Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Producer: Activision
Release Date: November 4, 2014
Platform: Xbox One, PS4, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Rating: Mature
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Back to the Future
Written by Jesse Seilhan
If there is one series that has desperately needed a shot in the arm, it is Call of Duty. The perennial shooter has showcased all notable wars in the past 100 years, used every weapon imaginable, and told just about every military story known to man. But Sledgehammer Games, makers of the Dead Space series, had this year’s entry on their desks and decided to do something different while still sticking with what works. Gone is the modern setting and in its place is 2054’s military problems. North Koreans open the game as enemies, but quickly the Private Military Contractors known as Atlas take over as the big bad entity. Their leader Jonathan Irons, played expertly by Kevin Spacey, gives you every reason to want to hunt him down and kill him, but not before you get a sweet exo suit. This suit is the real difference maker in Advanced Warfare, with mobility and abilities unlike any other Call of Duty game ever.
The suit gives you all sorts of benefits, the most obvious being increased speed and a double jump. Each single player missions gives you a variant of the suit, some allowing for a multi-directional dash, while some opt for the double jump. Mapped to the d-pad are a multitude of special abilities, such as amped-up defense, a sonic blast that stuns everyone in range, and a slo-mo effect that gives you time to dispatch any and all threats. Your battery meter dictates how many uses you get out of these powers, which can be upgraded in the all-new exo upgrade menu. Between missions, players can buy perks like faster reloads, higher damage threshold, and the ability to hold more grenades, by spending points earned by getting kills, headshots, and grenade kills. The weaponry gets an upgrade too, as the boring red dot and iron sights have been replaced by threat-detecting reticles and smart grenades. These grenades are awesome, as a single grenade can be “cycled” through a variety of options, from homing, frag, and sticky on the explosive side and EMP and threat detection on the utility side. These changes make the moment-to-moment gameplay more engaging and at the very least, different than prior iterations.
Plot tends not to matter to most COD fans, as plenty of people never even touch the campaign, but this year’s effort deserves some praise. While the story goes down a hole you can see coming a mile away, the way it gets there is at least a ton of fun. Each mission plays differently, giving you different toys (drones, airbikes, and a badass tank) to play with and big-budget blockbuster moments featuring Michael Bay explosions all over the place. That being said, the draw here will always be the multi-player modes. Advanced Warfare sort of streamlines prior outputs by leaving some beloved modes at the door while iterating on the custom class system from the Black Ops games. You get a dozen slots to fill, from grenades to weapons and perks, allowing you to create many specific loadouts, fit for the dozen or so game modes packed into the game. Domination and Team Deathmatch are still around, as are Kill Confirmed and the litany of Hardcore playlists, so most people will be happy.
All in all, this is the best Call of Duty game in years. It’s a fun romp through a near-future America with stellar graphics, tight gameplay, and a somewhat compelling campaign. Multiplayer is still as addicting as ever, but zombies are gone and that will always turn some people away. The package as a whole is the best Activision has put forward since Modern Warfare 2, but still pales in comparison to the big shooters of 2014: Titanfall and Destiny. Both of those offer a sense of scope, mobility, speed, control, and fun that games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are not built to match. This game tries with the exo suit and the fun tech toys, but if they continue in this direction, the franchise could lose its way and alienate dedicated fans that have been fans for a decade. It’s up to either Infinity Ward or Treyarch to carry the torch in 2015 and build on this excellent product.