I just played about 5 hours of the beta and unlocked most of the key stuff.
First of all, there are 3 maps and you can get up to level 11. You can play capture the flag, war, team DM, free for all, and mercenary team DM which has some new name.
Maps:
All the maps are very large and fairly complex. And great looking in general. There are a lot of ways to get to each area, it makes it very difficult to camp one area or anything since you get caught from behind all the time. This is fine as long as there are in fact some smaller maps in the full game. It would have been nice to try one.
Only one of the three maps has vehicles, roundhouse which has two tanks. On one hand I think the graphics, movement speed, power of the main gun and all that feels just about right to me. When you are trying to take out a tank by yourself it has seemingly way too much health, as it can take 2 rpgs, a grenade and keep on going at times. However at the same time when youve got multiple people throwing anti tank grenades at it it can die very quickly, so i suppose its reasonable overall.
Roundhouse is a long range overgrown like map in an industrial train station area which is pretty well executed, i like it.
I cant remember the name, but theres little bit smaller map at a pier similar to a GRAW map i remember. Not much to say, it works. Its fairly dark so you can be hard to see in the right spots.
The last map is castle, a japanese castle area with multiple levels and pretty nice scenery. Seems pretty good. All of the maps were well done visually and seem good, although maybe not exception.
Gametypes:
I cant say much on the major new game mode, war. I wasnt having fun playing it so I didnt do much. its a progressive assault gametype where you capture various points, but funnelling every user to one area in a game like CFoD where you die so easily gets frustrating.. dieing over and over by grenades tossed in there.
CTF returns, and works just fine. Its one touch return for the flags, and although its 2 way ctf you alternate between sides after 5 mintue rounds. Whoever gets more caps in the 2 rounds wins, no limit on how many. I enjoyed ctf a lot.
Everything else in the beta is standard deathmatch/TDM and needs no explanation.
Grenades
First of all maybe its my imagination, but grenades appear to take longer to throw to me. Maybe im mistaken.
The flare does not really disorient you, its just a bit bright spot that serves mostly as an obstacle to prevent you from going through the spot safely.
The poison grenades are not thick clouds and they do not last long, but they do slow you down/blur your vision for a pretty lengthy time if it goes off right with you.
Havnt used standard smoke grenades, but I presume they are the same.
Frag grenades appear to have less range. There were far far fewer grenade deaths in these games, although noone has 3x grenades or martyrdom.
The tank grenades are essentially stick grenades, to throw on a tank of course. They also stick on players and walls and such, but generally I dont think it impacts gameplay very much. I havnt used them very much.
Molotovs appear completely useless to me, you can hold them down as long as you want, but they take a long time to light and dont have a wide effective area or burn that much. Sure if you hit someone they die, but with that much effort you may as well use a frag and get more splash damage or a gun and just kill them. I didnt use them much though so maybe they are better than I think.
Weapons
Now obviously Ive only used the weapons you get through level 11 so thats all I can speak on.
Rifles are the main difference. There are no automatic rifles, only semi-auto with fairly small clips. Thus long range fighting is primarily semi-auto or single shot, where as in cod4 you could still be effect with various auto guns. The biggest problem with these guns is the iron sights are awful, it reminds me of the mp44 in cod4. Its hard to see. Thankfully, most of the guns allow you to quickly get the red dot (whatever its called now) which helps tremendously. The svt 40 is what I was using, and though the clip is small its accurate and a good, fun to use gun for me. I like it. The only other semi auto you can get in the beta is the gewehr, which ditn seem any better so i stuck with the svt. The biggest downside from cod4 is that they take much longer to relaod, which is irritating.
The single fire bolt action guns imo are my biggest problem with WaW. You can only use 2, but they are both terrible. The first one, the arisaka, can take up to 3 hits to kill someone, which is unacceptable for a slow rate of fire gun, i tried a lot and got owned by all the other gun types. They should be one hit kill, and unless you practically hit the head or neck they arnt.
The sniper rifles feel good, no problems there. For some reason attaching a scope to a bolt action gun makes it more powerful.. or at least it seems like it. No problems with the sniping.
MP40 and the BAR are tough to use without the sights, but just fine once you get them. although even worse at medium-long range than their cod4 counterparts with major kickback.
The base pistol seems about the same as the cod4 ones.
Kill Streaks
The UAV is now recon planes but operates exactly the same.
Artillery replaces planes, and the concussions of each blast freeze you and trap you in the blasts for a bit. Its obviously not going to wipe out several people quickly generally, but its overall about the same power and more controllable, as its in one small area rather than a long line you cant control. Could be very useful in domination and such. Now the one concern here is how long it takes to work. Remember waiting so long for airstrikes to end so you could use yours? Well artillery lasts far far longer, so if one is active you will probably not get to use yours unless you are hanging back not fighting.
Dogs work beautifully, I prefer them to the incredibly annoying helicopter. They are fast and come from every direction, so while one is easy to take down you can get caught by another quickly. Additionally while fighting them off the enemies will be after you so you get killed while fighting the dogs. It all works, I like it.
Weapon attachments
The weapon alterations are handled as well as you could expect. There is an equivilant for red dot and acog that work just as well, and massively improve the early guns for me. There are flash muzzlers and silencers, which both work the same as cod4 silencers, just called different things for authenticity I guess There is still a rpg equivilant (grenade aparatus) for the bolt action guns but not anything automatic. There are bayonets (the animation is cool, but they appear to just be the asme as a knife) and.... grips and such. I dont think there is quite as much variety as CoD4, but given the tech of ww2 i think its done reasonably. At first glance what guns the attachments work with are more limited though, like I cant put a red dot sight on the bolt action guns.
Oh, and the bar/mp40 (and probably other sub machine guns) get large rammo clips as their third kill unlockable at 150 kills. Which is very important for the thompson, which just doesnt have enough ammo.
Perks
Well, cant say much since most of them are not available. Martyrdom exists but is not available in the beta (level cap). Last stand as we know can now revive others that have last stand, and also it takes far longer for you to die on your own, probably to allow actual use of the revive mechanic. Most of the perks appear aobut the same, theres still all the same ones pretty much. There are some new ones in the later level that I can look up later but I dont know what they do. Oh, there is one that makes it so when you pick up a grenade the fuse resets so you can throw back short fuse grenades if you use it.
There is also a 4th perk setting, for vehicle perks. Go faster/reload faster and such.
Random
Rather than getting +2 for every assist, you get more xp points for the more damage you do. Almost kill someone but have someone steal it? +8. I like this a lot, not only do you get some credit for doing most of the damage, but it lets you know how much damage you did to someone who you dont kill.
There seems to be some sound glitches, or else things are just different. I often dont hear my grenades go off in the distance.
Kiefer sutherland voices the american side, lol. Well not american but some squadron i assume is american. Germany/Russia and America/Japan are the sides in the maps.
I noticed more auto aim than I did in cod4.
No more nightvision, not that it matters. Up now brings up the map.
Overall
CoD4 is the better game from what Ive played because the weapons are just more interesting, but at least from the beta WaW appears to be a very solid change of pace for those who want it. Nothing appeared rushed or poorly executed. I think I will probably buy it.
Main changes: Far less grenade presence, at least in the beta since there is no martyrdom/3 grenades, but probably overall as they seem to be a little weaker. More difficult long range fights with inferior scopes/guns. In between CoD2 and 4 as you might expect.
