Heat of Battle v0.31 (Call of Duty Modification) Mini Review

Weapons

New Guns

There are a few new weapons in HoB, which include the American's & British who get an extra SMG each in the form of the Greasegun and Sten Mk V, the Russians and Germans on the other hand are given something to compete with the Garrand, the G43 & SVT40.

The new weapons seem balanced enough and none stand out as being 'Over Used'.

Weapon Restrictions

The distribution of weapons throughout the team has also changed in HoB, for example a player can now only hold one main weapon. Another feature is percentage based weapon restrictions, this meaning only a certain percentage of the team can select a certain gun type ie Rifle, Support, Sniper etc. When a player joins the server, or changes weapon before respawing, a current tally is shown of how many of each weapon type are allowed and how many are currently in play. The player cannot change his weapon choice if the weapon type is already fully allocated throughout the team. At the moment though this method of restricting weapons is not ideal as you will often find that there are 3 support gunners allowed, and there are currently 4 in play. This is because of weapon drops when someone dies, or changing their weapon for another one. The problem however is not that noticeable and will soon be fixed with an upcoming server patch. The new patch will allow weapon drops to be turned off, or limit ammo dropped when a player is killed.

Maps

HoB comes with a few mod specific maps. From all the maps I have played for HoB (HoB Specific that is), I would list the following as the most 'Team Based', other maps seem to end up with a mass of TDM and little interest in the Capture of the Command Points.

hob_nuenen, hob_second_coming, hob_townville, hob_village, hob_railspike, hob_offensive.

I'm sure others will have differing opinions on what makes a good HoB map. I personally think a map design that encourages people to work as a team and go for the CPs is a good HoB map.

One other thing to mention about the maps is that there is still some optimization required on some of the maps, fps can often go from 100 fps down to 50 on certain maps, suggesting that further 'Tidy Up' work is required.

How good any map plays however is dependent on the players on the server at the time, which brings me nicely onto the next section.