The next COD's beta has a story mission for some reason
It's gonna be better than the last one, we swear!
It's that time of the year again. While the summer heat is far from relenting, we march on towards the fall which means yet another entry in the Call of Duty franchise. As is tradition, this year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is getting a beta — but with a weird twist.
Next week, the "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Open Beta Early Access" (what an oxymoron) goes live from August 21st through the 25th for anyone that preorders either the $69.99 Standard Edition or the $99.99 Vault Edition of the game. The actual "Open Beta" part of this experience will come in what Activision and Xbox are referring to as "Week 2" for those of us who might not be ready to drop the cash on the 23rd COD game just yet.
While the Early Access "Week 1" window is live, players will be able to get their hands on eight different multiplayer modes including Kill Block (which admittedly does look neat), five new 6v6 maps, and for the very first time, a campaign mission. Obviously there’s no real way of knowing exactly where in the game this mission takes place, but there does look to be some big, Call of Duty style set pieces and maybe even a bit of vehicular gameplay.
Week 2’s content offering is much the same but it also brings the new Warzone Resurgence map, Zodiac, to the open part of this “Open Beta”.
Last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 released to scathing reviews of its campaign. Despite its extremely popular Multiplayer and Zombies modes, it was left sitting at a 65 on Metacritic with an audience rating of only 1.7 — the lowest scores a COD has seen in years. Black Ops 7 was following in the footsteps of the Black Ops 6 campaign, which had nearly the exact opposite reaction. Putting a campaign mission into this beta may convince some traumatized fans to give it another shot.
There is no denying that Grand Theft Auto 6 coming out in November will have some effect on sales for COD this year. Asking players for $70-$100 for the next entry in an annualized franchise less than one month before the most anticipated game of all time is going to be tough. Between including a campaign mission and offering a 10% Loyalty Discount on the Vault Edition of the game (as long as you’ve purchased a COD since 2019), it seems obvious that Activision is trying anything they can think of to get the game in people's hands. Whether or not it ends up a victim of GTA’s looming presence remains to be seen.
