player based game mode. This was slightly disappointing as no one locally really played this mode forcing you to peer over to international players games. The mode is like Conquest from Battlefield where there is various objects to capture and hold. There are vehicles you can use on the map to navigate your way around. Overall the mode was good but felt like it lacked originality and felt like it was straying from the traditional Call of Duty layout. There was also the 2v2 Gunfight mode available, which is great to grab a buddy to jam it out with.
The pace of the game has slowed down a bit compared to the normal pace of Call of Duty. The time to kill is very quick, but that is the usual formula Infinity Ward uses compared to Treyarch. The killstreaks still feature in the same manner as they always have. The perks are divided into 3 classes and you can mix and match from there along with the weapon perks. So you would have to decided what weapons are you using and then decided on your perk choices from there. I did like this feature a lot.
Coming back to the cross play feature which made finding games locally a lot easier. One thing I did notice was that console players had a very high aim assist "snap", but this was in a 1v1 situation because on PC it is much easier to switch targets in a 1v3 situation. The one weird thing I did experience on PC was that there was a slight aim assist happening as well so I am not sure why that was happening because for console players it would make sense but not so much for PC . I am really eager to see how they attend to this type of balancing moving forward.
The general performance on PC was great and I was playing the game with Max settings at 1440p and had no hiccups during the Beta run. There was some small glitches here and there but that is expected in a Beta release, but I was really impressed with the overall performance. The graphics were also not disappointing but they did not stand out for me compared to most of the new games being released as of late.
The Beta was great overall showcasing some really neat features, maps, modes and so forth. I could see already that there will be a lot more to experience on launch, but the Beta gave more than enough to experience for now. Call of Duty Modern Warfare is coming with this action packed Multiplayer, a single player and specs ops mode on launch. I am really excited that they decided to move back to a single player campaign and giving Zombies a break to allow for the specs ops mode to make a return. The game will be releasing on October 25th on PC via the Blizzard Store, PS4 and Xbox One.