In the gaming community, the word Activision tends to stir up mixed emotions – and that’s putting it mildly. Many regard CEO Bobby Kotick as being a maniacal satanic overlord, who has no greater wish than to strangle every last penny from the average gamer. It’s no surprise, then, that the announcement of Call of Duty: Elite was received with an air of curious suspicion by many. The release has been a disaster from Activision’s point of view; insanely high traffic has had the service floundering in a constant sate of unavailability. So it’s only right that we ask the question: is it worth your money and time?
Well there are two sides to the CoD: Elite coin, a free side and a paid side.
Standard (Free) Functionality
When Call of Duty: Elite is publicly released, or if you were lucky enough to be invited to participate in the beta, you’ll have the ability to sign up, free of charge. This will give you instant access to a wide array of tutorials, stats, and communities. At first the site seems complicated; you feel like you’re looking at a computer console from the bridge of the starship Enterprise. But as you begin to look through the features, you’ll quickly become familiar with the lay-out; a slick user interface to expand and contract the content you want to view.
I’ve found the ‘Career’ section by far the most useful. It lets you view your current overall stats, and shows you the technical details of your most recent matches. It also shows all of your current weapon classes, although disappointingly it will not allow you to edit them online. One of the things that Activision seems to be most proud of here is the ‘heat map’ ability, although being honest I found it rather useless. Heat Map displays a colourful representation of where on the map you died in a recent game. Nine times out of ten, it only really tells you what you probably already knew: stick to the outskirts and keep moving.
I personally found more use in the overall stats, and the rivalry section. The former will do things like show you your all time KDR, and calculate how long it will take you to reach the next prestige based on current performance. It also shows some more obscure, but still interesting figures, like ‘return on investment’ from the multiplayer contracts. The rivalry area displays your ranking against friends (which you define), which will give you all the ammo you need to send your friends a few boasting texts.
Another cool feature you’ll get for free is the ability to view your weapon performance. Here you can see a breakdown of Kills, Deaths, Accuracy, Headshots and Times Killed By. Finally, you get a view of any recent theatre uploads you submitted from the game. This gives you a neat way to share them with fellow gamers, or just throw ‘em out on Twitter or Facebook to irritate your friends.
Outside of the career page is an ‘Improve’ section. This is basically a glorified Wiki, which gives you some basic stats on each weapon, attachment, map and perk in the game. Although it leverages Elite’s slick user interface, the information is just not detailed enough to offer any advantage over a normal Call of Duty Wiki site.
This leaves us with the “Connect” page. This is a community portal which offers a variety of ways to engage with fellow cod-heads. It’s a hub for user-submitted content such as in-game footage, machinima, cool pictures, and other stuff. It also allows you to search, join and create groups of gamers.
Given all this cool shit, you can’t argue with the price. Especially when, well, it’s free. If you’re a regular Call of Duty player, the free aspects of this site are a great add on. Not essential, but worth the effort of typing in your email address to register.
Paid Functionality
For the humble fee of $49.99 (about thirty-five quid) you’ll get all of the above, plus all Modern Warfare 3 DLC for free. That’s the big hook, especially as Activision have confirmed that said DLC will be monthly. That’s right, you’ll be getting the best part of a dozen DLC add-ons to Modern Warfare 3.
The other features included in the price mainly revolve around the clans and competitive side of Call of Duty. You’ll be able to ‘level-up’ your clan, and enter exclusive competitions. But is it worth the money? The short answer is, if you are probably going to want all or most of the DLC, then yes. If you doubt that this is the case, then unless you are a seriously competitive CoD player, you probably won’t be interested in the paid service.
Verdict
I don’t think Call of Duty: Elite is the sort of thing you can slap a review score on, so I’ll try to sum the experience up in a sentence or two. Call of Duty: Elite is definitely worth signing up for, even if there are a few features (like online class customisation) missing. If you think you’ll want all or most of the DLC, then you will also want to sign up for the full, paid version.
