Call of Duty 5 Beta Review

Being on the E list of fame has its perks such as a key to get into the beta for Call of Duty: World At War the follow up to last year's smash hit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The beta lets you play 5 multiplayer modes (CTF, War, Free For All, etc...) with 3 maps and a few options for weapons to give you a nice taste of what to expect come November. It would be nice to have a little bit of the campaign in this beta, but the multiplayer is truly what draws people to this franchise as even Sarah Palin's down syndrome baby could beat the single player missions with ease.

For those of you who were worried that Infinity Ward has handed off the series to Treyarch for this installment, fear not, the multiplayer is pretty much exactly the same as it was before. The boot camp objectives, barracks, and levels of rank are all back and beefed up. The biggest complaint with going back to World War 2 was losing the fancy red dot sights from Modern Warfare and I must say this does make a huge difference in the heat of the battle to not be able to have a pin point laser dot going over the enemies head. I think players will get used to it, but its a big step back at first and feels like the series might be moving in the wrong direction as there was still so much they could have done with Modern War. There is an inclusion of vehicles which are a fun new touch and you can get "momentum" bonuses for capturing multiple flags or bases in a game, which help you capture more flags in quicker time. The air strike is back and you can even get guard dogs after a certain amount of kills to sniff out any opponents trying to hide in the brush.

Overall, I think people who were expecting a train wreck with this game will be pleasantly surprised to see everything is still in tact. Graphically, there is virtually no improvement and I experienced a lot of clipping/lagging/and even a crash but thats to be expected in a beta version. Quite frankly I don't know if this game is worth $60 because the multiplayer is the same as it was in COD 4, so you're getting some new maps and the satisfaction to kill some jap's, but thats about it. For people who are not familiar with the series, it'll make for a lot of fun to discover what all the hype is about, but COD 4 vet's will probably burn out pretty quickly on this. Especially with Gears of War 2 coming out around the same time with a better tweaked Multiplayer experience and more riveting campaign.

8/10