CoD4 Beta

The beta is awesome. That being said it was lacking some things that i would like to express here.

First, all the weapon seem (which is much different from the other COD games) small, and taper off towards the front. To be honest, they look like the original MOH weapons and this is a bad thing. they need to be more substantial (check out the weapon scales in rainbow six Vegas). They should also have more unique sounds and feels when shooting, after all they use very different ammunition types, some sub-sonic some super-sonic, etc.


Second, i would like to see more destructible terrain, or at least more particles flying around when im in a dense area of the map and under fire/shooting. Everything seems too much like a set.

The game speed is very fast, this is good, but it for some reason does not feel as solid as COD2 were you can point at shoot and kill, no guessing or compensating for the lack of precision that you have to do in the beta.

The player models seem so similar to the maps that its hard to tell what is what, and it looks pretty homogeneous, that being said, the character animations are awesome when you get over the fact that they look like pieces of paper flying around a cardboard house.

For weapon switching, the controls were lacking very much. I would suggest using the entire D-pad for weapons where you press Y and select weapons/grenade types on the D-pad with just switching between primary and sidearm and holding X will let you modify the current weapons ROF, etc with x alone reloading or priming.

I really like the inclusion of the mele, and crouch needs to be reassigned to the left stick because if you crouch you are most likely going to need all the right stick action for aiming and not crouching.

The HUD could be a little more informative, the small symbols were not super obvious as to what they were and which direction the selection button would take you in your inventory.

More foliage and more open terrain that is not flat would be cool too, but only if the player models were more human like and the terrain was more terrain like.

A marine would most likely carry more than a single frag grenade and would most likely not die from a shot in the leg, which was happening quite alot.

finally, the most important thing, cover. Its unacceptable for a next gen shooter to not incorporate some kind of cover system. Games that shouldn't compare to this one feel much more solid as a shooter because of the cover system. No mistaken cover runs while reloading, just your back against a wall. I beg you to incorporate cover into this game!


RECAP:

Weapons look like MOH weapons and all sound/feel similar

Homogeneous terrain/characters need to be more destructible, more complex

Game speed makes it necessary to compensate for the imprecise controls (not solid)

Controls are not suited to the game (Y and X modifiers for D-pad are a must) and custom sensitivity is needed. Crouch should be on the left stick where you move around because when you crouch you need all the right stick action for aiming.

Hud is not to obvious, seems like little symbols all over the place, check out the HUD in Vegas.

Not very realistic (1 grenade?, leg shots=instant death, no accuracy penalty after sprinting?)

NO COVER? Come on, this is an ultra next gen title!

All in all, I was very impressed with the BETA, but i hope alot of things get fixed in between now and the release date. If not, i think i would still be playing Vegas. If you want a solid 360 shooter, pick up Vegas, and keep your eyes out of COD4.