The "Call of Duty" franchise is one I have a love/hate relationship with. On one hand, I love it because I was weaned on classic, first-person-shooters like "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom," so it is hard-coded in my gamer DNA to love and cherish a quality FPS...and the "Call of Duty" games are almost always that. On the other hand, this series has almost single-handedly given rise to the "dudebro" and the "hey, I'm-12-and-my- parents-don't-love-me-so-I'm-going-to-yell-vile-crap-at-people-all-day" culture that has turned online gaming (mostly on Xbox Live) in a cesspool, swirling with the lowest common denominator of humanity.
That being said, it's been some time since I reviewed a "Call of Duty" game (seven years...since "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare"), but this newest version, "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," intrigued me because of two reasons: the fact that you get to play as a "Starship Trooper"-esque super-soldier (the book version, not the movie version) with crazy augmentations, and the fact that Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey plays a main role in the game's narrative. I could and would watch Spacey talk to a wall for two hours...if he felt so inclined to do so.
"Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" came out a week ago, and I've had an opportunity to spend a good amount of time with the game since then. It's good...damn good. The people at Activision and Sledgehammer Games know how to craft a quality FPS. It's not Shakespeare (not even with the inclusion of Spacey), but I didn't expect it to be. It's a high-octane action movie set in 2054 that you get to mess around with for seven or eight hours while gleefully blowing various terrorists morons to Kingdom Come. I dig the inclusion of the "advanced" abilities (drone strikes, shields, climbing magnets, overdrive, super-jump...just to name a few), and Spacey's character, Johnathon Irons, really comes across as well-rounded, complex individual...who may, or may not, be the over-arching villain of the piece. I honestly thought his inclusion in this title was going to be minimal and gimmicky at best, but I actually enjoyed the scenes with Irons and had no desire to skip them because they were making me cringe as if I just quaffed down a whole pitcher of homemade lemonade.
So, those are my overall thoughts on "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare." Let's see what my peers had to say about the game as well:
Brian Albert at IGN says: "Simply throwing a robot suit onto 'Call of Duty' could have been a lazy path to making 'Advanced Warfare' seem different from what we've played before, but the way Sledgehammer has integrated its enhanced abilities and choices into every aspect of how we fight went above and beyond. By designing the levels in the campaign, co-op, and multiplayer to facilitate those new mechanics, 'Advanced Warfare' is granted a weight and importance that changes how the fast-paced shooting action feels in all three modes. This is a 'Call of Duty' game to its core, but one that rehashes as little as possible while still retaining its strengths."
"'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare' is a complete package then," writes Tim McDonald of Inc. Gamers. "Offering both an endearingly silly campaign and the typical live-fast die-fast multiplayer (with new emphasis on height), although it's a package that provides a nagging sense that it really should be a bit more than it is. Make no mistake: it's a good 'Call of Duty' game. It just treads a little too close to its predecessors to be considered a truly great one."
The acerbic Jim Sterling at the Escapist elaborates: "Despite a handful of extra playthings, this is the 'CoD' campaign you've come to know and tolerate. The attempts to provide dramatic sequences have gotten more desperate, and the coddling of the player is harder to ignore, but if you just want to shoot some dudes, 'Advanced Warfare' can at least do that, wrapped up in a story that wants to try and make a statement about something, but can't decide what. Is it pro-military? Anti-military? Is CEO Kevin Spacey an evil extremist, or does he have a point? Are governments inefficient? Can corporations do good? These are all questions 'Advanced Warfare' could have addressed."
"Sledgehammer has made some bold moves with their first Call of Duty title. With the addition of a new dimension and brand new weapon types, Advanced Warfare's multiplayer feels great. It's fast paced, it's smooth, and it feels rather well balanced. Add to that a genuinely compelling single player, and Advanced Warfare does enough to reignite anyone's interest in the series," extols Calvin Robinson of God is a Geek.
And finally, Ron Whitaker of GameFront, who subtitled his review "Stagnant Warfare," states: "It's a competent shooter that scratches exactly the itch that 'Call of Duty' players want scratched - a new setting, some new abilities, and lots of new maps within which to shoot each other. Just don't expect anything you haven't already seen before."
As of this moment, "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's" Metacritic score stands at 82 (5.4 user score) on the Xbox One; 83 (5.8 user score) on the PlayStation 4; and 81 (4.7 user score) on the PC.
