Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Beta First Impressions

Everytime a new Call of Duty title is about to be released, the hype from the community really gets going. Avid players are excited about new features, casual players check it out to see if they can jump into it, and the more experienced ones really check out the gameplay, the movement, gunplay, and all the minute details that are in the gameplay.

So it was great that we were able to try the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Beta a weekend ago. It was a chance to check out arguably the most popular title in the CoD series, and see if it was all worth it. People are expecting a lot from MW2 as the original Modern Warfare released in 2019 was such a hit. Launching with the battle royale mode known as Warzone, it was the game a lot of people played during the pandemic. Personally, it was my escape from all the stress that came with dealing with a worldwide pandemic, Verdansk was the place where I got together with friends and have some of the best gaming memories of my life.

With that, MW2 has a lot riding on it, as CoD: Vanguard wasn’t universally praised and the Warzone map that came with it, Caldera, wasn’t everyones cup of tea. Going back to modern times with MW2, everyone is excited to recapture that nostalgia that came with playing the original Modern Warfare.

First Impressions

Pros

My first impression with the gameplay of Modern Warfare 2 was that the gunplay was different, not in a bad way, compared to its predecessor. Guns actually have realistic or more recoil now, but don’t forget, this is still a game that is fast-paced and will test your twitch skills. It’s just that guns feel like they have weight and the attachments that you get while leveling do feel like they really add something to your gun, and of course subtract something as well.

You actually need to play a bit more tactical now, in the limited time we played the different modes of the game, I couldn’t just rush all over the place getting kills left and right. The movement is different from MW1 where a bug called ‘slide cancel’ was used by experienced users to glide across the map really fast. You can still slide, though cannot shoot while doing so, which I think should be tweaked a bit, but this allows other players to pick you off if you tend to go solo and bum rush everybody.

The new Invasion mode was a fun addition to the core rotation of game modes the game had to offer. This pits a team of 20 against another team of 20 in a large Team Deathmatch style of game. The expansive maps allow for really tactical gameplay and positioning is key when it comes to this style of map.

Gunsmith 2.0 was also a welcome addition as I said previously, attachments are now shared across different guns of the same type and do feel like they really are different from one another. Sometimes the attachments of its predecessor would do the same thing as another attachment but so much worse, so people would just end up using the same attachments all the time. I see a bit more diversity when it comes to Gunsmith 2.0 and I look forward to what it looks like in the full game.

Lastly, the maps that were playable during the Beta were excellent, the graphics, the explosions all felt super immersive and was polished for the most part.

Cons

The initial con that I really hated in this game was the visibility of nameplates of enemies. It’s pretty difficult to see the red and blue nameplate and sometimes it wouldn’t even show at all.

The speed also of your player was an issue for me, I feel like you should have a bit more footspeed even without sprinting in this game. It just felt heavy for my taste. If you’re going to remove a skill gap move such as ‘slide cancel’ then you have to be able to replace that with something that allows more experienced players to move faster.

Lastly, I feel like a better looking HUD would help users a lot, there’s something off about the HUD of this game that I can’t quite pinpoint just yet. The visibility is okay but I think it could be so much better.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the beta of MW2 was fun, it gave us a taste of what the full version has to offer and it was already very polished in my opinion. It does still feel like a CoD game with arcade-y type gunplay but at the same time, it feels like a more tactical version of CoD. It’s up to you to determine whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Either way though, I’m super hyped for the next entry of the Modern Warfare series (and most especially Warzone 2.0) and I can’t wait for this to come out.