At a Call Of Duty: Ghosts event this week, PSU went hands-on with two of the new game modes that will be available when Activision’s flagship shooter launches in November and found both to be excellent additions to the franchise.
BLITZ
A unique take on the classic game mode Capture The Flag, Blitz is extremely fast-paced, exciting and, at times, chaotic. Each team is tasked with entering enemy territory and jumping into a portal which then sends them back to their base. Players gain a point each time they step into the portal and the team with the most points when the match ends is the winner.
The catch here is there’s a cooldown period of 10 seconds each time a player enters the portal before the next one can make the leap, so you can’t all just go bombing in expecting to rack up a heap of points. We started the mode on the Chasm map with the mentality of sprinting to the enemy portal as quickly as possible, but soon realised you can’t just abandon your own portal, as you need to defend it.
It wasn’t long either before the Blitz ‘noobs’ on the other team also realised this important tactic and before too long a welcoming committee would be waiting for us at their base ready to pick off anyone who attempts to run into the portal.
As the match went on, Blitz proved much less of a run-and-gun mode and became increasingly tactical. We’d move in a group of three to the base and the rest would stay back and defend, taking up positions around our portal to try and cut-off all entry points to our spawn area.
We were largely in the attacking team and while two members of the team would provide cover fire and a distraction, one would make a dash for the portal. Then the second guy would provide cover while the third would make a run after the cooldown period has ticked down. The third guy, now alone, would then pull back slightly and wait for the others to arrive before attempting the tricky portal run. We found this to be an extremely effective tactic.
The mode also makes use of the new First Blood feature. As soon as someone dies they drop a briefcase, which gives you a field order, such as perform a melee kill. Complete that and you get a care package, such as advanced armour. Downing enemies as they were rushing for our portal and then waiting a few seconds to make sure the area was clear made it easy for us to grab the briefcase without fear of death.
There’s no doubt Blitz will be a popular game mode. Though it’s extremely tactical, there’s rarely a few seconds goes by without gun-fire and with so many people dashing around to try and rack up points there’s plenty of opportunity to notch up plenty of kills.
Read about Cranked mode overleaf…
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CRANKED
Though Cranked is essentially Team Deathmatch, there’s one a major twist that encourages players to play more aggressively and much more tactically. The winning team is simply the team who kills the most collectively, but after each kill you get a speed boost and see a 30 second countdown timer begin to tick down to zero. During this period you must kill again otherwise you automatically explode and die. Much like Blitz, Cranked can be a chaotic mode.
The pace is largely dictated by the speed boost which means players who are Cranked scoot around the map at a frenetic pace. We found the best tactic wasn’t to simply run around like a headless chicken waiting to spot an enemy in your sights, but to find a location on the map where you couldn’t get flanked or approached from behind and therefore had a clean view of players running toward you.
The fact that you have only 30 seconds to kill means this tactic doesn’t work all the time and as soon as we hit the 20 second mark we’d take advantage of the speed boost to then start hunting. It’s quite a buzz knowing that you only have a few seconds on the clock and must kill before the timer runs down. Like Blitz, Cranked is a lot of fun and an excellent addition to the franchise.
With over 20 new killstreaks, 30 new weapons and a host of brand new multiplayer game modes, Activision looks to have stepped up its game with CoD’s multiplayer offerings this year and these two particular playlists have already won us over.
Call of Duty: Ghosts launches on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 5, 2013 with next-generation versions of the shooter arriving at the end of November.
For more on Call of Duty: Ghosts check out our central hub.