Oh God, it’s fast. It’s so fast. After a month playing mostly Fortnite (with the odd quick foray into Overwatch to remind me what “proper” shooters are like), the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 beta feels like jumping on to one of those holiday park waterslides and realising that you are are travelling at 4omph down a rickety plastic tube maintained by surly teenagers in flip-flops. Anything could happen – and it could happen really quickly.

Of course, Call of Duty has always been slick, maintaining a 60fps frame rate and an endless spawn-kill-die dynamic, but its developer, Treyarch, has upped the speed even further for this iteration. On five small maps, players are in conflict within seconds of kick-off and remain there for the duration of the bout. It is the Napalm Death of game pacing.

There’s a strange inconsistency here, however. As many players have pointed out, the health gauge starts at 150 instead of the usual 100, meaning that you live longer under fire than in any other Call of Duty game. This makes engagement more tactical and demanding. You need to land seven or eight bullets on target to score a kill and, as there is no health regeneration (you need to hit R1 to jab yourself with a med injection), you often crawl out of fights barely alive, only to be picked off immediately afterwards. That can be infuriating. What’s more, players can wear body armour that adds an extra 50 health points to the player at the start of a life. Bringing these sneaks down takes an age in CoD time and can tip the scales in the more strategic modes such as Control.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest There are plenty of sniping perches hidden on the Black Ops 4 maps – and one-shot kills are now vital. Photograph: Activision

Submachine guns are this year’s must-have accessory. Usually you can rely on the default assault rifle for your first 50 games, but here you are stuck with the MX9, a rounded and rather overpowered SMG that almost everyone I played with and against was toting – that’s if they hadn’t graduated to the Spitfire, a gun with such a ridiculously high-fire velocity it sounds like a dysenteric elephant farting into a wind tunnel.

The specialist system – which requires players to pick from 10 differently skilled characters, each with two unique attributes – has been hugely updated since Black Ops 3, no doubt influenced by Overwatch. It is the central tactical decision of the game, especially as team sizes are now five v five on all but the Chaos TDM playlists (where it is six v six), you really have to think about the specialists you have on each team. The tank-like characters, Ajax and Battery, are popular: the former wields a ballistic shield that soaks up fire; the latter a War Machine grenade launcher that can turn the tide of the battle.



More subtle support comes from Recon, whose Sensor Dart reveals nearby enemies. He can then build up toward a Vision Pulse, which marks in red all the enemies on the map. There is a healer-style character named Crash who provides ammo packs for allies, and has a health boost that will overcharge the life gauge of himself and nearby pals. It is a good option for those of us without the fine targeting skills of a 14-year-old on a Red Bull intravenous drip.

The balancing is not bad, especially as the stronger of each character’s two options can be accessed only after building up in-game achievements. They tie in well with the classic CoD gameplay of shooting things really quickly. The specialists do not stand out as characters, though, so no one will be rushing to cosplay them at Comic-Con next year.

The five available maps are compact and deadly, with the odd long-sight line, usually down the parameters, and lots of raised cubbyholes for snipers, cowards and people who need to get their breath back. Payload and Frequency are stark industrial military complexes with steel walkways and corridors leading into slaughterhouses. Gridlock is the tricksiest – a Japanese city where ruined vehicles and roadblocks create a multilayered maze in which enemies appear suddenly out of the rubbish. My favourite was Seaside, a picturesque Spanish fishing village with beautiful cottages, leafy plazas and gorgeous restaurants – I didn’t know whether I wanted to fight there or book an Airbnb.

Call of Duty takes on Fortnite with Black Ops 4 battle royale mode Read more

People who have ploughed hundreds of hours into CoD might say this does not feel like Call of Duty, but unless you are mired in the intricacies, it absolutely does. It’s fast and claustrophobic, the death rate for average players is turbo-charged, and all the usual visual and audio signals are here, from the stabs of crappy heavy-metal guitars to the gritty northern guy who pops up at the start of every bout to give motivational speeches about killing people for money. While the time to kill is longer and the specialists and their tricks add a wider tactical array to the combat, this is still well within the ancient CoD commandments that Infinity Ward brought down from gameplay mountain in the 00s.

The Black Ops 4 beta, which will continue next weekend, is not going to convince CoD haters that this is the one to buy. It is, however, a good indication of the post-Overwatch experience a lot of people were expecting. There will be a lot of buffing, nerfing and tweaking before the game launches in October, and one big question remains: what will the Fortnite-inspired battle royale mode be like? It won’t be trialled until next month, but it seems a lot of the perks, items and gear options are aimed at a game mode in which nothing is locked and everyone gets the same chance to pick up the best stuff. We’ll see.