Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Review
Hey there, fellow casual gamer! This page serves to share my experience with playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. My overall experience summarized is: it's a cool game to play for anyone into Sci-Fi or FPS games, and having played it only once, it was a great experience.
Story:
The story wasn't too bad. The idea of a private military corporation forming a collusion against the world for the sake of control and safety 'for their vision' is quite intriguing. I liked the take, and it's not a simple good vs. evil directive as it can be debatable whether this antagonistic approach served from a story perspective is actually 'evil' in its sense. It can be compared to a simple communist state, e.g., Russia and China are communist states, but it seems people live peacefully there, from an outsider's view that is. I've never been to those places, but seeing what talent has been produced from those countries, that is, its citizens, I would say communism isn't point-blank evil. The campaign for Call of Duty Advanced Warfare I played was (to be updated), and I should say it was compact and well-directed. I didn't feel there were any holes beyond the pace of the story (except for the beginning where a newly introduced character suddenly got sacrificed), but otherwise, the story was traceable in comprehension. I would recommend it to the casual gamer and those looking for a new experience, it's not too far from how one could predict how your giant typical American corporate could behave like!
Gameplay:
There is not much to comment about the gameplay for anyone familiar with the Call of Duty franchise. It features your fundamental gun-play controls that are usually customizable in the modern era for everyone, and there are accessibility options as well! Being more technology-inspired, I would say it is definitely worth a play for Sci-fi fans in general as guns are impressively different and 'enhanced' over the guns you'd commonly come across in real life. Some guns feature a UI-friendly display for your bullet and grenade count, and some guns only operate on kinetic energy! The EXO-suit is your technological body armor, and I should say that would be way more awesome to take over your standard body armor you'd find in real life if it were possible. You can 'super jump' with it, you can quick-step sideways, which I believe has a pneumatic mechanism attached to the suit, and it can 'go invisible.' Yes, these are sci-fi concepts for now which I believe have the possibility to manifest in real life. I do believe the technology imagined in Call of Duty games definitely has the possibility to be crafted by the U.S. military, whether in the same timeframe as the setting of the Call of Duty game itself or a bit further in delay. It can definitely be a reality, which can be scary or exciting, but such feeling is no different from the A.I. revolution. Player experience / Player Options: Most games are better with a friend, in almost all cases where possible. There is not much for the single player to experience in other options besides the campaign, except for EXO survival and multiplayer with bots. I generally do not recommend playing multiplayer with randoms in a Call of Duty game, as it can be... hectic. For peace and satisfaction, it would be best to ignore the multiplayer feature unless it involves your friends; then all is well. EXO survival is cool. I played different maps with that mode, but it falls short. Each map has the same deployment of enemies at the same round, which makes it repetitive and boring. Had it had some random element to it or featured different skins of enemies (at least!), I would have played all the maps, but that repetitive element makes it unmemorable for the most part to anyone wanting to play it. It would probably be better with a friend. There is one exception: the last round of EXO survival features zombies, which is quite a clever tactic to advertise the Zombies DLC for Advanced Warfare. But to get there, you need to play approximately 150 rounds of the previous maps to unlock that last round! I would be able to, unfortunately, but it becomes boring as previously mentioned with the predictable repetitive deploying of enemy types, so I couldn't carry on after a few maps. If you're the type that would like to grind, go for it!
Conclusion:
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare is a game that I would definitely recommend to the casual gamer to play at least once. There is not much replayability, and it is an old title at this point, but I'm happy to have played it once and left it alone after some EXO survival. I got this game for $2.79 for the PS3, and I do not regret my purchase for playing this as a one-time experience. I give this game an overall rating of 6.5/10.