By Cameron Maldonado-Olea
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” beta shows potential to meet players’ expectations before the full release on Nov. 10.
It has been almost 12 years since the original title of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,” released on Nov. 8 2011.
Activision continues its reuse of the old title’s impacts to market its new rebranding of the story and world.
As the multiplayer beta came to a close on Oct.16, the game needs a few improvements to meet those expectations.
The performance of the game ran smooth and felt responsive. Besides when off, the game had to be reset and updated multiple times before finally opening, taking a minimum of 10 minutes of loading up, by far the most frustrating part of the beta.
The visibility on idenityfing characters was extremely difficult to reconize who is a friend and foe, even with nameplates to distinguish the person.
As well, visibility in long distances made it hard to distinguish the players, the color choices or coding made everything into a blur.
Trying to fix this issue by messing with saturation, brightness, and other visual filters did not help at all to solve the problem.
A major issue that many players talked about was the spawns. Through twitter, Reddit, and youtube many voiced there annoyance with spawns.
A spawn is a process in which after death you will in a specific location.
The spawn issue happened the most in the game mode Domination, where you have three flags to capture.
Capturing flags even leads to inconsistent areas in which the player and enemies would spawn in. They end up right behind or right in front of the player.
As well, the issue with the spawns is that there is no protection against equipment, especially the flashbang.
In small maps, specifically Rust being one of the smallest maps ever, you get flashedbanged as you spawn in. It made the map unfun and truly a chore to finish a game.
Another issue is the user interface that the beta was using the same as their previous title “Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2.”
Many people hate it for not being user friendly, being overly complicated and many players with hundereds of hours still find trouble with it such a Birdman.
Weapon balancing needed a bit of work as well, some weapons that were in the beta were out performing others in the same category by a large margin.
Maps presented in the beta were remakes of classic maps from old “Call of Duty” games and played very mediocre or terrible.
The worst map was Estate, which is a house located in a mountain range with a wide-open field and verticality, the house having the high ground.
It played very slow and didn’t have a flow to it. Even in high engagement areas, it favored those who sit in one area whether they were losing or winning.
The best map was Highrise, two skyscraper rooftops that have a section to go under and flank your enemies.
It played the best out of any map, allowing all types of players to thrive.
The flow and pacing that Highrise allows felt satisfying.
Create-A-Class is a system to pick your weapons, attachments for weapons, perks and equipment to your liking. Weapons are divided into primary and secondary. Primary are your main weapons such as snipers, shotguns, and rifles to name a few.
Each weapon can have five attachments equipped. The variety of attachments include bullet type, magazine, barrels, grips, muzzles and stocks. Perks are separated into three different categories for this game.
The perks may give you movement enhancement, extra equipment or extra point for the kill streaks. A new introduction to the Create-A-Class system was the addition of the vest, which has unique traits that the perk system doesn’t include for this game.
The vest overall fell short in balancing and is truly an unnecessary inclusion. The best vest and the only one that was needed was the infantry vest, which gives the player movement enhancement. The other vests either filled in what perks did already in previous titles, or the traits themselves were underpowered.
A better option instead of the vest is the wildcards. Wildcards are souped-up class enhancers that can give more attachment to weapons, extra perk slots for each of the perk categories, and replacing a secondary weapon for another primary.
It gave a sense of power that enhances the Create-A-Class to the users liking.
The kill streaks availiable in the beta as well felt underpowered.
The one that was the most consistent kill streak was the SAE (Saturated Aerial Effect), which gave you three chances to strike any location on the map. It was most effective in open maps like Rust and Estate.
The worst kill streak was the Sam-turrent which aerial denies when placed on the map. Having being underpowered and relatively worthless.
One of the best qualities of the game is the movement. Feeling quick and responsive, but slowed down compared to “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019,” giving a balance for tactical and aggressive play styles.
Another great choice that was made was the attachments on weapons do not give a great penalty like the previous titles for the past three years do. This allows more diversity in crafting your weapon as desired. Gunfights in the game felt extremely satisfying from the shooting to the reloading was like a reward in itself.
Even though a handful of weapons were outperforming others, the pistols in this game were finally given proper balancing.
They didn’t feel underpowered or overpowered, but just right, being able to kill people in close range, yet not eliminating enemies them across the map.
A beta should be a testing ground to improve quality and performance issues before a full release.
Even with many negatives of the beta, the majority of it can be fixed. The gameplay is addicting and will keep players hooked on it.
The positives of the game highlight how they improve issues that plagued the past three titles, giving proper enjoyment to casuals and hard core players