On Sept. 24-26, the new “Call of Duty” (COD) beta was able to be played on all platforms, such as Playstation, Xbox, and PC.

This game is the sequel to the 2019 “Call of Duty” game, “Modern Warfare”.

One of the biggest controversies of the new beta is the removal of slide canceling. Slide canceling allows the player to slide then instantly jump to their feet, making them harder for the enemy to target. This decreases the so-called “skill gap,” which is a large gap between the casual players vs the more dedicated skilled players.

This is supposed to help the casual player who finds it difficult to learn slide canceling and difficult to target other players who are using slide canceling. The more experienced players argue that anyone can learn this easy move. Taking this movement out of the game definitely slows down the movement and overall pace of the game.

This beta has a faster pace of play than the first “Modern Warfare,” where the maps and perks were catered towards a slower play style. The beta has a slower play style than the last “Call of Duty” though, which had a really fast time to kill, and maps that led to lots of engagements and angles on the enemy.

My favorite play style is quick-scoping with a sniper rifle. Sniping in the new beta feels really smooth and consistent. The only sniper we had access to was the signal 50, with no attachments. Even with no attachments, the aim down sights time was pretty good, and dealt lots of damage to enemies. 

The best map in the beta was the market map, which was a three-lane style map with lots of alleyways and the flow of the map worked really well. The worst map in my opinion was definitely the museum map. This map was a lot larger than it needed to be and led to lots of time without engaging the enemies.

Many people want the old-style COD minimap to come back. The old minimap had a radar that shows everyone on the map when the radar sweeps. On the new minimap, players show up as a red dot when they fire an unsuppressed weapon. Infinity Ward confirmed that they are not going to change the current minimap.

Overall, I think that the game is a really good step in the series with really good graphics, smooth gameplay, and a good pace of play. I hope Infinity Ward listens to the criticisms that the community has for the game and keeps the game alive for the two-year cycle.