Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Review (Xbox One)

The Call of Duty series is one of the biggest in the video game industry, earning publisher Activision hundreds of millions in profit with every yearly release. After dominating the previous console generation with the Modern Warfare titles, the franchise was set to enter a new era with the Ghosts installment, which appeared from franchise founder Infinity Ward.

Unfortunately, while the title sold pretty well, it failed to generate that much hype, so Activision is now hoping that Sledgehammer Games and its Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will take the series to new heights in terms of popularity amongst fans.

With a futuristic setting, plenty of major changes to the core gameplay, not to mention a bigger emphasis on story as well as multiplayer, Advanced Warfare is looking set to be a great iteration in the first-person shooter series. Does it deliver on its promises or is it not advanced enough? Let's find out.

Story

Call of Duty games haven't exactly been known for providing deep stories, but some installments have managed to provide quite a few nifty little moments or plot lines, such as the Modern Warfare or the Black Ops ones.

In Advanced Warfare, developer Sledgehammer Games takes things further and goes Hollywood style by bringing in actor Kevin Spacey to play the role of antagonist Jonathan Irons, who runs the Atlas corporation, a private military company that fights wars for other countries.

Players take on the role of former Marine Jack Mitchell, who, after serving the USA, goes on to work for Atlas and engage in a variety of adventures, while slowly figuring out the actual plan of Irons, played quite well by Spacey in a way that reminds his fans of Frank Underwood from House of Cards.

While the plot still focuses heavily on set piece moments and offers just a brief explanation for the connections between them, some of the characters stand out, such as Gideon, although some of Irons' actions don't necessarily make a lot of sense.

Kevin Spacey as Jonathan Irons

Gameplay

Advanced Warfare retains the core elements of the series in terms of gameplay, which is running and gunning everyone in your way through a first-person perspective, but introduces way more new elements than previous games before it.

First up, there's the new exo suit that allows players to perform superhuman feats, from jumps to dodges or just pulling out doors from cars to use them as makeshift shields. Throw in hover bikes, special grenades, and other such things and you'll certainly feel like a warrior of the future. There's also a nifty change, as the heads-up display that shows the state of your ammo and grenades is displayed on the actual weapon.

The campaign takes players through all sorts of great environments and there are very few moments to catch your breath. However, there are some baffling sequences that have no place in such a game. There's one where you need to press a button to pay your respects to a fallen comrade, or another where you have to play a makeshift game of Frogger, as you have to cross a busy Korean highway on foot, despite having a pedestrian bridge just a few yards away.

There are once again moments where you have to control different machines or vehicles, from turrets to tanks or beefier exo suits, and they offer a brief change of pace from the regular gameplay. Some, however, work better than others and you might feel a bit clumsy in some situations.

Enemies aren't that diversified, with just a few requiring a bigger effort to take down. There are plenty of AI-controlled allies that can help out, more or less, during the campaign, so you won't feel punished all that much.

Unfortunately, while the game certainly tries to deliver something much more ambitious with its campaign, there's still the same strategy of forcing players to follow one of their allies throughout all the environments of the story. What's more, your squad mates constantly remind you of your goals and this can get quite annoying.

Besides these rather staggering moments, Advanced Warfare handles quite well in terms of gameplay, offering a fluid experience that sees players wield all sorts of advanced weapons and gear and go on many wild adventures. Of course, there are also moments when the game takes things away from you in order to create tension.

Multiplayer

Of course, the main bread and butter of any Call of Duty game is the multiplayer mode, and Advanced Warfare is no exception. The team at Sledgehammer managed to squeeze in all of the sci-fi gadgets and weapons from the single-player campaign into the online one. More or less, Advanced Warfare feels like a hybrid between regular Call of Duty multiplayer and the likes of Titanfall, as the exo suit offers way more possibilities in terms of gameplay.

Call of Duty's online mode was already a hectic and fast-paced experience, and the exo suit addition takes things even further, especially when it comes to traditional modes like Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag.

Other modes, such as the new Uplink, were pretty much made for the exo suit and players can really let loose and experience the futuristic shooter in all its glory.

The maps are quite diverse and place a bigger emphasis on verticality. You never know what's above or below you, so you need to really polish your multitasking skills if you want to stay alive. Thankfully, players take a bit longer to kill with most weapons, so Advanced Warfare manages to reduce the frustration that can appear when you get killed in just a couple of shots by someone you didn't even see.

The game also features a brand new Pick 13 customization system that allows players to equip two weapons and an array of gear and perks that are unlocked as you progress through the 50 levels. Afterwards, you can "prestige" and reset your progression, while keeping your unlocked gear.

The whole system may seem a bit confusing at first, and when combined with the new gameplay mechanics, a bit overwhelming, but after some experimentation you can soon shape your own warrior and go through all the maps easily.

For those who want to work with others, there's a special cooperative mode called Exo Survival that's basically your Horde experience. Up to four players need to withstand waves of AI-controlled enemies, ranging from other exo-equipped soldiers to drones and many other things.

You can upgrade your abilities between waves and there are random objectives offered every once in a while to make things interesting. This is pretty fun, but considering that a cooperative Zombies experience has already been confirmed as DLC, expect something much better to arrive in the future.

Visuals and Sound

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare looks quite good in terms of visuals, offering a dark but pretty experience with the same rock solid 60fps framerate. Sure, some of the visuals are way too gritty for their own good and there are quite a lot of jagged edges due to the poor anti-aliasing, but overall, things look decent. There are some noticeable frame drops during the CGI cut scenes, probably because of the loading that happens behind the scenes.

The soundtrack is quite impressive, managing to complement the action on screen rather well. Of course, the main praise is for the voice acting, with stellar performances from Spacey, as well as Troy Baker as Mitchell, who does a good job but doesn't get that much dialogue. The rest of the cast performs rather well, such as Gideon Emery, but they pale in comparison to the protagonist and antagonist.

Explore gorgeous environments

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare offers a much more innovative take on the first-person shooter series than previous installments, but it's still shackled to the core recipe of forcing players to follow allies through set piece moments in the story campaign. The multiplayer offers a higher degree of innovation and it should certainly entertain quite a lot of fans who are open to trying the new mechanics.

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