Being an annualized franchise, Call Of Duty has been getting flack for some of its more recent offerings not quite being up to par with its past iterations. Sledgehammer games, who has worked on past titles, was given the chance to lead development and alter the formula which makes up a Call of Duty game. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes big steps in reinventing the momentum of the series while also keeping its sense of self. Movement is the game’s real advancement, and warfare fills the gaps between boosts.
Players take on the role of Jack Mitchell, a former Marine who is offered a job at a private military organization named Atlas by a fallen squad mate’s father and CEO of the company, Jonathan Irons. The story centers around Irons, played by Kevin Spacey, and his views on power, war and what is right. If Irons isn’t dictating missions to you, he’s likely the driving force for your involvement in them. Although Irons is incredibly well voiced and modeled, the character itself is steeped in cliche action movie tropes of undiscerning anger and self importance. It’s through these that the story makes some implicit characters act in ways that question whether they are paying attention to what is going on around them, or simply falling into line because that’s what they are there for. Regardless of its weaknesses, the story does a serviceable job of guiding the player through a number of varied environments, set pieces and combat scenarios while showcasing the new tech and weaponry.
In the first mission, Advanced Warfare eases players into the use of the game’s headlining addition, Exosuits. Exosuits grant brand new options for traversal, including a double jump and quick strides forward, back, left or right. This enhanced maneuverability allows for both offensive moves like jumping up on a high ledge to get a better line of sight on a target, or defensive moves like quickly sliding into cover or boosting around a corner to break line of sight. As familiarity with this movement starts to sink in, tactical options and lines for advancement start opening up. In later missions, some environments have more space to move around which gives players different options on how to tackle objectives. Stay on the ground and slowly move between cover or go aggressive by jumping on top of structures and constantly moving. Every option is rewarding and it never feels like the developers picked which one they prefer in any given scenario and made it feel better than another.
In addition to this new move set, Exosuits also host a number of different abilities. Exo abilities are dependent on the type of Exosuit that is assigned to the player at the start of each mission and range from a deployable shield to block enemy fire, magnetized gloves that allows for scaling buildings and cloak which conceals your location from enemies. Each gets highlighted at different aspects of the campaign without feeling like their use is being forced down your throat. Grenades get new life with the addition of new grenade types and uses for familiar standbys. Threat grenades make targets glow red, making them appear through walls, smart grenades will track targets behind cover or around corners and EMPs are used to knock out the squads of drones that occasionally attack. Using each delivers an unique gameplay experience like scanning an entire room to get a visual of what’s going on before entering or finally being able to drop that last group of soldiers that has been hiding behind cover and won’t expose themselves to gunfire.
Although the story being told through the world isn’t very compelling, the world itself and its depiction of the future of war is. Locations vary from busy cities to barren snow tundras, each laid out with varied color pallets that keeps the eye directed to the point of advancement. Visually and thematically the tools of war do a great job of being consistent with what war could look like in the next 50 years. Drones and performance enhancing Exosuits are just some of the ways the story uses tech being researched and developed in the real world today to its advantage without eliminating human soldiers actually being needed in conflict.
Multiplayer is where Call of Duty games have shined in the past and Advanced Warfare is no different. Here the verticality of level design and the new movement options really take center stage and enhance the new additions to the game’s arsenal. Players are given multiple angles on advancing into the same space, opening sight lines and tactical positions that otherwise wouldn’t be present without the Exosuit. Instead of just running into a building, maybe a player jumps to the roof and shoots down through a window or ground slams through the glass and on top of an enemy. In the same scenario the player might bring up a shield and walk in the front door to take fire away from a teammate that comes and cleans house or that player runs in the door to check for enemies and then simply boosts out backwards if they start taking fire. Its a super rewarding dynamic once the player’s ability to read a situation and perform the movements matches with their style of play. Things like leading a player out of a building and jumping to the roof to wait for them to run outside is exciting every time and really affects the player’s feeling of agency in matches. This new speed to gameplay allows for getting into skirmishes quicker, which means getting to the fun faster, but can also get the player caught in negative gameplay loops. Its easy to fall into bad habits like running into areas without properly exploring routes which enemies could take or simply not using the new tools the game has to offer. For those moments of negative play though it only takes one or two generally exciting plays to make up for the negative experience and get oneself back on track.
Players are able to choose what type of gear and weaponry to bring into matches by customizing loadouts, allotted 13 points in which to spend on the setup they want. Each gun, attachment, perk or scorestreak uses on of those points. Choices include balancing between adding a third attachment on to a gun and deleting off a kill streak or take multiple grenades into the fight. The system gives you enough points to have a dedicated plan of attack while also having some sort of backup plan, but it can also allow players to focus primarily on one weapon to ensure that they get the most out of that playstyle.
Scorestreaks return, allowing players to pick up points towards them with not just kills but accomplishing objectives as well. Scorestreaks can be customized in the loadout by adding additional costs to achieving that streak. For instance, making a UAV (which marks enemies on the radar) cost 450 instead of 400 points, can add the same highlighting effect to enemies as the tracker grenades. Loadouts can be tested at a firing range while waiting for games to start.
Just by playing, supply drops are earned which will give them items to customize their characters look and alternate versions of weapons. These weapons offer different tradeoffs like giving up a bit of the gun’s accuracy for a faster fire rate. These guns never seemed to throw the balance of the game out of whack and often just gave you new ideas for loadout builds.
Sometimes supply drops also feature a care package that will drop within a certain time period into your next game. it’s certainly a nice feature but there’s been many times where I’ve been towards the end of a match and that care package falls with little to no time for it to contribute meaningfully to the match. These can’t be carried on to the next game and if they don’t drop in that first game the bonus is completely void.
Advanced Warfare also features the Exos Survival, which is a co-op mode for two players locally or up to four online. After chosing from three Exos, each with different movement options and restrictions on gun types, players then take on waves of enemies in the multiplayer maps. Waves are broken into rounds with increasing strength and numbers of enemies. Sometimes rounds include an extra objective over top of killing the enemies. Objectives could be things like defusing bombs, picking up intel or collecting dog tags. Completing rounds and challenges reward upgrade points to spend on upgrading their Exosuits or weapons. Performing well in the challenges will earn more upgrade points, however failing to complete these objectives punishes the player in the next round. These punishments could be things like sentry guns being set up around the map or having your heads up display disabled for the next round. These punishments make the objectives important and force teams to move and complete them. This counters the want to stay stationary in an area which is the normal approach for a survival game type.
Movement is Call Of Duty: Advance Warfare’s real advancement. The possibilities it adds to each scenario makes for a rewarding experience even if failure is on the other end of the decision. Sure there are playlists that allow for matchmaking without the Exosuits, which proves that Call of Duty still has top notch gun handling, but removing them takes away the thing that makes Advanced Warfare stand tall as one of the greatest in the series.
This review is based on a retail copy sent to SideQuesting by the publisher, Activision, for the PS4
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