Ok, i' ve been playing for 5 hours straight and everything is still fresh in my head...
I maxed out at level 11 after about 3 1/2 hours. The beta was initially going to be capped higher, but they' ve decided to cap it at 11 and then gradually increase it meaning that hopefully there will be even more to unlock the further we rank up.
I' ve only played team deathmatch because that seemed to be the mode that had the most people playing.
Of the three maps i' d say Crash was my favourite...
The other two available maps are Overgrown and Vacant..
...which are good too but Crash has more choke points and it' s the map i' ve been scoring highest on so part of my preference will be subconscious based.
The first few matches were pretty vicious and i was dying more often than killing as most players had already ranked up and unlocked the better weapons, sights and the create a class option meaning they could mix up their own perks while i was left to select from a couple of defaults.
The more you kill the more experience you get and reaching the next required amount of experience pushes your rank higher. A single kill will give you 10 points. Simple. What' s great is that you' re also issued challenges, (say 25 kills with the MP5) which upon completion gives you an extra 100 (i think) points, although the score could be different for each challenge.
Get three kills in a row and you can activate the radar which shows everybody on your team where the enemies are, get 5 and you can launch an airstrike (which is awesome to watch), and get 7 to launch a surprisingly effective attack helicopter. Alternatively, you can take down your enemies helicopter (with lots of machinegun fire or an RPG) and net yourself 250 points...
The teams are made up of Russian Spetsnaz, British SAS, Muslim “Opposing Force,†and American Marine Force Recon, and obviously these are map dependent. On Crash for example one team plays as Force Recon and the other the Muslim " Opposing Force" , ...just how matches have always been in previous CoD games. When you start you can only select from 4 or so different classes, each with pre-set perks and weapons loadouts. Of these i found the spec-ops class (complete with MP5, pistol and remote detonated C4) the most accessible as the MP5 has a decent rate of fire and is pretty accurate even at mid-long range. I was disappointed that the M4 wasn' t immediately available as i wasn' t keen on the M16' s ironsights so when playing Crash and Overgrown i pretty much stuck to the MP5, using the shotgun when playing Vacant.
The M4 is unlocked once you reach level 10 and i made that my goal for the night, but when i got to level 8 or so i unlocked the red-dot sight for the M16 which made the weapon far easier to wield and it soon became my weapon of choice. I did unlock the M4 but as with the M16 the ironsights aren' t as good as red-dot sights so for now i' ll be playing most maps with the M16/red-dot combo until i unlock the red-dot sight for the M4, which ironically will probably only happen after i' ve got a certain amount of kills WITH the damn thing. For reference, this is the M16/red-dot combo...
...and as you can see, the player didn' t get 10 points for the kill. The game gives you points for kill assists and the amount is based on how much damage you contributed to the death. I kept getting lots of 2 point assists so i' m guessing the other guys were getting 8.
From my limited experience with the M21, i' d say it was overpowered and had too little recoil. Add the fact that it' s semi-auto and not bolt-action and you can easily become a glorified death machine, just as long as you' re good with scoped weapons, ...which i' m not. Because i don' t like using scoped weapons i also found the Acog scope for the M16 useless and even though you unlock the holographic red-dot first i found it far more manageable.
Also of note are the grenades. The ability to " cook" them has made the transfer from CoD3, but don' t hold them too long or they' ll explode in your face. If a grenade lands near you you can pick it up and throw it back or try and get away from it, but more often than not you won' t manage to outrun the shrapnel and will take it in the back. There are frag grenades, smoke grenades, flashbangs and even stun grenades. If you' re injured you can actually be killed by a flashbang although it didn' t happen to me just yet.
The Vacant map, which consists of empty offices and some small outside areas is a blast (heh!) with a shotgun and 2 x RPG. If you use the Extreme Conditioning perk too you can sprint non-stop through the halls ducking into an out of the small rooms for cover when you encounter enemies and firing of an RPG at any enemies who think they can hide in those same small claustrophobic rooms.
I unlocked the create a class mode and almost exclusively used the stopping power and deep impact perks as i' d already heard that the last stand perk was pretty useless. I really wanted the martyrdom (drop a live grenade when killed) perk but it' s either not in the beta or just hasn' t been unlocked yet due to the level 11 cap...
I think my best score was 37 kills 5 deaths on Crash using the M16/red-dot combo and airstrikes. Before i got the red-dot sight for the M16 i had sucked pretty badly.
Anyway, i was briefly in a lobby with Eddie and Mass, trying to create a party and get into the same game, ...but for some reason it kept giving us an error so i didn' t actually get to kill either of them yet...
Graphically the online mode is great. Not quite as attractive as the single player gameplay we' ve seen but definitely an improvement over CoD3, one of the best looking games on the console. The character models, environmental effects (such as standing dust, sand blowing about, grass swaying etc), particle effects (explosions, smoke, sparks etc), weapon models and level detail are all excellent. Some of the environmental textures are a little flat and the game isn' t as clean as it could be but i' m not sure whether that' s a technical or stylistic thing as the sharper games get the more sterile they tend to become.
This is a screen of the spectator mode (which i didn' t experience because of instant respawns), but it gives you an idea of just how high-poly the character models are...
What i really thought were good were the run cycles and you' re players " handling" . Infinity Ward have nailed weight distribution. It takes time to slow down when sprinting and it take time to speed up. It' s hard to describe but it just feels (and looks) right.
You' re appearance is class based so there' s no Vegas-esque visual customization. You' re limited to choosing what camo, if any, you want to apply to your main weapon. This is probably a good thing because everybody would just choose a ghillie suit and you' d have to do a double take every time you past a bush, just to make sure it wasn' t another player. Plus it means you can tell from a distance what kind of weapon they' re packing.
Everything seems stable and i didn' t experience a single framerate drop. It was a constant 60fps the whole time i was playing and i was matched up with people with similar strength connections. The only slowdown i experienced was caused by shellshock after a grenade exploded right next to me. The animations for this are great, usually the guy wiping his eyes or covering his ears (when it' s somebody other than you that' s affected), but since you can' t see, hear or aim at anything (when it' s you that affected) for a few seconds you usually end up dead.
I' m going to go get another beer and jump into another game. I' ll post more tomorrow.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that your perk 1 slot bonuses (C-4, 2 x RPG' s and M203 grenade launcher) are selected using left on the D-pad. Right on the D-pad activates any kills streak rewards you have (radar, airstrike or the gunship), and up on the D-pad activates your night vision (not needed in the beta).
< Message edited by NITRO -- 30 Aug 07 12:05:42 >