Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 beta — hands-on with the tense Heist multiplayer mode

Treyarch unveiled a new Heist mode in its second beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 multiplayer. I’ve played it a number of times on the PlayStation 4 and here’s my hands-on report.
The Black Ops 4 multiplayer beta test continues until 10 a.m. Pacific time on Monday August 13. With Heist mode, five human players compete against five human rivals. You have to locate a bag of cash and then take it to the extraction point. It’s reminiscent of similar modes in Counter-Strike and Battlefield Hardline, and it almost always ends with some kind of dramatic struggle.

Each battle has as many as seven rounds, but the team that gets to four victories wins the match. You start out with a pistol. The more rounds you win and the more cash your team collects, the more you can purchase upgrades in a store. Typically, I was able to upgrade to a light machine gun within a couple of rounds. You also have to pick up a health pack and ammo on the map.
The bag of cash is a magnet for combat. It pays to get to it first and then spread out as you await the inevitable enemy rush. You’re exposed when you grab the cash, so you have to make sure your comrades are covering you. Once you get the cash, you have to run around and avoid being shot.

Meanwhile, an extraction point appears on the map. If you’ve got the bag, you have to make it to the extraction point and survive the timer. If you do, your team wins the battle. You can also win the round by killing all the enemies, as you can’t respawn.
One of the interesting features is that you can revive your teammates who get shot. When you get shot once, you have to crawl around until someone revives you. But if you get shot a second time while crawling, you’re out for good and you have to spectate the rest of the match.
One of my colleagues was kindly reviving me, but then he got shot. So it’s best to crawl to cover where it’s safer to be revived. Picking up your health on the battlefield, rather than just having it come back on a timer, forces you to think about your health more, as you can’t take the health revives for granted.

Of course, the object is to make the other team die or crawl. It’s a fun mode, and it feels good to earn your favorite weapons and buy them in the store. It reminds you that shooting it out with pistols in the first round is a real test of skill and teamwork.
Heist may be a copy of other games, but it’s nice that Treyarch added its own twists to the gameplay that make it more exciting. Check out what Heist looks like in the videos that I’ve embedded in this post.
I’m enjoying Heist mode, but I prefer other familiar modes like Team Deathmatch and Domination. But it nice to see Treyarch doing a lot of experimentation. The big mode we’re all waiting to try is the battle royale mode on a big map, dubbed Blackout.
Source: VentureBeat