PlayStation 4 owners can now download the alpha for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War so that it's ready to roll when it goes live tomorrow. The latest entry in the annualized FPS series is a direct sequel to the previous Black Ops game and takes players to the height of the Cold War. The game even includes President Ronald Reagan in the singleplayer campaign, a controversial inclusion due to his checkered past and severely tarnished legacy.
While the game's story looks to be an engaging, if likely objectionable, affair, the Call of Duty franchise has always had a much stronger emphasis on the multiplayer side. The new game is set to bring plenty of changes and developments to this aspect as well, including an alteration to the franchise's scorestreak mechanic that's raised a lot of controversy among players for how it will affect the balance of the game. The uproar was so severe that the lead game designer recently spoke out to defend it. But the scorestreak change isn't the only new development fans can expect from the game's multiplayer, and hopefully the rest won't be quite as distressing for longtime fans. In order to get a feel for what Black Ops Cold War is bringing to the table, Activision is hosting a free alpha for PS4 users set to take place this weekend, from the 18th to the 20th.
As announced in a blog post on the official Call of Duty website, PS4 owners who are excited to dive into the alpha can pre-load it right now. The event will start tomorrow at 10 AM PDT and conclude on September 20th at the same hour. Participation in the event is totally free and doesn't even require a PS Plus subscription, which is usually necessary to play any online experience on the PlayStation 4.
The announcement went into detail about what fans can expect to experience when they take part in the alpha. The event will host three 6v6 game modes. These modes include the standard Team Deathmatch game mode, with a dog tag-collecting variant called Kill Confirmed. The third game mode is the objective-capturing Domination mode, which Activison brags will feature a larger objective capture area than previous titles. Along with these 6v6 games players can enjoy a vehicle-oriented 12v12 mode called Combined Arms: Domination, a new feature that drew heavy comparisons to EA's Battlefield series when it was announced.
With any annual video game franchise, it can be hard to make enough substantial changes for a game to feel truly different than its predecessor without changing so much that the developers can't handle it. Recently, Madden NFL proved how hard it can be by releasing a buggy, underwhelming game that barely iterated on its predecessor. This new Madden game enraged fans and quickly became the lowest user-reviewed video game in Metacritic's history. Call of Duty: Black Ops certainly looks substantially different from the Call of Duty games that came before. Hopefully the upcoming alpha will further set the game apart in a good way.
Source: Call of Duty