Because I’ve been playing an extreme amount of Call of Duty 4, online, Activision has decided to let me into the multiplayer beta of the sequel, Call of Duty: World at War (WaW). Yay for respecting your geeky customers! Anyway, I love the multiplayer of CoD 4, at the moment I’ve played more than 30 hours, but I’ve had mixed feelings about WaW, mainly because it’s developed by the makers of Call of Duty 3, Treyarch, and not Infinity Ward.

After playing the beta for a couple of hours, my worries are gone. The design of the interface, and the features of the game, are almost identical to that of CoD 4, which is perfect. They’ve made some small changes though, obviously the premise of the game is different; you now have WW2 weapons, gears and perks, but one of the kill streak bonuses is also different. Three kills gives you a recon, and 5 kills give you an airstrike, as in CoD4, but instead of getting a chopper, after a 7 kill streak, you now get a pack of dogs! I always hated the chopper, so this is a welcome change, it also gets your adrenaline going when five dogs are running towards you. They’ve also added “Momentum”, this means that, as your teammates gain kill streaks, the entire team can capture points faster.

This is exactly what I wanted, all the brilliant design elements from CoD 4, in a new setting. The game will also have 4-player co-op mode, both splitscreen and online, so I guess I’ve found another game for the wishlist.