Five Things I Learned From the Black Ops: Cold War Beta
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a title that feels like it should have a colon in between Ops and Cold, but it doesn’t, for whatever reason. It’s also a game that just wrapped a back-to-back weekend shot of multiplayer beta business. With a handful of modes and what felt like most of the actual multiplayer progression included, it served as a pretty good indicator that, yep, this is another Call of Duty game, for better or worse.
I spent some time with the beta over the weekend, and walked away from it feeling fairly comfortable with how it played. It’s snappy, the Create-a-Class “pick 5 mods for your weapon” system is just the right amount of nitty-gritty customization, and the time-to-kill feels just a little longer than what I remember from previous installments. There are some pretty severe readability issues on some of the maps on offer, with the desert-and-cliffside-riddled Satellite being the worst offender. Ronald Reagan was notably absent from the multiplayer, and the game felt a lot better for it.
Whether or not you’re in on the idea of another year of Call of Duty, the five most important things I learned from the Cold War beta will assuredly improve your K/DA, make your watch shine just a little brighter, and ensure you’re the first to get all those tasty Scorestreaks. Those are all things that relate to Call of Duty!
“Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War: Weekend Beta: Five Things: The Beside the Dunes Report”
“#1: Dirty Bomb Takes Too Long”
Dirty Bomb serves as one of the signature “big map” modes for Cold War, putting eight squads of four into a gigantic map and tasking them with collecting cubes of uranium to fill up dirty bombs, which they then detonate for points. It’s a neat idea to blend the scavenging of a battle royale game with a minor objective focus, but in practice it felt like a single match goes on for, approximately, way too goddamned long. While most matches in some of the traditional game modes ran for roughly five to ten minutes, a single Dirty Bomb game felt like it went on for at least twice that, and the frenetic action I expect from a Call of Duty multiplayer experience just wasn’t there. It’s fun to ride the litany of vehicles scattered throughout the maps, and running people over with them is very funny, but I couldn’t see myself playing more than the one or two matches I did this weekend unless the actual time-to-completion was cut in half.
“#2: The Level Up Riff is Still Good”
Listen to this level up sound, from the original Black Ops. It’s a brutal, ear-filling drum fill accompanied a heavy guitar riff, the kind that Meshuggah would be proud of. Cold War’s take on the series-defining level up notification - truly, the hallmark of the entire franchise - is no slouch, either, as YouTuber Clifford Benton has graciously documented it for the world. It’s a little faster, a little cleaner, but still feels like it’s the sonic equivalent of a person on a dirtbike getting some sick air before either giving the middle finger to the person filming them or crashing and burning for a wild beef compilation.
More games should incorporate sick guitar riffs as Pavlovian serotonin releases. That’s really what I’m saying, here.
“#3: Someone Left a Perfectly Good Sandwich in This Hotel”
It may not hold a candle to the dishes served up by the Meowscular Chef in Monster Hunter or the labored loves of Final Fantasy XV’s cooking, but I cannot sit idly by and refuse to acknowledge the impressive sandwich craft on display on the Miami map. What we have here appears to be two different types of cured meats (perhaps a salami, maybe a proscuttio?), some bold leafy greens, and what appears to be a fairly basic cheese, probably a Swiss or a White Cheddar, all on a fairly plump hoagie. Eagle-eyed readers may also see what looks like a bit of seedy mustard in the bottom left corner of the hoagie. The worst thing about it is the fact that whoever went out to buy this sandwich will never know the joy of eating it, forced into imagining what might have been.
“#4: The After Action Report is Detailed!”
Stonks?
In returning to Call of Duty after staying away for several years, I was pretty impressed with the after action information dump you get. It’s got a lot of graphs that track your stats across your last ten games for each map and mode combination. If you really want to know how your DPS or win/loss ratio for Miami in particular compares to others, Black Ops Cold War has the hook up for you. With it being that specific (and the beta having no way to track your overall combat records), it feels like you’d have to play a lot of a particular combination to really get a feel for how you perform on that map, but the granularity there is still pretty cool.
“#5: You Still Cannot Play Fishing Derby”
Call of Duty features a handful of Activision tie-ins across the series, starting with Black Ops II’s inclusion of a handful of Atari 2600 games in their Nuketown 2025 map. That tradition continues with three 2600 “classics:” Fishing Derby, Barnstorming, and Grand Prix can be found in the Miami and Cartel maps. Unfortunately, the Barnstorming cabinet is unplugged and on a dolly, while the other two remain active, but unplayable. If the beta is any indication of the final product for these maps, those of you yearning for the ability to escape from the hells of Floridian street combat by attempting to fish up 99 pounds of fish will be sorely disappointed.
Black Ops Cold War does feel like a solid entry in the series, as a lapsed Call of Duty Enjoyer. There’s some really impressive lightwork, especially in the Miami map, and I ended up liking the flow and feel of combat more than I expected to. I’m not deep enough into the series at this point to pontificate about very specific, detailed balance changes, to be honest, but I never felt like anything I was rocking was grossly overpowered or disastrously weak to use.
There are plenty of other equally important observations I found throughout the roughly five hours I spent partially paying attention to the tasks at hand, but the core shooting is what you’ve come to expect from the Treyarch side of things (though, unless I’m mistaken, the dolphin dive is gone!). I still have some fairly substantial Issues with the tone the single-player campaign is striking, but the multiplayer seems fun and crunchy enough to really dig into.
Black Ops Cold War launches on November 13th. I hope that sandwich finds its owner!
Full Disclosure:
I played the Beta with a code provided by a PR representative.
Given that the code itself seemed to have permanent Double XP associated with it,
I can’t comment on how it actually felt to level up at the account or weapon levels.
