Call Of Duty: WWII Private Beta Review

GameCentral gives its verdict on COD’s first closed beta, and asks whether the back to basics approach is going a bridge too far.

Given some of the talk surrounding Call Of Duty you’d think it was a franchise on the rocks. But despite being the least popular entry for several years, Infinite Warfare still managed to end up as the best-selling retail game of 2016 in the US and the second best in the UK – after only FIFA. Call Of Duty is so incredibly popular that several years of declining sales still puts it above 99% of all other games. Activision obviously want to stay in the 1%, and so this year sees the biggest revamp of the franchise since the first Modern Warfare.

 We’d already played WWII’s multiplayer back at E3 in June, but if you’ve pre-ordered the game then last weekend gave you a chance to play a closed beta on PlayStation 4. The beta started earlier than expected and it’s not entirely clear when it’s ending, but probably 6pm tonight. After that a second beta is due to start on September 1, for both consoles, and end on September 4. (The PC will be getting a beta too, but there isn’t a confirmed date yet.)

Developer Sledgehammer Games had already revealed what the first beta would include, with a number of multiplayer modes and three different maps. Despite a tease when you first start, you don’t get a go on the Headquarters social space and there’s no loot drops or proper progression. There’s also nothing from the story campaign or Zombies modes. Instead, what you got is what many fans have been demanding for a while now: a back-to-basics shooter with no jetpacks or sci-fi shenanigans.

 

One of our favourite truisms has always been the warning to be careful what you wish for. WWII is absolutely a return to boots on the ground combat, but that does bring with it some obvious limitations. The sci-fi style extras of the last few games may have been increasingly unpopular with many fans, but they did represent a logical evolution of the style of gameplay perfected in the Modern Warfare games. The problem with WWII is that it is not a different evolutionary path, but instead an attempt to reset the clock back to the very earliest entries.

This may well prove to be necessary for Call Of Duty as a whole, as all the feature bloat from a decade’s worth of sequels is surgically removed, but it can’t help but make WWII feel a little empty and undercooked. And yet the basic action is as fast-paced and exciting as ever, and it’s a relief to find that killstreaks have been pared back to merely a useful bonus; rather than a game-altering super move that makes the game even easier for people that are already really good it.

The beta purposefully leaves out a lot of the customisation and loadout options that will be in the final game, but the impression it gives is that Sledghammer is trying to make the game seem fairer and less intimidating to new players. Dying the instant you respawn hardly ever seems to happen now, and the number of available perks has also been drastically reduced.

Apart from trying out the five different class types (one of which is labelled as being perfect for beginners) the gameplay is purposefully straightforward. So unless you’re a complete newbie it’s memorising the layout of the maps which is the first real hurdle.

The ones in the beta are all extremely small, another nod to the game’s roots, but also very complicated. One is an almost literal maze and the others aren’t far off, with lots of barriers that look like you should be able to climb over but which are essentially invisible walls.

Call Of Duty has always been about small, tight map design but the relatively more open designs of Modern Warfare still feel like the pinnacle of the series, and the ones in WWII are a little too constrained by comparison. They’re not awful by any means, but it does feel like Sledgehammer is purposefully ignoring Modern Warfare even when its design decisions would’ve worked better for the game.



The beta featured only a basic collection of play modes, with classics such as Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Hardpoint. There was nothing much to learn from them but we do continue to be impressed by the new objective-based mode War. The map was the same one we played at E3 but it’s the one part of the multiplayer that feels genuinely new, while managing to still look and feel like Call Of Duty.

But it seems clear that the priority in WWII is not creating something new, but venerating the old. In that sense its entirely successful, but the question is whether it’s gone too far back. WWII is entertainingly uncomplicated, but it also seems a little bare bones and predictable compared to other modern shooters. But it is true that sometimes you have to go back to go forwards.

Formats: PlayStation 4 (previewed), Xbox One, and PC
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Sledgehammer Games
Release Date: 3rd November 2017

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