Developer: Infinity Ward
Publisher: Activision
Genre: FPS
Date posted: 7 September 2007
ScreenShots: 6
Written By: Ian
Hands-On !
One of the advantages of being involved with the videogames industry is being able to occasionally get or get into things early, and here at PlayDevil we have been lucky enough to get a place on the coveted "UK" Call of Duty 4 Beta test before it officially opens to Europeans, and here are our first impressions!
There are three maps and three game modes currently available, although developer "Infinity Ward" are possibly going to add more throughout the course of the intensive Beta, which is scheduled to run until sometime in October.
When you start the game, only the Xbox Live menu is open, so you need a gold membership to be able to partake in the Beta.
The three maps are fairly varied, one takes place around a dry riverbed with houses on either side, another at a black hawk helicopter crash site, and the final one at a factory.
The second and third maps feel quite similar, but this is no bad thing.
The first thing you will notice about the game are the graphics. They look great, but in our opinion they are a step down from COD3, as Infinity Ward are still clearly using a version of their own COD2 engine, choosing not to use Treyarch's.
Everything from the graphics to the sounds and animations has a very familiar feel if you ever played either COD or COD2, despite the modern setting.
The gameplay is very realistic, and by that, I mean unforgiving, as with only 1-2 shots you die, but this makes the game tense and fast-paced.
Most team games are first to 75 kills, but with a full lobby of 16 players, this only takes about 10 minutes per game; it feels a nice length of time.
Newly introduced is a kind of matchmaking system, and it works in a similar way to Halo 2 and 3, and even at this stage, it feels very polished.
The best part of the game is the levelling up scheme. This happens in 2 ways. The first part is permanent; with kills, you level up (the current cap is level 11, but greyed out options suggest that at least level 60 can be attained in the final game).
Levelling up gives you new options, like a map, new weapons, camouflage and the like.
At level 5 you gain access to weapons challenges, which allow you to level up your weapons with laser sights and scopes. Eventually you get access to 'perks' which allow you to use C4, or take a few pistol shots as your dying act of revenge.
The second type come during games, and are a reward for great performances. You get air strikes for 5 kills in a row, for example, and these can really change the way a game works out.
The gameplay is fantastic already, and we are sure that the graphics, which are above average anyway, will also get better.
This is shaping up to be one of the best multiplayer games in many years!
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