About four days ago I got my hands on the Call of Duty 5 beta. At first I wasn’t even going to try it because it wasn’t by Infinity Ward. I feel that Infinity Ward saved the COD franchise with COD4 and that giving the series back to Treyarch was a giant mistake. Alas, a bunch of my friends picked up the beta and they said it was pretty good, so I jumped on and installed it. Basically all they did was take Infinity Ward’s COD4 and re-skin it to look World War 2ish. They did some improvements but it is basically the same game, just with a significantly different gameplay.

New Modes

There are 2 new modes in COD5, War and Capture the Flag. We all know what Capture the Flag is so I won’t say anything else about it. War is a great new mode. It is inspired by the Battlefield franchise in my opinion and it consists on the two sides taking a series of flags. You have to capture the flags in order and as you capture the flags you build momentum, if you are stopped you can lose momentum and even have the tides of battle shift on you!

Vehicles

Another cue from the Battlefield franchise are vehicles, there are tanks in the game which is a nice new touch. The tanks aren’t really overpowered as you would think because they are slow, the turret speed is slow, the rate of fire is slow, and there are a ton of counters for a tank.

You also have vehicle perk which allows for you to improve one aspect of the tank, say you don’t like the turret speed you can use the perk that increases the turret speed rotation.

Gameplay/speed

The gameplay in COD5 is a little more team orientated than COD4. It feels that you kind of have to work as a team most of the time to do anything because of how balanced the guns are compared to COD4 where most people used the same guns.

The friends feature is nice and kind of eliminates the need for X-Fire when you are playing COD now. It is still a little rough and could use a little bit more of an UI overhaul, but it is a good start.

Conclusions

COD5 is a fun game that excells in many of the areas that COD4 was weak in. Treyarch took a great game by Infinity Ward and just made it better in most areas. They could have shown a little more creativity with gun attatchments and done the bouncing betty differently (they are rediculously overpowered in their current state) but the game is just overall fun. Even though I was expecting a future themed game, I guess the nostalgia of WW2 is nice.

I can’t wait for Infinity Ward’s COD6 Future Warfare though!

Buy of Not? Depending if my friends want to change from COD4 to 5 I will buy it. If I don’t buy it I will probably borrow a copy from my friend and play on cracked servers like I did before I bought COD4.