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

How does it play?

Any game relies on the people playing it to make it either a good experience or a bad one. The current version of HoB 0.31 has problems implementing the "Team Damage" option. At the moment it is on by default and that's it. You cannot remove it or change it to reflective. In gaming terms this means plenty of the players on your team enjoy nothing more than to shoot you at any opportunity, or even better demonstrate their inability to throw a grenade in an appropriate direction. For me this is one of the most annoying things about this Mod, given the experience in many games of people who like nothing more than ruin it for everyone else, games/mods these days should be designed from the start to incorporate as many restrictions as possible to prevent people from ruining the experience of everyone else. A fix for this problem is promised in the upcoming server side patch.

A further problem with the current version is there is no restriction on what team you can join, so if the Americans currently have 5 people on their team, and the germans have 15, you can happily join the germans no problem. It beggars belief that people do actually do this very thing quite often. Many games I have played where people WILL just not change team. The number of people who's main aim in life is to annoy other gamers seems to be growing. Again a fix is promised in the next server side patch.

Problems aside the actual mechanics of the game work pretty well, when played properly the team will split up into small squads and capture command points, and then move onto the next point, often a player will stay behind at captured points to defend against enemy intrusion. Placing support gunners in defensive positions, and a sniper at a high vantage point can help your team to dominate the map. The round ends once all points are capped or the round timer reaches zero, a bonus is given for capping all points, and until this happens points are gained every few minutes for any point held.

Another thing worth mentioning is that in HoB you can 'cook' your grenades, they explode about five seconds after being primed, so it can be useful when you want your grenades to explode on impact, giving your target no chance to move out of the way. This being a very good anti-camper tactic for flushing out building.