Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

After what feels like years I finally got back to the next Call of Duty game in the series I've yet to finish. This time its Advanced Warfare. I knew nothing about it, but by the looks of it its looks like they're going with the fiction based scifi futuristic approach. Well, I usually am not a big fan of that setting so...

The premise is...the game starts off...uhh..I beat the game like 1 hour ago and I still barely even know. Something something CEO (Kevin Spacey) of super rich company building Exosuits and high-technology, then some point in the campaign theres a super secret twist where hes now the evil guy that wants to take over the world and have "A war to end all wars" - I don't really know, its all kinda stupid. Yeah it has super high budget and production values, its got the famous actor Kevin Spacey playing at first as the main friendly guy, then antagonist, but beyond that the plot is just generic and forgettable. Atleast the big name actors keep it interesting, the story would be a lot less exciting without him I think.

The whole game you're being handheld by a small team of other AI. The main guy is called Gideon and hes this old gruff kind of basic pro tactical war guy. He kinda just tells you where to stand, when to run, where to move, what to do , at all times. Its like the game forbids you to ever think for yourself. It's so on-rails and corridor it feels like a mobile game or one of those Arcade games you play by aiming a light gun at the screen. I mean really, the whole campaign you barely feel like you have any freedom at all. Every step of the way is just some AI telling you exactly what to do or the objective is just "Follow the npc". What the fuck.

The basic gameplay and combat is all of this super futuristic high-tech weaponry and novelty abilities. But you dont even get to choose your loadout or pick which gadgets you want. I dont know why these modern COD games dont just let you pick your load out, at least have some semblance of player agency and freedom but nope. Every mission starts off with a little screen that shows what gadgets you have avalible for the mission, stuff like Slow-mo, double jump booster pack, Walking on walls etc. But most of the shit you can only do at scripted segments when the AI tells you. Other times, the controls are so shit and clunky that just trying to fumble with the DPAD to try to activate your abilities is more hassle than its worth, constantly pressing the wrong buttons and abilities. The grenade controls are also shit, you have two 'cateogries' of grenades or some shit. Left bumper is the tactical grenades which is stuff like showing all enemies through walls (wall hacks) or EMP grenade and some other thing. Right bumper pulls out the lethal grenades like Frags, Homing grenade, etc. Then once you hold a bumper you have to slowly cycle through the grenades in the category with another button. Its clunky as hell, how the fuck did they make the controls on a call of duty game so awkward and clunky?  The HUD is atrocious and hideous, theres not really a HUD but its like your guns have all sorts of technogizmo screens all over them showing your ammo counts and this and that, its a mess and isnt that cool to look at. I generally just kind of hate the way all the weapons look, its too futuristic and far removed from anything tactical or immersive or anything, it just looks dumb and gimmicky and over the top. The weapon system is the basic two gun limit where you just walk around and pick up different guns. But moreso than any other COD game they all kind of look the same and have nonsensical names so you'll never remember what gun is what, none of them really act any differently and 90% of them are just some marginal variation on a machine gun. The only thing that really matters is what attachments the gun has. Stuff like red dot sight, acog sights, or the best thing in the game: "Target enhancer" - I quickly realized that any gun that has the attachment 'Target enhancer' is just overpowered because when you aim, it lets you see a highlight of enemies behind all the walls so its like free wallhacks. Ok, game figured out. Ignore every gun and just pickup Target Enhancer. Great.

I played the difficulty Hardened and it was probably a mistake. But I dont want to play some piss easy, linear, corridor AI handheld game with ZERO challenge, but the Hardened mode here wasnt any fun either. You kind of just randomly take damage from all sides like thousands of peasents throwing peas at you, your screen is constantly covered in jelly (low health) and you just have to sit in a corner and wait for the jelly to go away from all the peasents throwing peas at you. Nowadays, the more I think about COD campaigns the less and less theyre appealing. This is mostly just fucking stupid. Yeah Its kinda dumb fun seeing just how many millions of dollars these developers can throw into making a campaign so over the top and flashy, chaulk full of scripted events cutscenes and dumb corny patriotic voice acting, but the actual gameplay segments like I said before are so handheld it feels like every level is just one giant hallway escort mission, except in reverse, where the AI is escorting me. I would  die multiple times almost every checkpoint, but its like I dont even think I can say its a player skill issue or something, it just feels like the way the enemy combat works is like RNG if I get hit by bullets or not. It just feels weird and bad like theres some number generating rolling dice that if I'll get hit too many times or something. I don't know, its been awhile since COD combat felt that exciting and interesting.


A lot of the levels are very samey with nothing standing out. It's a lot of high tech warehouses, city streets, factories, labratories. Thats about it. Theres about 15 missions, and from my memory it seems like almost half of them are just pure bullshit or filler. Like these boring handholdy stealth missions where all you do is follow the AI around and wait for him to tell you when to move. Or these shitty vehicle missions where you fly a jet through a laughably linear path while shit blows up around you. Or the car sections where once again you just drive in a straight line with a few left or rights to take. Or the mech suit sections...just ugh. It really is like the whole game is just some corridor but its just an illusion that youre in this big packed world, but just the walls of the house are painted with a sky texture. On the one hand the game has really impressive graphics, with great lighting shadows and shaders, and high quality character models, but on the other hand if you can see through the facade everything is so small scale and on-rails that the illusion just kinda falls apart. It's a really shallow game, constantly it will say "You are outside the mission area!" Like if youre not doing EXACTLY what the script says the game shits its self and demands you return to the script. It barely even feels like a fucking video game, it just feels like I'm acting out a script to make the program go to the next step. Weird.

I dont know if my nostalgia is blinding me or what, were previous cod campaigns this linear and without player freedom? Was every single mission just following some AI jackass around? I dont think so , but its been awhile... But yeah, theres like two missions I can even remember and I just beat the game 1 hour ago. One mission I remember is this giant straight bridge. All you do is crawl your way in a straight line across this bridge, hiding behind parked cars. The only reason I remember it is because its like the only mission in the game where you almost feel like you have some agency to do what you want instead of just following AI. So it was just a dumb mission that acted basically like a shooting gallery where you are free to progress at your own pace and engage in the gameplay as you wish. The other mission was around the beginning where you go through this little villa, then inside these houses to rescue the president. Turns out, as a twist, the whole thing is just a testing simulation to prepare your character for his new bionic arm, and they make you play the whole segment twice. It wasnt exactly great, but I guess memorable.

Of course the game has to force in some sort of upgrade mechanic,so at the end of every level you get these upgrade points, i guess depending on how many headshots you got, or how many kills, or whatever shit, and you can upgrade stuff like your recoil reduction, health, grenades, sprint. Nothing crazy. Really barebones. I'd almost prefer if this shit wasnt even in the game and it was just fully balanced around one setup, but nope, its a modern game so it needs a upgrade ability.

Towards the end of the game you meet up with different characters, this lady character which is pretty boring where you just stealth around or do this dumb drone minigame on a computer screen which was really boring and frustrating, the game has some bad use of objective markers where sometimes it should have objective markers telling you what to do when it doesnt, like the drone segment with the glass building being just a total fucking mess and annoyance. Yeah theres just way too many dumb, filler, novelty, gimmicky level segments. I remember having this problem with the last game, Ghosts, too. Just give me straight up, boots on ground, constant well designed levels, where I dont have to follow a fucking AI guy around waiting for the script to play out, where I get to use cool and fun guns, and high production quality. They cant do it anymore. Its the most dumbed down, boring, predictable, hand-holding baby shit ever, as I said before, It barely feels like I'm playing a video game, but like watching a script play out where I sometimes do a few trivial things here and there.

Atleast the games shooting is just decent, again, I dont like any of the weapons or the arsenal, i cant remember a single weapon, only the stupid wall-hack attachment gun scope. I dont even know what to say about all the bionic arm gimmicks, they just felt shoehorned in as an excuse to say this game did something different than the last. The most entertaining part about the game was Kevin Spacey and how he big surprise, turns into a bad guy that wants to take over the world. It was just interesting to watch the high production values and big budget over the top explosion segments and what not.

Towards the end of the game, the last few missions just start taking a nose dive. First of all you have to do this boring jet level which was a joke. Then, your arm gets blown off so you have to play an entire level with just one arm, which means you cant reload, which means you constantly have to pickup a new gun. Atleast it was a change of pace, and atleast it was a level that made me feel like I actually had to do something myself instead of follow AI but it was overall kinda stupid. Then the last mission is a fucking mech section where you have to do this annoying romp through the streets spamming rockets at everything that moves, of course I died multiple times to random bullshit, yada yada, you get to the end of the game and make Kevin Spacey fall off a cliff then end credits. Ok. Like I said, the best thing about the game is just sitting back and watching out a dumbed down, linear, easy to play action movie basically, but especially the whole futuristic fictional spin on the COD series, the way they've taken it here with how unasthetically pleasing the whole arsenal is, the goofy exosuits, the boring, unimaginative levels, this might be one of the worst COD campaigns I've played so far.

4/10