I’ve been spending most of my gaming time playing Blue Dragon as usual for this past week but last night I got to try out the Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer Beta for the first time. It was a lot of fun!
Tomorrow is the last day that Gamespot will be giving out Beta keys, so if you’re interested, you can try to get one. If you’re not interested, maybe you can read on and see why you could be interested…
Qualification and Installation
I received the Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer Beta through Gamespot. Gamespot is giving about 20,000 keys out per weekday this week on a first come first served basis. As of this morning (Thursday), today’s batch has already been given out. I find it strange that it ran out this morning when yesterday afternoon I was able to get one. Anyway, I already had an account at Gamespot, so when I signed in and accessed the CoD4 Beta key page, a Beta key was presented to me on the screen and the same key was emailed to my email address on file as well.
Last night I entered the code at the Marketplace tab and the 1 gig Call Of Duty 4 Multiplayer Beta began its download. It downloaded very quickly – maybe because it was hosted on a server that only beta participants were able to access. In any case, a short time later I was launching the CoD4 Multiplayer Beta.
Initial Feelings Prior to Playing the Beta
I’m sure all of you guys know how little I care for the multiplayer aspect of these 360 games. I did feel like “oh it’s just multiplayer” but I had two main reasons to check it out: to get something to blog about and to actually see how the Call of Duty 4 game engine was.
I loved Call of Duty 2, and I’m sure that many of you don’t really cared much for the series since I tend to enjoy WWII history more than the average guy (I even took a history class on it in college). Thankfully, I won’t have to convince you guys much to give Call of Duty 4 a chance, as it’s the first in the series that has switched over to modern warfare. Gone are all those Lugers and Thompsons that are so played out along with the WWII genre, replaced with weapons such as the MP5 and AK47 that Counterstrike/Rainbow Six: Vegas players are accustomed to.
Did I enjoy Rainbow Six: Vegas? Check. Did I enjoy Battlefield 2? Check. Did I enjoy Counterstrike? Check. Did I enjoy Call of Duty 2? Check. So you’re telling me that the developers behind Call of Duty 2′s well done game play would be making a modern combat FPS game akin to all those other ones I enjoyed? It’s a match made in heaven!
Call of Duty 4 multiplayer features
The CoD4 Beta consists of 3 maps and currently has a level cap of 16. In Call of Duty 4, each player gains experience points from playing matches similar to Rainbow Six: Vegas. You get points for kills, assisting in kills, and winning rounds. As you rank up, you gain access to more powerful weapons and features. For example, at level 12, you can affix a clan tag next to your name, and at level 55, you get an option to play a mysterious “Prestige” mode. The level cap for the beta will be raised to 25 on Monday, allowing for more powerful weapons and features to those who continue to play.
When I was a level 1 Private, I was only able to choose between the Assault and Spec-Ops classes. As I ranked up over the course of several games, the other three classes were unlocked for me: Light Machine Gunner, Demolitions, and Sniper. As I leveled up further, I was able to create a custom class which allows you to pick your primary and secondary weapons as well as grenades, accessories, and perks (like in Rainbow Six: Vegas).
Perks are a new multiplayer feature in Call of Duty 4 that allow for further customization of multiplayer play. Basically, each player has 3 perks slots they can fill when creating a custom class (the three perks are assigned for the specific classes already) and it’s cool to be able to pick the ones that support your play-style. For example, some perks that have already been announced are:
Last Stand: Fall to the ground and pull out your pistol for one last chance to kill the enemy before dying.
Stopping Power: Increased Bullet Damage.
Juggernaut: Increased Health.
Martydom: Drop a grenade when you die. (Anti-Tbag Technology)
Endurance: Longer Sprint.
Deep Impact: Increased Bullet Penetration.
You are able to start creating custom classes at a very early rank, so it is available to anyone after only playing a few games. As you rank up more, you can choose better weapons, accessories, and most likely perks. Although some may complain about not every player being on equal ground, I didn’t think the balance was that bad. I was still able to kill higher ranked players at level 1, although they had special accessories such as laser sight that I did not have.
There were only three game types available in the beta: Team Death Match, Free for All, and a third option with smaller firefights or something (I think it was smaller 2-3 man teams for more intense firefights). I only played Team Death Match, and that seemed to be the popular one as there were over 10,000 people playing that while only about 1000 playing in each of the other two modes.
Here are the confirmed multiplayer types at launch:
1. Free-for-All (deathmatch)
2. Team Deathmatch
3. Capture the Flag
4. Search and Destroy
5. Headquarters
6. Sabatoge
7. Oldschool (no details available)
8. Domination (no details available)
I also really enjoyed the match making in Call of Duty 4. It wasn’t like Rainbow Six: Vegas where guys were creating rooms and waiting for them to fill, but it was Halo style where you just choose the option to play and it automatically puts you into a match. I prefer the automated Halo style match making myself over the manual rooms. There’s also a party system in CoD4 so you can invite friends to join your party and look for matches together, something that I wish was present in Rainbow Six: Vegas.
There’s also team balancing as well in the game – at the end of a match every player is given a score based on how well they performed, and then if the players stay in the lobby for the next match to start, the players get split up on teams to even out the skill level. It looked like the top player would go on one team, the second best player would be put on the other team, and the third best back on the first team, alternating like that for all players. I imagine that if you were to play the game with a friend or two in a party, it would still keep you together and do the calculation to still keep the teams pretty balanced in terms of skill.
My personal impressions
After playing it for a couple hours last night, I must say that I had a lot of fun. It’s actually very fast paced – more so than I expected so it had almost an arcade like feel. It was definitely faster than GRAW2, and maybe even faster than Rainbow Six: Vegas. I liked the speed of Rainbow Six: Vegas, but I did get used to the Call of Duty 4 speed after playing for a bit. I also liked how when you land from jumping there’s a “landing delay” so you couldn’t keep rocket jumping all over the place. The game looks realistic but the game play seems really tweaked for fun and I don’t mind that at all.
I picked the initial class, Assault, and had a really hard time killing anyone with the weapon (forgot what it was). However, when I eventually switched to the Spec-Ops class and had an MP5, I began killing a lot easier. Not sure what was up but maybe I just didn’t have a good feel for the assault rifle. There’s a Kill Cam replay in this game, which shows how you died from the killer’s viewpoint when you die. It’s a little embarrassing to see yourself sticking out past a wall or something and getting picked off, but at the same time it’s a good teaching method to learning not to make such a mistake again. I was a little jealous from watching the kill cam to see my killers have their red dot scopes right on me and picking me off – one accessory I still could not get yet due to my low rank.
I also really liked that the knife is a one hit kill. Many times when I snuck up on someone camping I could just push the right stick in and they’d be dead. A lot of other FPS games you have to swing the knife many times before you actually make the kill, which to me didn’t seem realistic. If you can get close enough to someone in a firefight to use a knife, you should be able to kill them. I’m glad that was in effect for CoD4, as I got plenty of knife kills (and was killed myself that way).
Another feature in this game that keeps the multiplayer very engaging is that the map shows the position of your teammates as well as the enemies. Teammates are represented as green triangles while enemies are red. However, the enemies aren’t just on your map indefinitely; they show up on your map when their weapon is fired (without a silencer) at any teammate in the area. So in a sense, firing a weapon gives away your position on a map. Thus you don’t have to hunt around all over the place looking for people. If an enemy has fired his gun at someone on your team, his position will be given away and you can head over to the area to investigate. He may or may not be there, but it still keeps the action going rather than becoming a big camp fest where no one really knows where anyone else is.
In any case, I really enjoyed my hands on with the beta and encourage any of you with Live Gold to register and get your beta codes tomorrow morning.
