CALL of Duty is giving away 10,000 beta keys for the next major entry to the franchise.
You’ll be able to bag early access to the recently announced Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War – before its official November release.
The beta test gives game makers a chance for players to test Cold War, and discover any bugs.
This will be totally open to the public, even without a key.
But Activision is offering players to get Early Access entry to the beta – with 10,000 keys up for grabs.
We still don’t know exactly when the beta will begin.
But the game comes out on November 13, so the beta’s Early Access event could begin very soon.
Beta tests can often run for weeks or even months before a game launches.
So how do you get a key?
You’ll need to tune it to the first-ever Call of Duty League championship this weekend.
It takes place on Sunday, August 30 at 4pm NYC time or 9pm London time.
To be eligible for the giveaway, you’ll need to sign up or log in to your Activision account.
And then you’ll need to link it with the website or app for the official Call of Duty League.
You’ll also need to choose if you want to play the beta on Xbox One, PS4 or PC.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is out later this year, and plays out at the height of nuclear tensions between the US and Soviet Russia.
As expected, the storyline follows the real-world events of the Cold War – but will dramatise some elements.
The first full trailer kicks off with footage from the Vietnam War, but swiftly moves on to the early 1980s.
This was a period major tension between the USA and Russia, with widespread fear of all-out nuclear war.
An earlier teaser trailer revealed that the game would include a hunt for Perseus – a spy working against the US for Russia.
Perseus really was an alleged Soviet agent, believed to have been snooping on the Manhattan Project.
Longstanding Call of Duty Black Ops characters make an appearance in the trailer, including Alex Woods, Frank Mason and Jason Hudson.
And we also see in-game footage of US President Ronald Reagan, who was instrumental in ending the Cold War.
Reagan appears to play a fairly important role in the game’s narrative, and has been rendered very accurately by game designers.
In the last few seconds of the trailer, we catch a brief glimpse of some multiplayer gameplay.
It looks action-packed, with desert combat and vehicular warfare aplenty.
The Cold War was a period of major tension between the USA and Soviet Union, but wasn’t an outright war in the conventional sense.
Instead, both nations supported “proxy wars” – regional conflicts used to gain global influence.
And the fact that both nations controlled nuclear weaponry meant that neither side was willing to risk a war proper.
The period is generally said to have run from 1947 through to 1991 – when the Soviet Union was dissolved.
In the first teaser trailer, Activision noted: “At the hight of the Cold War, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov issues a chilling warning.
“He claims a spy codename “Perseus” has infiltrated Western intelligence.
“His goal: Suvert the US to ensure Soviet dominance in the arms race.
“To this day, the identity and whereabouts of Perseus remain unknown.”
Bezmenov is actually a real person, and genuinely did work for the KGB.
The teaser trailer uses actual footage from a real interview with Bezmenov, where he warned about the scale of the Soviet Union’s Cold War plans against the US.
“Understand what’s going on around you,” he said during the interview, which was borrowed for the trailer.
“You are in a state of war, and you have precious little time to save yourself.”
Activision says the game is inspired by actual events: Perseus really was the codename of a possible Soviet spy.
Perseus was believed to have breached US Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, which produced the first nuclear weapons in World War 2.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War will be out on November 13.
In other news, we spoke to Warzone’s creators about the future of the spin-off game.
Call of Duty Warzone is getting a graphics update for the next-gen consoles.
Call of Duty recently banned 50,000 Warzone players for cheating.
And here are some Warzone Plunder tips revealed by Pro gamer Spratt.
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