News - Call Of Duty: Warzone 2i (2023) Beta Impressions: Uncharted Territory
Intro
Last year's MW2 was a bit of a tepid release considering the magnitude of the game that it was following up. I've been saying it every year since it came out, but MW 2019 was truly an inflection point for what was a very stale lost franchise, though some of that goodwill was squandered in the years that followed with a milk toast Black Ops game that went back to the old engine and sledgehammers Vanguard, which is arguably the worst Mainline CoD game anyway.
Multiplayer took things in a very unexpected way. Direction: By leaning into the mil sim-inspired seasoning that gave 2019 a fresh feel and made it the overall direction of the core gameplay, just about every action was slower, recoil was stronger, and damage falloff was the most noticeable it had ever been in a Cod game.
It was a much more hardcore and punishing gameplay style that I thought went too far in the context of a casual arcade shooter, and it was paired up with an equal parts mediocre and sparse map selection. As well as a very goofy implementation of the perk system, after playing it, my gut feeling was that many of the changes and new mechanics were intended for War Zone, which is likely a far bigger priority for Activision now than the core multiplayer experience.
As sad as that may be, while it led to a somewhat confused identity in the multiplayer, I thought the gamble paid off for War Zone 2.0. I had a fantastic time with it at launch, and it's been my most played multiplayer game for the past year that sentiment is pretty unique to me though it was relentlessly lambasted, by popular streamers and Esports players as well as many Cod die hards online and for the past year Raven has been hard at work reshaping the identity of what war zone 2.0 was intended to be to appease that audience all be it to mixed effect overall the past year has not been great for war zone and cod in general MW2 dwindled quickly after launch and war zone is still playing catchup to get back to the level of popularity it had prior to 2.0.
The word on the street last year was that MW2 would be the first 2-year CoD game. Then Modern Warfare 3 was announced, and my expectations for how this 2-year cycle would play out were somewhat subverted. While it is going to be sold as a full-priced standalone title, MW3 is more like a massive patch and content expansion for MW2.
And while I think the value proposition of that is a bit insulting, it's definitely still a better route to go than forcing out yet another half-baked all-new entry or letting MW2 languish with drip feed updates, so yes, while this is another year, another cod in technicality. It's also the biggest change to the franchise's strategy in its history; extending the shelf life of these Cod games and giving the all-new entries more breathing room to develop is 100% the right move and long overdue.
In my opinion, they should have started this formula with MW, 2019. Despite that, my feelings going into this were not very good. With the return of slide canceling a movement EX exploit that came to Define Highle War Zone 1 gameplay being one of the first teased and most anticipated features. I knew that this really wasn't going to be a game that appealed to me.
This has been outwardly advertised as being that fan-pleaser game, something intended to write about the perceived wrongs of last year, while I don't think MW2. Was anywhere close to a Flawless game I think every game that's gone this route of design via feedback has become a joyless homogenized boore something made for some ambiguous sense of balance and competitionrather than fun the exact type of game design that I lamented in my halo infinite review as well as my article on war zone 2.0 earlier this year then there's the fact that this is a sledgehammer game the indisputable, weak Link in the three developer chain after Vanguard my faith in them is the lowest it's ever been though the nature of this release is admittedly a less onerous task than an all-new title needless to say I didn't have High Hopes going in and for me this is a game where the publisher strategy and the audience 's reception of it is going to be more interesting than the game itself regardless it's a yearly tradition for me to tackle these betas and after hitting level 30 I think I'm qualified to have an.
Opinion uav standing the UAV is on station Recon.
Gameplay
Online , from the second you take control it is readily apparent that mww's design philosophy has been relegated to history Every Act you take in MW3 is faster and the transitions between actions are quick to borderline non-existent to the point where it feels closer to Old Cod than mw19, inputs are kind of weightless in this game as a result with gun field trading in last year's beefy impact in favor of slick responsiveness, the base ads time on all weapons is significantly faster recoil both statistically and Visually is massively reduced reload cancelling is back and the severe damage fallof specifically on SMGs is gone this is all paired with sound design that is to me a massive downgrade from last year and 2019, it's very reminiscent of vanguard's anemic sound design so I'm just going to assume that it's the sledgehammer house style.
The the overall feel and feedback through audio and animation work is nowhere near as solid as in MW2, or even the current build of War Zone, though it is at least very responsive, which was clearly the priority. Then the movement, it's this buzzword; it's the only thing anyone wants to talk about regarding this game, and the changes made are directly addressing the concerns of streamers and competitive players, almost beat for beat in line with everything that demographic has been complaining about for the last year.
Movement speed is faster across the board, with tweaks like tactical sprint recharging during a normal sprint and mantling being faster; sliding provides a larger and more immediate burst of speed and allows for more maneuverability. And of course, you can now slide cancel again, which simply means that you can press the jump button at any time to break out of the animation with little penalty.
