My introduction to Call of Duty 4’s MP Beta started off with a bang. I entered the match and was subsequently introduced to the vast intricacies of the multiplayer game by a helpful fellow teammate. He really seemed to know a lot about the game, talking about stuff that the average Joe really wouldn’t talk about so I asked him where he worked. Turns out he was an Infinity Ward Dev.
We won that match by a rather large margin...
Members of the press were invited into the CoD4 beta in order to get a first impression to bring to you our readers. In case you guys don’t already know, the public beta starts on Monday August 27th at 12 PDT and is open to anyone with a gold US gamertag who has registered over at http://www.charlieoscardelta.com . Word is the beta will open up to other regions down the road although most international folks already know that it’s really not that hard to create a US gamer tag complete with a free month of gold. So if you’re not in the States don’t fret! The demo weighs in at almost a gig though, so expect a long wait as the server is going to get hammered.
With all that said, what are my impressions of the game?
First off let me state that the amount of game options in CoD4 is mind blowing giving you everything from map options, to weapon options, from choices of sidearm, to choices of specialty inventory, not to mention multiple game modes. The four game modes consist of Free-for-all, Team Deathmatch, Team Objective, and Team Tactical and within each of these modes are further sub modes (for instance Team Objective consists of Search and Destroy (blow up objective with bomb ala counterstrike) as well as Domination (Capture and hold the flags). Team Tactical on the other hand allows for smaller teams of 2v2 or 3v3 using some of the sub game modes in the other game options.
There are three maps in the beta consisting of Vacant, Crash and Overgrown and all 3 look absolutely stunning … I personally felt that the MP in this mode represents a return to the beloved CoD2 MP style while hosting a whole slew of options that improve gameplay. Aside from the graphical prowess and improved gameplay displayed in the beta, it’s also obvious that a lot of developer thought and time went into ensuring that the maps were properly balanced to ensure optimal fun. All 3 maps in the beta feature buildings to run through, choke points, alleyways, ladders to climb up, sniper spots to camp in, and much much more.
Crash was my personal favorite and consists of a town with a downed helicopter in the middle of the map. The buildings offer various corridors to run through, and lots of alleyway shootouts. Snipers will love this map as some folks vie to find the best camping spot. That said, those who enjoy close quarter combat will love hunting down those snipers and pumping them full of hot lead. Crash actually reminded me a lot of an MP map I played in CoD2 … I can’t remember the name but it also took place in a town. This map held a ring of familiarity to it, while still providing a totally new gameplay experience. Team Deathmatch was awesome on this map, as enemy teams would spawn on opposite sides of the map. This created a tug of war dynamic where you felt like both teams were constantly pushing against each other to get closer to each other’s side of the map.
Overgrown takes place in an open fields type area, with a bridge crossing over a ravine riverbed that cuts through the centre of the map. There are a few buildings scattered around which offer prime sniping positions to take down those foolhardy enough to cross your path. Domination (Capture and Hold the Flag Points) worked really well in this mode as many of the capture points are in sniper kill zones (I affectionately named these “the killing fields” while camped up in a window with my trusty sniper rifle).
Vacant takes place in a trainyard, with a large one-story warehouse/office filled with multiple corridors. Vacant was an excellent map and played very well when doing Search and Destroy mode in Team Tactical. On Team Deathmatch however, I found massive clusters of deaths happening as too many folks got tangled up in the hallways
I have noticed that camping (not spawn camping, just old school camping) seems to be fairly popular ... this in part is due to the laser sight which gives mid range assault weapons pretty devastating accuracy. Personally I'm an automatic machine gun type of guy, run in gun blazing so snipers really get me down. They are very satisfying to kill though, especially if you can get a one hit melee kill with your knife (press in the right thumb-stick).
There are a lot of interesting things going on in your HUD while you play. The life bar works like the other two CoD games. You get hit too many times you die, if you run away and hide, you'll heal up. One of the perks (more on this in abit) can give you additional health to your life bar so you can take more shots. When holding the sniper rifle you have a shaky hand until you press in the left thumb-stick to tense up for a shot. You can only hold the rifle still for a second though so you got to make those “tense” seconds count.
Another interesting feature of the game is that when you die there is a kill camera that shows how your death happened from the eyes of the person who did it. There are a lot of things that can be learned from the kill camera … it shows the position of your enemy (bad thing for snipers), but it also shows you the loadout of the enemy as well as what perks they have equipped (more on perks below). In a way the kill cam acts as a trainer to learn from, and provides a unique perspective into the “skillz” of those players who have more experience. For the impatient you are able to skip this and jump right back into the action.
An in game feature that adds a little bit more to the team element is the inclusion of three different “kill streaks”. Kill streaks give the player special abilities they can activate (using the d-pad), and are achieved by gaining a certain amount of kills.
There are three different kill streaks:
3 kills = UAV Support: UAV shows the position of all enemies on your radar
5 kills = Air Strike: Allows you to call in an air strike on enemy positions
7 kills = Chopper Support: Allows you to call in a support chopper to fire on enemy positions
Some folks have claimed that kill streaks only serve to unbalance things making the losing team lose even worse, however I found the kill streaks to be fairly well balanced.
Perhaps the most engaging factor of CoD4 is the “Create a Class” mode which allows you to choose your own loadout consisting of a primary weapon, a sidearm, Grenades, and 3 inventories or perks. The weapons are wide and varied with classes from assault rifles, to sniper rifles, to light machine guns. Each gun class features multiple choices, with many more to be unlocked (more on this in abit).
Perks are perhaps one of the most interesting features of the game, which help you to create a unique soldier. Perks are 3 special abilities you can pick for your soldier, and each Perk has a sub selection of perks that you can pick from before the match starts. The catch is that you can only bring 3 perks into a match, so you have to mix and match your perks carefully.
Perk 1
• C4 x 2 – You can plant these and remote detonate them. By tapping reload twice it will allow you to detonate while holding a weapon
• RPG-7 x 2 – A 2 shot rocket launcher … I love shooting these into sniper nests
• Special Grenades x 3 – Give you extra grenades
• Claymore x 2 – Mines that will blow up when stepped on
• Bomb Squad – Allows you to see mines and explosives
Perk 2
• Juggernaut – Gives you Increased Health
• Stopping Power – Increased bullet damage
• Sonic Boom - Deal more damage with explosives.
• Sleight of Hand – Allows you to reload your weapons faster – believe me guys this one will be important later on … some of those light automatic machine guns take forever to reload
• UAV Jammer – Makes you invisible to enemies UAV radar … unless you fire
Perk 3
• Extreme Conditioning – Let’s you sprint farther
• Steady Aim - Better hip-fire accuracy
• Deep Impact - Your bullets hit harder … allows you to shoot through thin walls and damage enemies on the other side
• Last Stand – Instead of dying like you normally would you fall to the ground and whip out a pistol for some sweet revenge.. You even get the option to take “the coward’s way out” which means your enemy only gets partial XP for the kill hehe
• Martyrdom – Drop a grenade when you die
I mentioned earlier there is an unlock system in place. Unlocks are related directly to your rank. You gain XP for every enemy you kill and eventually you will have killed enough to gain a rank. I ranked up to 11 in 3 hours however I'm unsure how many ranks there will be in the full game as I've heard everything from 20 to 70 from folks in the beta. For now 11 is the rank cap and it opened up lots of opportunities.
You see ranking up doesn’t just give weapon unlocks. Ranking up also unlocks challenges. Challenges are wide and varied including goals like "Use M16 to kill 15 enemies" or "Get 25 headshots with XX Sniper rifle" ... stuff like that. Basically every single gun has challenges as does every single gun category. Then there are special challenges like "Shoot down the enemy Chopper" for instance. There are literally dozens of these challenges and they all unlock new items or give a massive XP boost towards your ranking.
Challenge Unlocks include extra weapon sights (laser pointer for example), new weapons, camouflaged weapon, clothes, the list goes on and on and on. I suspect challenges will take much longer to complete than actual ranking up as each weapon class can have a huge number of challenges (get 75 kills with weapon X, get 15 kills with Weapon B, Get 40 headshots with Sniper gun C) and so forth.
The dynamics of the class system are sufficiently complex that many of us will be spending many MANY hours unlocking new toys to play with and experimenting to find the “optimal” class setup.
Speaking for myself I’ve put more hours into the CoD4 beta than I have on any game in a while so I’m thinking this is a good sign. The beta is incredibly polished, I believe it will be played every night religiously by a huge amount of old fans and new. From what I’ve seen in terms of multiplayer gameplay you really can’t get much better than CoD4.
The multiplayer portion of the game is a masterpiece, and I have to tip my hat off to Infinity Ward for creating one pretty kick ass multiplayer experience.
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