Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s first downloadable content expansion — Havoc — is here. Four maps inject some fresh environments into the game’s competitive mulitplayer mode, giving players an assortment of new warzones in which to run around and shoot things.
But what are the best places to shoot things? Where can you hide when you want to get the drop on some fools? Why does that clown keep barfing bombs out of his hat?
Let’s take a look at Havoc‘s new maps and get a better sense of what’s new.
Core
Core is set in the remains of an abandoned nuclear plant, deep in the sandy wastes of the Gobi Desert. It’s got a roughly circular layout, with open spaces to the north and south where the two teams spawn.
Core also features its own, special scorestreak reward, obtainable from care packages. The Decontamination Drone award sends out small, flying attack pods that seek out the enemy team.
The open-air east and west edges of the map are dotted with cover, acting as flanking routes from one spawn to the other. There’s a central chamber that’s accessible via hallways in the north, south, east, and west. Much of the action tends to focus around that chamber and its connecting hallways.
There’s an advantage to be had if your team can control the central chamber, since so much of the action funnels into that location. Close-quarters players are best off sticking to the central chamber and its hallways, but long sightlines to the east and west offer good opportunities for snipers.
Drift
Ski resorts are a common theme in Call of Duty multiplayer maps, and Drift is the latest example. Its snow-covered Rocky Mountains setting is a large, sprawling, and primarily outdoor location. Trees, snow banks, and rocks provide plenty of cover, along with a handful of indoor spaces.
The rectangle-shaped map funnels the action around a central courtyard space, featuring a small, working carousel, multiple entry points, and little in the way of cover. There’s quick access to virtually any part of the map from here, but running through is a risk.
Roughly halfway into any match, sirens start to blare throughout the mountain village, signaling an imminent avalanche. Snow rushes in shortly after the alarms sound to decimate roughly one-third of the map (where the Christmas kiosks are). Stay away until the snow has settled.
The opposite side of the map is occupied by a train station that offers easy access to Drift’s more elevated, sniper-friendly locations. There are good sightlines for those that like to operate at a higher elevation, but not a lot of cover. Drift is very balanced overall, with layout quirks that suit virtually any type of strategy you care to bring.
Sideshow
Sideshow is a sniper’s paradise. It’s an open-air, abandoned amusement park-slash-resort filled with creepy clown iconography and rundown, rooftop-accessible buildings. The central space is death valley, with little in the way of cover and sightlines galore for snipers that happen to be positioned along the fringes of the map.
Players on both teams need to be mindful of the large clown sign in the middle of the map. At various points during a match, it laughs and lifts its hat, revealing a rocket turret that launches explosives indiscriminately around the map. The blasts aren’t just deadly, they also have a wide area of effect, so be wary.
If it’s not apparent by now, it’s best to stick to the edges of the map. The gas station and motel rooftops are ideal sniper perches, though the motel interior doubles as a great ambush location to get the drop on enemies gunning for your snipers.
Sideshow is not a map that favors lone wolves. Very few locations off effective all-around cover, so it’s always best to have someone watching your six.
Urban
Havoc‘s lone cityscape is the Urban map, set in a Texas city under curfew. It’s the smallest offering in the new map pack and possibly the smallest in Advanced Warfare on the whole, built more around elevation than sprawl.
Urban’s action swirls primarily around a central courtyard outside the map’s main, multi-floor building (the area with the “Century Station” sign). There’s an interactive event on the map as well, and it opens up some additional ground-level areas that offer good opportunities for close-quarters combat.
Avoid the open spaces in the middle of Urban and stick to the stairways, ledges, and windows as much as possible. The map’s tight confines and abundance of nooks and crannies creates a fast pace with high kill counts. Chaos reigns supreme in Urban, so just embrace it, shoot everything, and try to keep a low profile.
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