The second week of the Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Beta is now in the books. Over the last two weeks, we have had the opportunity to sit down with Treyarch‘s next Call of Duty. Following in the footsteps of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare, Black Ops Cold War continues with boots on the ground style of combat while adopting game modes from other popular shooters. During the first week, players leveled their account to unlock new weapons and gun modifications; however this weekend, Treyarch enabled double XP and allowed players to equip any available attachment without needing to level your gun.
Like any Call of Duty, the Black Ops Cold War Beta was not without its flaws. Throughout the Cold War Beta, Treyarch implemented a few quick fixes within their patches. At the start of the beta, the M16 was a bit overpowered; by the second week, the M16 was slightly nerfed and the XM4 and Krieg took its place. Although, the gun changed it was still viable. Every weapon in the Black Ops Cold War beta was viable as long as you understood how they worked. The Black Ops Cold War beta did have four main issues that made the game frustrating at times.
The Maps, GamePlay, and Weapons
First, let’s start on the positive aspects of the Black Ops Cold War Beta. The beta provided access to a variety of game modes, each with its own unique objectives. During the second week of the beta, players could choose between Warzone, Fireteam: Dirty Bomb, Combine Arms Mosh Pit, Vip Escort, and Quick Play. When you are not actively playing and have hit a certain level, you could build your own classes. Like other Call of Duties, you must unlock the weapon before it is available to be used in a create a class. During the Cold War Beta, the level cap was 40 which was easy to obtain while double XP was on.
The create a class system allows the player to choose a Primary and Secondary weapon, Tactical, Lethal, Field Upgrade, Perks, and a Wild Card. Players can put five out of eight attachments on each gun. The Cold War Beta featured fourteen primary and eight secondary weapons. Burst or single-shot rifles now fall under the Tactical Rifle category. The five primary weapons categories were Assault Rifles (4), Sub Machine Guns (4), Tactical Rifles (2), Light Machine Guns (2), and Sniper Rifles (2). The Secondary weapons offered Pistols (3), Shotguns (2), launchers (2), melee (1).
Each game mode could only be played on certain maps, and have a certain amount of players. Below are the different game types, with how many players are able to play each mode, available maps, game types, and objectives/alternate rules.
- FireTeam: Dirty Bomb – 20 to 40 – Ruka & Alpine – Collecting Uranium, Detonating bombs, and Kill enemies.
- Combined Arms Mosh Pit – 16 to 24 – Armada, Crossroads, or Cartel – Domination and Assault.
- Vip Escort 10 to 12 – Cartel, Moscow, Miami, Crossroads, Last stand and revives enabled
- Quick Play – 10 to 12 players – Satelite, Miami, Moscow, and Cartel – Team Death Match, Hardpoint, Domination, Kill Confirmed, and Control.
Game Issues
Unlike the previous Call of Duties, cars in the Cold War beta would not blow up. This took some of the realism out of the game and made it more difficult to kill enemies who were camping behind said vehicles. Throughout the whole beta, we only saw Kill Streak vehicles blow up. The beta had a bit of an issue with loading. Load times between each match ranged anywhere between 1 minute to 4 minutes. At times this was due to players leaving lobbies, however, there were multiple instances where the game would throw you into a new lobby. Luckily, if it did throw you into a new lobby, your party would still accompany you.
Despite the beta being on multiple platforms, it was almost impossible to connect with others outside of random matchmaking. Even with others adding your Activision account queuing on the PS4 with Xbox or PC was impossible. Once you got into the game, a cinematic will play to show your character deploying. This cinematic will often lag and feels pointless, outside of choosing your weapon class. Like other Call of Duties, Black Ops Cold War has a problem with Quick Scoping. Without even aiming down the scope, the player is able to quickly snap on to enemies in the general vicinity and hit an easy body shot; if you flick up the analog stick quickly, you had about a 50/50 chance to get a headshot.
The final issue we noticed during the beta was the game struggling with input commands. If the player pushes too many buttons at once, the game has trouble deciding which to execute first. At one point, we cocked a grenade, reloaded our gun, switched our weapon, and then threw said grenade. This was probably the weirdest thing we experienced during the beta but not the only thing. Hopefully, before the game releases in November, they will be able to fix a lot of these issues.
Game Impressions
The Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War beta reminded us of why we can love Call of Duty by why it can get old fast. Throughout there was very little communication in most of our games. Thankfully, teammates were rather chill however trash-talking is still a big part of the game. In addition, the beta reminded us why we love Treyarch more than Activision’s Infinity War. The Black Ops world feels connected and you can understand why certain things are going on. Did I die because I ran at a guy who could already see me? Yes! I didn’t get randomly shot across the map when a guy shot through 4 walls, a car, and a garbage can.
Each class allows for the player to play however they like. Yes, quick scoping is annoying but there are ways to play around it. Gunplay is smooth where everything lines up. You understand why you missed your shots. Is it annoying that snipers can still aim down scope while being hit, yes, but it makes it fair. Is something not working? Change things up. Each map allowed the player to find alternate paths to attack an objective or player.
Although the beta would wear us out after a few hours, the game was still enjoyable, especially with friends. Hopefully, what we saw during the beta was just a tidbit of what Treyarch has in store for us with Black Ops Cold War.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War releases on November 13th on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S.
