Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Reviews

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is here, and this is what we think so far

By

We’re officially in “Day Zero” territory for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the first game in Activision’s venerable series produced with Sledgehammer Games as the lead developer. Reviews are starting to surface from those who have had extended time with the game, but we’re holding off until the end of launch week to give you a proper critique. It’s important to see how the game behaves in a “live” setting.

For now, we’ve managed to knock out the entire single player campaign and spend a handful of hours messing around with both Exo Survival, Advanced Warfare‘s new cooperative mode, and competitive multiplayer. How do these pieces stack up?

Related: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare review

Recommended Videos

Let’s start with the campaign. As Call of Duty roller coaster rides go, this is a good one. In a series that survives by being reliable and never changing, Advanced Warfare‘s six to eight hour story mode feels like a fresh twist. Much like Black Ops II and Ghosts did in years past, Sledgehammer isn’t afraid to introduce new ideas. In a first for the series, these ideas bleed into the other modes as well, but we’ll get to all of that in a bit.

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare 5
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The story is as coherent as it’s been since the very first Modern Warfare waved smelling salts beneath the noses of World War II-fatigued gamers. Much like the 2007 release did to shake the series out of its Saving Private Ryan-induced funk, so too does Advanced Warfare come along with a confident step away from familiar, predominantly brown settings and convoluted war stories set in a convoluted modern world. Sledgehammer leans on simplicity: Go shoot the bad guys, and do it with style.

Related

Related: What kind of monster computer machine will you need to run Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare?

Style matters in Advanced Warfare, though not for any concrete gameplay gains. You’re just compelled by the tools the game equips you with to make like a badass. The heart of this is the new Exo suit, a powered exoskeletal armor that allows you to jump higher, hit harder, and bring an assortment of other tools to bear on surviving the game’s constrained battlefields.

The story is as coherent as it’s been since the first Modern Warfare waved smelling salts beneath the noses of WWII-fatigued gamers.

The familiar constraints are eased in Advanced Warfare. For every sequence that sticks to a pre-ordained script — sneaking through a moon-lit forest under the cover of cloaking technology, raining hell on an enemy force from the cockpit of an attack fighter, that sort of thing — there’s another that kicks down the doors and opens things up. We’ve seen wide open Call of Duty battlefields before, but Exo abilities make them feel bigger somehow, more like the lethal playgrounds the series has always aimed to capture.

There’s a brand new upgrade system that rewards players for reaching body count, headshot, grenade kill, and intel (collectibles) milestones with points to spend in a simple upgrade tree. These amount to stat boosts, buffing everything from overall health to explosion resistance to reload speed. There’s choice in how you spend your points, and it really depends on your style of play. Like to wade into the mess with everyone else? Boost up that health. Prefer to hang back and snipe while the AI maintains the front lines? Invest in recoil reduction.

More game-changing abilities, like the much-talked-about boost jumps, are defined by the overall purpose of whichever Exo suit you’re wearing in a given mission (it’s a scripted thing). The aforementioned forest creep kits you out with a sweet cloaking device, but limits the enhanced mobility that other suits enjoy. A couple of scenarios set you up with a handy grappling hook, used not just for traversal but also for stealth kills and quick, one-hit mech takedowns that drag pilots out of their powered “Goliath” suits, but limit your warrior tools in other ways.

The result is a varied campaign experience, moreso than it has been in a very long time. The pace is just right, alternating between traditional (yet still Exo-enhanced) run-and-gun warfare and a range of other activities where you’re given special tools that suit the situation. Sometimes it’s an Exo that allows you to make yourself invisible, and other times it’s a tank equipped with armor-denting explosive shells, swarm rockets, and EMP blasts.

As much as the campaign stands on its own as a Call of Duty thrill ride, the variety, particularly in the Exo abilities, serves equally well as training for Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer. On the competitive side, boost and dash capabilities are standard for every player, with more unusual functions reserved for a special slot in the Create-a-Class menu.

Related: Here’s our first hands-on with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer

The result is a dramatic shift in the way Call of Duty’s multiplayer feels. There’s an easy point of comparison in Titanfall, with Respawn Entertainment’s high-flying, parkour-inspired traversal feeding into the same spectrum of entertainment that Advanced Warfare‘s Exo suits. The latter feels more grounded in the known world. These aren’t Pilots, they’re soldiers. They don’t run on walls, and they don’t (often) summon towering mechs down from the heavens. Sure, they jump a lot higher than they have before, but there’s no hang time. For all of the enhanced mobility, much of this latest Call of Duty’s gunplay still plays out on the ground.

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare 1
Image used with permission by copyright holder

And that’s fine. Changes to the multiplayer create a shift in the flow of the action, but it’s not so dramatic that this feels like a different game. There’s a definite learning curve, and likely a frustrating one for most since the same servers that host Joe and Jane Gamer are also the training grounds for a growing eSports community. Though it’s apparent even after just a few rounds that the speed and immediacy of Call of Duty multiplayer is intact in Advanced Warfare.

Finally, Exo Survival should be immediately familiar to anyone that enjoyed Modern Warfare 3‘s similar mode. It’s wave-based survival gameplay for up to four players, with currency points earned during each round spent on upgrading gear and — fittingly — Exo abilities. It’s a challenging hold-the-line type of scenario that favors teams capable of working together and rallying around a single, defendable point.

In a blockbuster series like this, there are good games and there are bad games. This happens to be a good one.

Though Exo Survival mixes things up by introducing objective rounds that give squads one of several tasks like collecting all the dog tags that appear, searching enemy corpses for intel — that sort of thing. Complete the objective and you’re all good, and go to the next round. Fail, and you’ll have to deal with some horrible disadvantage when the next wave approaches. Maybe your primary weapons jam, relegating everyone to pistols only, or maybe your whole Exo suit system is hacked … at which point you might as well pack it all in, because the screen distortions are nigh impossible to play through.

We’ve still got a ways to go with  Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but if you’re looking for a kneejerk summation: It’s great. Yes, it’s undeniably Call of Duty. A few tweaks to movement and an arsenal of future-world weapons doesn’t change the basic style of play to the point that it’s going to usher in a whole new audience of fans.

But is that ever the point with a Call of Duty game? In a blockbuster series where iteration generally trumps evolution, there are good ones and there are bad ones. This happens to be a good one. Go get it, fanfolk. More to come on Friday.

Adam Rosenberg
Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

Editors’ Recommendations

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies: tips and tricks for beginners
A bunch of characters standing around with guns getting attacked by flying giant bugs in Call of Duty's zombies mode

After the backlash surrounding the Zombies mode in Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has returned to the round-based roots we all know and love. Well, the structure might be familiar, but this mode has more than its fair share of new tricks that will see you getting swarmed in seconds if you can't learn to adapt. If you're familiar with how Call of Duty handles its Zombies mode, you will know that there's a lot more you need to know besides just shooting zombies if you want to make it to the later rounds. If you want to survive as long as possible, we have the key tips and tricks to withstand the zombie horde in Black Ops 6.
The basics still apply

There are a few tips from past Zombies games that will serve you well here in Black Ops 6 that are worth a quick reminder. Starting off with the need to conserve ammo in the early game. Zombies are weakest in the first handful of rounds, but ammo is incredibly scarce. You can't count on getting more when you need it, so save as much as possible and try to melee as many zombies as possible. Only shoot if you get swarmed, need to save a teammate, or when a boss or elite shows up.

Read more
The best Wildcards in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Kill Order gameplay in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

The concept of a Wildcard might sound like a risky endeavor in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, but this part of your loadout isn't random at all. We haven't seen this system since Cold War, and even those who remember it from that game will need to learn all the new cards there are in Black Ops 6. You can only equip a single Wildcard on your loadout, but they are powerful enough to completely redefine your playstyle. So far, there are only six to unlock while grinding through the levels with your friends, but picking just one is still a tough choice, especially if you want to use a permanent unlock on one after hitting Prestige. We've ranked all the Wildcards in Black Ops 6 so you can always have the winning hand.
All Black Ops 6 Wildcards, ranked

There is a level of personal preference in which Wildcard you will find better than others, but in most cases, the ones we've ranked as the best will help every player gain an edge in online matches. Here's our ranking of each Wildcard from best to worst, along with what level you unlock them at.
Perk Greed - Level 54
The last Wildcard you unlock is easily the most powerful. Perk Greed lets you unlock a fourth Perk to your loadout instead of being limited to three, which can borderline break the game if you choose the right set of Perks. It is also the most versatile of the Wildcards since it gives you the most options to play with instead of a specific bonus you may not find useful. It can also more easily unlock the special bonus buff you get for equipping three Perks from the same category.
Gunfighter - Level 33
Right in the middle of the unlock list, Gunfighter is one Wildcard you could easily make a case for over Perk Greed in some situations. This one increases your attachment points for your primary weapon by three. If you're rocking a top-tier weapon already, this Wildcard can let you tweak its stats even higher. We rank it second because it only applies to one weapon and thus is a bit more limiting.
Overkill - Level 24
For such an early Wildcard, Overkill is quite a powerful choice. This card lets you equip any weapon (except melee weapons) in your Primary and Secondary slots instead of the ones typically reserved for each. That means you can build a loadout with two Primary weapons and be far more versatile on the battlefield. Instead of having to trade off range, damage, rate of fire, mobility, or any other aspect of your game, you can cover almost all your bases by picking two Primary weapons that cover each other's weaknesses.
Prepper - Level 45
Field upgrades are powerful, don't get us wrong, but having two instead of one isn't always that much of a game-changer. It's a bit less useful than Gunfighter only because field upgrades are more situational and require more attention to use to their full potential. If that's you, then this is a great choice.
Danger Close - Level 38
Who doesn't want another grenade, Molotov, or combat axe? Is getting a second Lethal worth the Wildcard slot, though? Not in our opinion. Most of the time, Lethals are used in desperation or as a way to deny enemy movement for a time, and even then, they are risky because of how vulnerable you are while using them.
Tactical Expert - Level 15
The first Wildcard you get is better than nothing, but only just. It's exactly like Danger Close, only you can hold two Tacticals instead of Lethals. This is, by nature, a little worse since Tacticals don't have the ability to kill an enemy (unless you get super lucky and you directly hit an enemy with one who is on low HP). You can get some use out of them, but you're better off upgrading as soon as you have another option.

Read more
How to become Aetherella in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies
A horde of zombies about to get slammed in Black Ops 6.

There are a lot of tips and tricks to learn just on the multiplayer side of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 but nothing can compare to how many secrets are tucked away in the Zombies mode. While there are only two maps at launch, they are both packed with Easter eggs to discover. If you've explored Liberty Falls then you've no doubt come across the statue of the supervillain known as Aetherella in the comic book shop, but did you know you can actually play as her? It's just as fun as it sounds, and will earn you a Trophy, but is not easy to do without some help.

Read more