If truth be told, I made very little effort in securing a beta key for Call of Duty 5. I thought I would wait until the final game came out at the end of November and enjoy the experience then. Thanks must go to the nice lady at Activision who offered me one of only a few beta keys left. Suffice to say the last two evenings have seen me venture back to the shenanigans of World War 2 with aplomb.
I have played the Call of Duty franchise from the very beginning having downloaded the demo of the original title on the PC and literally being blown away by the claustrophobic atmosphere the game created. Thereafter Call of Duty 2 was the title I first purchased for my new shiny Microsoft console. Infinity Ward had truly advanced the FPS genre. Though I confess to not greatly participating in the on-line play of CoD2, I recognised it was there and appreciated by many.
Treyarch took the baton for Call of Duty 3, adding their personality into the gameplay mechanics and giving the Call of Duty 2 engine a fresh lick of paint. The single player game was satisfying, if not revolutionary. The multiplayer changes angered and frustrated many hardcore CoD2 players – a lesson to be learnt by Treyarch no doubt.
With the arrival of Call of Duty 4 developed this time by Infinity Ward, the franchise mechanic evolved ten-fold providing a graphically astounding game that immersed the player in an intense, if somewhat short, single player experience accompanied by a slick, accessible online multiplayer engine. For many, this is THE Game of 2008.
Roll on a year and its Treyach’s turn once again to try to impress the 360 gaming consortium and live up to the online phenomenon that Call of Duty 4 has become.
And so it’s onto the subject of this feature, the beta Call of Duty 5, and let’s be clear here this IS a beta and therefore some problems do tend to surface during the multiplayer action, but more of that later.
Loading up CoD5 multiplayer is reminiscent of dating an ex-girlfriend. The experience is familiar yet highly entertaining and rewarding. My first game on CoD5 was most definitely that – all the skills I had garnered over the year on Modern Warfare were put to good use almost immediately, the controls in CoD5 being identical to those in it’s predecessor.
The beta offers a total of 3 maps across 5 different game modes. The five game modes are Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, Free for All and Team Deathmatch without parties – all a pretty standard fare for modern day first person shooters. The mode of choice for myself has, and always will be, ‘Free For All’ even though the phrase screaming through my head at the moment is, “There is no I in Team”. In this mode it’s you against everyone else – just the way I like it.
The three maps offered in the beta are Roundhouse, Castle and Makin. Each map shows off the graphical prowess of the CoD4 engine to full effect and in some cases demonstrates a step up in beauty from the modern day landscapes of its predecessor.
Roundhouse is a firm favourite in these early hours of playing – the landscape is an abandoned area littered with vintage 1940’s trains in various states of destruction. Tanks can be found scattered around the playing area. Taking control of the vehicles
