Call Of Duty
Credit: Activision
I had a blast with the recent Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta. Spread across two weekends, the beta included a number of multiplayer maps and modes, the new Warzone Resurgence map, Zodiac and a campaign mission.
While most of the maps in the beta were small to medium-sized, I enjoyed most of them a great deal. There was a lot of variety and the maps were more colorful than a lot of previous Modern Warfare games. Despite all that, Infinity Ward made one change between the first and second beta weekends that left me worried about the game at launch.
I also really enjoyed the ever-shifting “Kill Block” map, which serves as a 10v10 or 3v3 Gunfight map. The gimmick here is that the map itself is made up of three sections and those can be reshuffled in an almost limitless number of ways. In practice, the variety isn’t quite on the level I was hoping, but it’s a good start. I could imagine future maps that had much more varied terrain, different environmental conditions (fog, night mode, etc.) and even maps that were in different layouts – a vertical shuffle that had three levels stacked on top of one another rather than spread adjacent.
The new Warzone Resurgence map, Zodiac, looked a little lackluster at first glance, but I ended up really enjoying it by the end of Weekend 2. It’s quite small, but there are so many layers and different approaches. There’s also a train that cuts through the center of the map, and everything together makes for some really dynamic experiences.
By the end of the second weekend, I only had one concern with MW4 before launch. The first weekend’s multiplayer beta had some issues with spawns and netcode that made some maps and modes overly chaotic, and this was widely interpreted as the game’s TTK (or “Time-To-Kill”) being too fast.
Infinity Ward adjusted TTK to be much slower in Weekend 2, but it seems obvious at this point that they overcorrected. Slowing TTK while also fixing many of the spawn issues made gunplay worse and engagements less snappy. The result is a game that feels like it was designed around a faster TTK that’s been artificially adjusted to a slower cadence to appease fans. It doesn’t feel nearly as good as the first weekend, and I hope that the devs realize their mistake and restore the faster TTK, which should be fine with better spawn logic.
Infinity Ward did acknowledge that they’re also not satisfied with TTK, writing in an update, “While the changes throughout Beta were an improvement, we aren’t fully satisfied with TTK and will continue dialing in our weapons ahead of launch.” My problem with this statement is that it was absolutely not an improvement in Weekend 2. The improvement was better spawns. TTK was worse.
My other gripe is simply a wishlist item. I would really love it if Infinity Ward would bring back the excellent 3v3v3 mode from Modern Warfare III. I ended up enjoying that mode and its frenetic asymmetry even more than Gunfight. It would be easy enough to do. It works fine on normal multiplayer maps and would make for some really interesting Kill Block matches as well. Bring it back, IW!
We didn’t get to test out the new DMZ extraction mode or map during the beta, which is a shame, but it does look really excellent. With Arc Raiders basically falling into total disarray and neglect, I’ve been itching for a new extraction shooter.
MW4 releases on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC on October 23. I’m really looking forward to it, and I’m certainly ready for a break from Black Ops.
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