Over at the Sony booth at E3, if you were lucky, there was the chance to get hands on with a little multiplayer action. There were 12 PS4 Pros available and I headed over to try it out.
I think pretty much everyone who's a fan of the series and even those who've drifted away in recent years are glad to hear this year’s installment is going back to WWII.
The demo starts with the option to choose a division – this is Call of Duty: WWII’s replacement for the traditional class system. There are five types of divisions with two variations of each – Infantry, Airborne, Armored, Mountain or Expeditionary.
Divisions have one class-specific skill and two forms of training that provide multiple benefits. Skills can be activated at will by pressing the relevant button on the controller. For example, Airborne 1 has the suppressor skill which prevents gunfire from appearing on enemy mini-maps. Infantry 1 performs a bayonet charge that helps close distances with deadly speed.
I go with Airborne 1 for the first game – Team Deathmatch using the Pointe du Hoc map. It’s a ten minute game in a heavily fortified German base on the clifftops between the Utah and Omaha beaches. It was a close contact map with a series of trenches connected to bunkers. Run and gun was the order of the day here. There were also some barns and other small buildings to hide in and remains of gun turrets with a view out to the sea showing the allied battleships. Graphically the game was looking really good – gritty and atmospheric. And of course, the multiplayer action was fast paced and pretty frantic at times. We seemed to be getting overrun by the enemy though and our match sadly ended in defeat but I managed 11 kills with 15 deaths - 2nd in our team.
Next up was a game of Domination using the l’Ardennes Forest map. This time I go with the Infantry Division to see if the bayonet charge will help. It was a good choice as this was another relatively small map set mainly within snowy bunkers. Moving between the bunkers and cabins I make use of the bayonet charge several times to help take down the enemy. There didn’t seem many places to hide in this map though and getting shot from behind seemed to become an increasingly common occurrence. Again our team lost this game as well!
There’s two new multiplayer modes coming that I wasn’t able to try – War and Headquarters. From what I’ve heard about War mode it sounds really good (similar to Battlefield Rush). War mode includes objective-based multiplayer with some of the perks of campaign style gameplay. It requires real team work, completing objectives such as repairing a bridge directly within enemy range. It takes two or three players to work together to repair the bridge under the cover of smoke bombs and sniper fire.
Headquarters allows larger groups of players to gather in their headquarters away from the battlefield. There players will be able to "compete, earn rewards, and show off their accomplishments."
Activision has announced dates for two multiplayer betas: 25th-28th August and 1st September – 4th September. The first weekend is exclusive to PS4 and the second weekend is for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
I’m no expert at Call of Duty but I enjoyed the limited time I got with it. Losing the jet-packs and laser weapons of recent installments and getting back to WWII action is much more appealing to me. If you’ve skipped the last few entries in the series I’d say it’s time to give it another go – at least for the beta and see what you think.
