In 2003, Call Of Duty was a PC only World War 2 shoot ‘em up. In 2007, its console only modern shoot ‘em up. In just a short space of time they’ve released a lot of games and made a lot of buzz. But the most recent buzz from the franchise comes in the form of a closed Xbox 360 multiplayer beta.

The Beta offers a sneak peak at this years offering, while giving Infinity Ward priceless feedback before their game goes gold.

The 3 Maps on offer are Vacant, An empty building complex that offers face to face, close quarters action that also has a nice out doors bit that offers slightly less frantic battles. I tend to go inside in this level a lot more, especially with the airstrikes raining down. The 2nd map is called Overgrown, which reminds me of the previous call of dutys. Overgrown is a small village with a big trench in the middle of it. The final one is Crash, based around a black hawk crash in the middle of a city, the other maps I have found to be all over the place but on this one I already have a favorite point on the map.

The game provides a variety of modes but I always end up playing Team Deathmatch, which seems very fine tuned and incredibly additive.

The challenge and ranking system adds to that by setting each different class a set of challenges ranging from get x amount of kills with a weapon to shooting down an enemy helicopter.

This combined with the ranking system thats similar to that of a standard RPG by giving you experience points for every kill, assist, completed challenge and the overall outcome of a match. Once you have gotten a certain amount of points you rank up to the next level. Each rank up happens dynamically during a game. So if you have only 10 more points to rank up then when you score a frag, which incidentally happen to be worth 10 points, then a notice will pop up telling you your new rank. You’ll then get new challenges, weapons, upgrades and modes based on your new rank.

The game also rewards kill streaks in a new way. 3 kills without dying and you’ll be able to call in a UAV to help your radar Intel. 5 kills and you’ll be able to launch an air strike and finally 7 kills and you can call in a chopper to obliterate everything in its path. This requires some balancing on Infinity Ward’s part, but otherwise really rewards you for staying alive.

So far the Call Of Duty 4 Beta has impressed the hell out of me by offering some of the best multiplayer on xbox live since Gears of War. It’s nice to see the folks at IW and Activision are trying to improve on this already great formula. The game is set to ship to stores November 5th of this year.