Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Reviews
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the revitalization the Call of Duty series has needed for years. While previous games have attempted to freshen up the series with baby steps, Advanced Warfare takes a massive leap forward in every aspect. The exo suit gives players more options than running through the maps, adding untapped vertical potential to multiplayer.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare adds new life with movement and graphics, but falls short on sound design and story.
The first Call of Duty built for the current console generation, Advanced Warfare is a leap in the right direction for the series. The exoskeleton power doesn't change "everything," but it creates a fresh experience.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is it's own unique game and does well in telling in a fantastic story that's well worth the experience. Multiplayer is entertaining as ever and controls remain fluid and responsive as set by it's own standard.
Sledgehammer Games has seen the future, and it works.
The culmination of changes in Advanced Warfare make it the freshest playing entry in the series, and the largest departure from its norm.
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare once again proves why this series is so popular and more importantly, it feels like a next-gen title with exceptional graphics and almost flawless gameplay. The story is brilliant and with the inclusion of Kevin Spacey, it's like you're the star of some Hollywood blockbuster movie and this is where the game shines, in single-player. Multiplayer is fun but cannot match the epic scale of the story of Call of Duty Advanced Warfare but even so, it's going to be a game that I'll be playing for quite some time.
Rescued by fearsomely good multiplayer
Despite a multi-player mode that's difficult to love and a pretty atrocious story, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare pleasantly surprised. It adds enough to the core of the game – the infantry action and gun-play – that the campaign never felt like a chore and none of the set pieces and vehicles outstayed their welcome. A new engine and new ideas breath new life into a series that was in serious danger of turning stale.
With gorgeous visuals and the best campaign seen in years, Advanced Warfare won't convince people that hate the franchise that it's good, but former fans should return to see how the franchise has progressed.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is a great action game, full of high tension moments and brilliant gameplay. It refreshes the old formula sufficiently to keep it interesting - but doesn't do enough to become something special in its own right. It's a lot of fun to play, but with a short campaign, uneven story, and by playing things a little too safe, it's not quite as advanced as it claims to be.
So that's my final opinion on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The single-player is phenomenal, and the multiplayer is good but limited by its own unlock system. I personally think the story alone is worth a purchase, and I hope that this becomes the mark of Sledgehammer Call of Duty titles in the future. Personally, I have played enough Call of Duty multiplayer already, heck, I have played enough first person shooter multiplayer in general, to know what I am getting in a multiplayer suite like this. Robot suits and double jumps and future weapons are all decently cool additions to the multiplayer formula, but a studio that is willing to criticize the U.S. government, capitalism, and global war culture in its story is a true rarity worthy of praise.
There are options all over the place -- asymmetrical multiplayer, open-world single-player, full narrative co-op, user-generated content, more use of vehicles off rails, grappling hooks in goddamned multiplayer... and so on. None of that is meant to lead you to believe this is a bad game -- it's the best Call of Duty since Modern Warfare and may in fact be better, but saying that isn't because it's changed the series' formula the way that game did, rather it's refined it. And maybe that's not the fault of any of the developers working on the game, and rests more squarely on the shoulders of the publisher who sets that beat I've talked so much about.
Call of Duty Warfare Infinite comes to the market with a lot of content, but little that is truly innovative. The campaign goes smoothly and lasts six hours, with no major twists. Specialist, perhaps, is the most interesting element of the mode and seems deliberately hidden and not valued properly. Jackal and Zero-G are interesting, but also have little space in the game. As for the multiplayer, there are new classes and the introduction of the crafting and "Mission Teams", of great interest for a greater involvement in the progression of the character, partially fails to evolve the game mechanics and gunplay. Zombies in Spaceland has no real problems but, apart from the madness of the situation and the many easter eggs, it repeats more or less the same concept of the series. In summary, a solid product that doesn't dare, but perhaps it should. Because the contents are so many and not bad, but the fun is sometimes hard to come by.
Review in Italian | Read full review
This sort of ridiculousness proves a good fit with Call Of Duty's metamorphosis. The removal of any meaningful ideology—however toxic it was when present—has diminished Call Of Duty to the level of pure fancy. It is, in other words, free to be silly.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare ticks all the boxes you'd expected from a title in the series, righting the wrongs of Ghosts' trudging campaign and lackadaisical multiplayer, delivering a set-piece laden showcase that succeeds in becoming an awe-inspiring sight. It's big, it's brash, it's bold, but it's certainly not clever. The core functionality of Advanced Warfare is as great as ever, but the questions will always be raised as to whether the series has changed enough to warrant a purchase. CoD: AW is a baby step in the right direction, and you'll likely get weeks if not months of play out of it, but those still tired of the Call of Duty formula would do well to stay away.
Activision injects some much-needed fun into their cash cow's bones, but its brain is still paranoid and its heart still cold.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the video game equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. There's a lot of flash and not much substance. If you just want explosions and spectacle (and don't mind being penalized in multiplayer for having a fast connection), then grab the disc and pop it into your console because Advanced Warfare delivers those in spades.
While by no means, a 'Game of the Year' contender as a whole, it is a must purchase and will serve, hopefully, as a template to be refined over this generation of gaming.
But as someone who deeply cares about narrative in game, it's immensely frustrating to see the money that Activition is clearly throwing at the narrative not bearing fruit. People tell me that narrative isn't important to Call of Duty, but if that's the case then Activision should not be investing in Kevin Spacey, and should simply pull the plug on single player and invest solely in multiplayer gaming. More than anything else I do believe that if you're going to do a story, you should do it properly. There's the world of potential in Call of Duty franchise to be the games industry's take on The Hurt Locker, so yes, is does annoy me that Activision seems to be more interested in generating endless clones of Black Hawk Down.