Before I begin, knowing how polarizing Call of Duty can be, I shouldn’t have to say anything but my review was not paid for by those at Infinity Ward. Believe it or not, there are people that like Call of Duty and aren’t rabid fanboys. You know…normal people.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was released on November 4th, 2014 on PC, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
The game was developed by Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision.
The year is 2054 and North Korea is gaining on South Korea. Keen to help an ally, the United States send aide to help fight back against the North. You are Private First Class Jack Mitchell and your best friend Private Will Irons along with the rest of the United States Marine Corps, take part in a campaign to push back the North Koreans in Seoul.
Your best friend, Will ends up getting killed when you both attempt to destroy a war ship. His hand gets caught in the vent where he places the bomb and shoves you away from danger. Because of this, you only lose your arm rather than your life.
At Will’s funeral, you pay your respects and you meet his father, Jonathan Irons. Mr. Irons, the CEO of a Private Military Company called Atlas asks you to call him. The military may have had to let you go because of your arm, but Atlas can give you another chance. And you take it.
STORY
The story of Advanced Warfare is pretty straightforward and feels familiar to the ordinary Call of Duty player. Cutscene, mission, cutscene mission and so on and so forth is the formula and Advanced Warfare does not deviate.
It’s also pretty straightforward and extremely easy to follow which is kinda of underwhelming sometimes when the whole story is just very flat. Not emotionally but thematically. There’s nothing under the surface that makes you really think about it. All the “themes” are just blatantly said to the player rather than the player putting down the controller and thinking about what was said.
However, it does have a few moments where when the villain is talking that makes you go, “Woah, this actually fits in my life right now.”But again, it doesn’t go beyond that though. It’s simple as far as narratives in shooters go.
There were also a few lines that made me question the writing here and there. For example, you and Will are supposedly best friends. There’s nothing that proves that and we’re just supposed to take your word for it but apparently your relationship is close considering Will’s father admires you for being Will’s best friend with things like “I can see why Will liked you” or “You remind me of Will.” What bothered me was that they didn’t know why their joined the military. Best friends about to go into battle and one of them says “I joined because my family was in the military” and the other says “I joined to get away from my family.” These are not things you say to each other just before going into battle. These are things you say before you enlist together or when you first meet. But maybe I’m just nitpicking.
Also, there’s nothing either of you say during the first and only mission with each other that cements that you two are best friends. Honestly, at this rate, your character seems like anybody that talked to him, suddenly became his best friend.
Secondly, after your first training mission with Atlas, Will’s father Jonathan gives you a tour of Atlas. I know it’s to introduce you to the company you’re working for but that seems like something Irons should have done on your first day before he gave you a prostehtic arm and before you’re thrown into a training mission to test out your arm.
CHARACTERS
The characters in Advanced Warfare are your generic Call of Duty cast of characters. You play as a man with less personality than a pet rock and you are often led by burly black man or wiry man with English accent both. They are both your commanding officers so they’ll always be barking orders at you. It’s obvious that they are working for the “good” side but less via the writing than it is just because I’ve seen any action movie ever and you know, “Oh hey, that’s the good guy! I just know it!”
As always, the villain takes the cake in a Call of Duty game and Irons is no different. He’s not really charismatic but he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and his bold plan to go to war with the rest of the world, sounds silly as I say it but as you play and talk to him more and more, his plan doesn’t seem all that crazy.
He responds and talks to people in government the way most of us can only dream. When he locates the terrorist responsible for the attacks worldwide, he’s in a meeting with an American general and rather than going through the red tape, he takes complete control and moves on with the mission of taking him out.
He’s against the idea of a democracy just because of it’s failure to act, he even jokes about it with a reporter.
There was a line that actually stood out to me and it was while he was speaking to the UN. He yells at them saying they’re part of the old world and that their wars don’t work. Having been contracted by some of their nations, he supports his argument by saying his men have died for their wars.
He may not be realistic but he’s logical and I found it difficult to fight against him morally because I agreed with his points more or less. I don’t mistake it for great writing but he did have his high points.
As for the rest of them, they didn’t really have personalities. They just said military jibber jabber like in every Call of Duty ever up to this point. I understand it but if you asked me what kind of person Ilona is, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
VISUALS
Right off the bat, the cutscenes look amazing but the visuals don’t follow that standard in the actual gameplay. The actual gameplay doesn’t look that bad but because the gap is so wide between the two, it’s difficult to not notice. When you watch a cutscene, Kevin Spacey is Kevin Spacey. Troy Baker is Troy Baker. In gameplay, that’s not Kevin Spacey anymore, it’s just a look a like now.
I also had a few graphical errors that although didn’t impede my gameplay, were totally noticeable. Characters would zip to a few feet away from their original position, sometimes the environment didn’t load properly so you’d see your environment pop in as you got closer. The load in time was never long but it was long enough for you to definitely notice.
All in all, the visuals in game are nothing spectacular. They look great but that’s really about it
AUDIO
Considering Kevin Spacey is in it, of course the acting is top notch…for him. I don’t even need to mention his kickass voice acting.
However, everyone else is just there. Like the visuals, there is a gap between the great and the good. Kevin Spacey being the great and then everyone else being just good. Surprisingly, Troy Baker voices Mitchell, the player character and he isn’t great. I realize that the writing wasn’t there to support Baker in portraying Mitchell but it just sounds like Troy Baker saying things as if he were in that position himself.
That being said though, the possibility for the lack of lines from Mitchell was probably to help the player immerse themselves in Advance Warfare but if that was the case, I don’t think Troy Baker was a good choice for these throwaway lines that could have easily gone to someone else and still make perfect sense.
GAMEPLAY
Call of Duty games always come down to one thing though: the gameplay. This game introduced the Exo suits to Call of Duty. After this, Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare had dramatically changed in terms of gameplay from the usual run and gun multiplayer.
Exo suits actually feel like they pack a punch and you especially feel it when you punch an enemy in the campaign.
Throughout the campaign, you will wear different exo suits and you will have different abilities for each of them. You can double jump, unleash a sonic wave on enemies, or even go into slow motion with the over drive ability. I won’t say they dominated my gameplay or that it revolutionized the first person shooter genre but I had fun with those abilities here and there.
To be honest, I did forget about them sometimes.
The grenades are interesting in that there aren’t “different types” of grenades to pick up but that you can switch them on the go. With one button press, you can turn a flash grenade into an EMP grenade. Another interesting mechanic but again, I honestly forgot they were there for levels at a time. I could probably count on one hand how many times I used grenades throughout the entire campaign.
The guns feel punchy with some that felt better than others. However, there weren’t any guns that really stood out. There were definitely some that were cool but they didn’t stand out. You’d use it in the game and be like “Woah, a gun that shoots lasers? Cool!” But they would never make it into your top ten guns in video games list.
There were those obligatory Call of Duty segments where you’re inside a vehicle and I must say those moments were the low points of the entire campaign with the exception of being in the ASTs which are basically mecha exo suits. However, driving a boat that’s basically the boat from The World is Not Enough, a car that drives somehow worse than my own in real life car, and flying a jet through a canyon that was basically a Call of Duty rip off of Star Wars Rogue Squadron were all the lowest parts of the campaign which is odd because usually piloting a vehicle of some sort becomes a moment of extreme power and fun for the player in Call of Duty games.
The level design is alright. You get to play in all sorts of areas but for me personally, the highlight was in San Francisco when you are in a firefight on the Golden Gate bridge. There’s nothing spectacular about it but I just get personally excited when there’s a level in either New York City or in or near my home area of Southern California.
You also have little optional goals for you to complete in every level and at the end of each level, if you complete a goal, you given an upgrade point or two. For example, one goal is to kill 100 people and when you meet that you are given a point and you can choose how to spend that point. An exo suit will appear with different ways to upgrade it and you can choose whether to upgrade your sprinting, your reload speed, or your health and it effects are definitely seen on the next level. When you upgrade something completely, you are given a reward but this reward is only for the multiplayer counterpart. For example, if you upgrade your reloading all the way, you might get a helmet to use for your character’s appearance in multiplayer.
CONCLUSION
Overall, Call of Duty: Advance Warfare is a solid game. It has it’s highs but overall, it stays within its comfort zone. The game could have been so much more but the game could have been worse. It was fun to play but I won’t go as far as saying that it was memorable.
The game took me two days to complete but due to a bug when this game first launch, since the game wouldn’t save, I had to beat it in one sitting and I did this twice before the bug was fixed. So that should say something about the length of the campaign.
The replay value is hardly there unless you’re interested in the multiplayer which as of April 9, 2017, is full of children that aren’t half bad. So if you’re a first person shooter champion, you can probably annihilate whatever community is left in a 3 year old Call of Duty game.
The story is good but the villain and the man who plays him out did everyone and will probably be the only reason you remember this game besides the exo suits. The visuals and audio are good and the gameplay is fun but nothing extraordinary. There is no question that this is a Call of Duty game. As I keep repeating, this game is far from great but definitely fun and far from the worst Call of Duty of all time.
So from me, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare gets a 6.5…out of 10.