Review: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Destructoid
After the disappointing Call of Duty: Ghosts, Activision needed fresh ideas, and Sledgehammer was just the developer for the job. Even before it delivered its first game, a weight has been lifted off of Infinity Ward and Treyarch’s shoulders. No longer does it need to turnaround a Call of Duty every other year, and there is more time to figure out how to make the series fresh again.
As a result, Sledgehammer has a lot riding on Advanced Warfare, the newest game in the series. It has everything going for it — a fresh futuristic theme, the same core multiplayer gameplay everyone knows and loves, and the talented Kevin Spacey running the show with the campaign.
The gambit paid off, even if it won’t bring back in those who have sworn off the series.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One [reviewed])
Developer: Sledgehammer Games (Current-gen) / High Moon Studios (Last-gen)
Publisher: Activision
Released: November 3, 2014
MSRP: $59. 99
Ghosts was ultimately a half-measure. While the James Bond-esque satellite kinetic rod cannon was a cool idea, the game didn’t really explore futuristic technology as much as augmented existing tech. Advanced Warfare throws any conception of modern-day limitations out the window, and it’s that much better for it. The gimmick this time around is the Exo Suit, changing the face of near-future war into that of a super soldier.
The suit allows you to jump higher, dash faster, and slam into things with greater strength than ever before. Right off the bat the game feels fresh — like a faster-paced Call of Duty — like something the series should have experimented with before this point. Heck, you can even air dash and double-jump — in a Call of Duty game!
Items like the Threat Grenade, which shows a heat-reading of all of the enemies within your field of view really drive the point home that this is not your typical fare, and I love that it feels so different in just about every game mode. You can also do things like flip-up a makeshift riot shield instantly from your suit, cloak, and shoot grenades out of your arm. Frickin’ laser beams are also in and are a joy to see in multiplayer.
We’ve finally come to the point where the franchise can be considered “current-gen” by any standard. While Ghosts was developed primarily for last-generation hardware, the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 versions have the top honors here, and it shows. The faster gameplay really lends itself well to a farther draw-distance and a smoother framerate, and load times are drastically improved.
For many, the big draw is the new story, featuring the lovable Kevin Spacey as Jonathan Irons. Over the course of 15 missions you’ll embark upon a journey with Spacey as your PMC boss, earning new gear and augmentations for your suit as his character starts to become more and more power hungry. Spacey does not phone it in — he gives a great, animated performance that’s worthy of his top billing, and the campaign is worth playing just for him alone.
Of course, the missions themselves are still practically on-rails, which will probably lead many people out there to skip the campaign again in favor of jumping right into multiplayer. With games like the recent Wolfenstein bringing back the glory of open-ended maps, I would have hoped that Advanced Warfare would marry the signature action style with a less linear map layout. If you know what you’re getting into, though, it’s better than the last three Infinity Ward campaigns.
The additional “Exo Survival” mode alongside of the campaign is kind of a throwaway however, hearkening back to the Survival Mode of Modern Warfare 3. It basically pits you and a partner against an increasingly deadly set of wave-based enemies, which is just as dull as it sounds. With no real story or gimmick such as aliens or zombies, there’s a very limited amount of enjoyment to be had here. Zombies are said to arrive with the upcoming DLC, but for now you’re out of luck.
Abbreviated load times are particularly welcome for one new feature for the series — the pre-game firing range. Gone are the days where you’re scared to try guns out of fear of ruining your kill to death ratio. Now you can almost instantly fire up a virtual range to test out your gear in before the vote and countdown ends to give you a better feel of your chosen loadout.
Multiplayer once again is the main event, and some interesting changes have been made give Advanced Warfare quite a long shelf-life. In addition to the tried and true Prestige system, “Supply drops” (read: loot) are also in this time around. Now instead of using the same few guns over and over, playing more and completing challenges will earn you unique drops, with new statlines to play with.
When coupled with the new training ground between matches, you’re actually encouraged to change up your style constantly — a fresh concept for hardcore fans. I also didn’t notice any real balance issues with any of the newer weapons or variants, which is also good news for casual players who still want to remain competitive.
My favorite addition is probably the “Uplink” gametype, which is basically futuristic basketball. A round object is thrown onto the battlefield, and two teams have to kill each other for it. Upon grabbing said object you can either throw it or pass it to a teammate, and the ultimate aim is to get it into the floating enemy uplink “goal.” Yep, it’s a blood sport, and it’s a ton of fun. All of the classic modes like Ground War and team deathmatch return as well.
The full-on customization “slot” system returns, which lets you change your loadout to your heart’s content outside of your basic primary and secondary weapons, and all of those wonderful toys will give you a lot of options. Killstreaks are now customizable this time around, which lets you change the parameters of the same boring old UAV you’ve played with for years. It’s another small mechanic that brings online play forward and makes it ultimately more interesting. Multiplayer takes place across 13 maps, which isn’t a lot, but thankfully the futuristic touch changes them up considerably.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare plays it a little too safe with the campaign, but it feels like a real core entry in the series, and will please fans who are jaded after last year’s release. While Treyarch is still the king of Call of Duty in my eyes, Sledgehammer Games has shown itself to be more than capable of taking over with its debut entry. Infinity Ward is now the odd man out.
Last-gen revisited: Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Just how much of a generational leap are the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 delivering in terms of the holiday season’s hottest games? That’s a topic Digital Foundry aims to explore this week as we return to some of Q4’s biggest titles, stacking the current-gen versions up against their last-gen counterparts. Are they still good games, worthy of consideration if you’ve not upgraded? And just how much that is new and exciting is being delivered by the new wave of consoles?
Built for PS4 and Xbox One hardware, Sledgehammer Games’ new Call of Duty engine births a much-needed tech revolution in the series. Top-end features like enhanced motion capture, subsurface scattering, and a physical-based approach to lighting all make the cut. It’s a surprise, then, to find Xbox 360 and PS3 versions also on the shelves — but does the culling of these features leave the core gaming experience intact, or is the end product a very different game?
There’s an argument that, while the new wave of games consoles has handed in some exceptional graphics, in many ways the gameplay feels as though it hasn’t moved to anything like the same extent. Looking at Advanced Warfare on PS3 and Xbox 360 allows us to put the theory to the test. The results aren’t always pretty, but the basic framework of Advanced Warfare still demonstrably holds together. Judging by the first few campaign missions, PS3 and 360 owners are given the same core level designs set in Seoul and Africa, with the same set-pieces involving drone swarms and trundling mechs, and even the same segments of cinematics. Backing that up, we’re looking at a 60fps target too — a staple for the series — but with mixed fortunes on the PS3.
This is where last-gen Advanced Warfare takes a sour turn. Sony’s ageing PS3 simply does not deliver this game at a fast enough update, producing one of the choppiest campaign modes we’ve seen from the series to date. The frame-rate range is between 45 and 60fps on Sony’s hardware, typically in between the two during any shoot-out, with heavy stuttering making control inputs stick. The 360 version pulls off a much tighter frame-rate, though often shy of 60fps, and joins the PS3 with its choice to engage full v-sync.
Based on our video below, there’s no question that these games are buckling compared to the PS4 and Xbox One forerunners. But what else is lost in translation?
A campaign frame-rate analysis shows PS3 struggling to run Sledgehammer Games’ new engine, even in its stripped down form. Xbox 360 fares a little better, but it’s clear neither last-gen platform uses the same advanced rendering techniques as on PS4 or Xbox One.
Alternative analysis:
- Call of Duty Advanced Warfare — Xbox One vs Xbox 360/PS3 frame-rate test
For those keeping track of Advanced Warfare’s development, this struggle shouldn’t come as a surprise. In a recent interview with Sledgehammer’s co-founders, the project is proudly described as being based on brand new technical underpinnings, «unrestricted by last-generation hardware constraints». With the studio weaving in specific rendering features for PS4 and Xbox One, it’s left to High Moon Studios (of Deadpool and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron fame) to piece together PS3 and 360 versions based on raw code and assets designed for an engine a generation ahead. No small task.
The list of visual downgrades is too numerous to tally. To reel off the biggest points quickly, each console renders at 1024×600 (typical of last-gen series outings), with a vastly simplified lighting model, removed objects and background details, bilinear texture filtering, and reduced character geometry — notably missing the PS4 and Xbox One’s subsurface scattering for skin. The result is one of the most stark cross-generational divides in recent memory.
The loss in character detail is a big one, and genuinely affects the heft of its cinematic spectacle. Characters enact the same motion-captured scenes as on current-gen, but the presentation is wildly altered. From Kevin Spacey downwards, every face is wrapped in low-resolution normal maps that gives each a gormless, pasty look. It sorely misses the photorealistic modelling on PS4 and Xbox One too, particularly in skin tone, while the snipping of motion blur and bokeh depth of field brings a dryness to each scene’s delivery.
But does this actually affect gameplay? The immediate answer is no: Advanced Warfare is stripped of the major rendering passes used on current-gen, but each level still unfolds as its always has. Without the physical-based lighting model on PS3 and 360, the Seoul stage is unmistakably plain and bright, but no more or less a challenge as a result. Equally, physics-based particles and transparencies are cut from the opening landing scene, and textures downgraded, but none of this affects the game balance at all.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneEven from its opening shot, Advanced Warfare is a very different-looking creature on PS3 and Xbox 360. Its lighting model is completely removed, as is its gorgeous bokeh depth of field (DOF).
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneThe gameplay engine of the PS3 and 360 versions works much the same way as the current-gen releases. However, the make-up of the environment is often unrecognisable — here, the aerial battles in the distance are completely axed on last-gen.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneScreen-based object blur is also removed from the older consoles, the effect only reserved for ejected bullet shells.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneThe multiplayer Instinct stage shows a massive chasm in visual design. Xbox 360 enjoys superior texture filtering over PS3, plus added specular mapping to the tyres on the left, and broader shadow draw distances. However, both severely cut back normal map detail — and last-gen misses the dynamic shadows on this stage.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneSubsurface scattering is cut from the equation on last-gen, leaving a synthetic, simplified skin map. In this case, we see the 360 experiencing a delay streaming the texture compared to PS3 (though the reverse is possible elsewhere).
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
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Xbox OneShadow quality across Kevin Spacey’s blazer is the same between the two older consoles. Lighting is entirely overhauled for outdoor scenes too, compared to PS4 and Xbox One, though PS3’s lighting is oddly oversaturated.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OneNeither PS3 nor 360 can match up to the current-gen standard with their 1024×600 native resolutions. However, we see Microsoft’s older platform handling aliasing on blossom trees here with crisper results than the post-processed PS3.
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
PlayStation 4
Xbox OnePhysics-driven, lit particles and alpha effects are either reduced or removed. It’s almost a different scene when viewed top down. One again, differences in reflection mapping divide the last-gen consoles.
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However, it’s a different story for the multiplayer mode, and for a few reasons. Across all its included 13 maps, the heart of Advanced Warfare’s engine still ticks at a fair rate on the 360, and plays with the same cut-down visual setup as the campaign with v-sync again engaged.
But the deal-breaker is in PS3’s multiplayer performance. Stages like Detroit and Instinct suffer from shocking performance levels, on par with the campaign’s worst, and in each case the PS3 chugs along at around 45-50fps. It’s a tangibly different competitive experience to the 60fps average of Xbox One and PS4 versions, and even a relatively smooth 360 edition, sparing its low 50fps dips on heavy gunfire.
Even a lowered player cap, going from 18 on current-gen consoles to just 12 on PS3 and 360, can’t save Sony’s platform from these sustained dips. As it happens, this detracts from the scale of larger Ground War battles, though it fits into the template of existing Call of Duty games on these formats.
On top of this, Sledgehammer Games’ engine benefits from the 360’s ability to stream from HDD, as enforced by a mandatory disc two install. In most cases this cuts the loading times in half from the PS3 version, with complex stages like Instinct taking Sony’s format up to 36 seconds to fully load on a stock drive. The PS3’s reliance on streaming from its Blu-ray drive also affects the campaign cinematics; one stylish ‘white flash’ transition on the second level taking the console a few seconds to perform, while other platforms handle this instantly.
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Attribution
On balance, both PS3 and 360 remove so much from Sledgehammer Games’ current-gen renditions of Advanced Warfare, it’s often staggering to see the contrast. The new consoles have totally delivered the generational leap in visuals we would expect, but the basic package in terms of the core gameplay is in place for the older hardware, despite glaring frame-rate issues on PS3 and a lowered competitive player count for both. It can also be argued that without the existence of superior versions on newer hardware, this would still rank as a respectable last-gen entry in the series, especially compared to Ghosts before it.
The technical merits of PS4 and Xbox One hold up here, though. All the features promised to belong exclusively to current-gen consoles are, expectedly, axed for the older formats; the most striking being the way lighting is rendered. But developer High Moon Studios has been handed a near-impossible task here, and for the 360 edition at least, it receives a passing grade on the grounds of solid multiplayer frame-rate. The engine’s issues adapting to PS3 are all too evident in similar tests, however. Where the 360 can just run Advanced Warfare in a simplified form at 60fps, Sony’s older hardware is clearly stretched too far.
Looking back at the Eurogamer review, Advanced Warfare received criticism for being «derivative and unwilling to move away from the safety of formula». From our perspective, it seems that COD has indeed moved on, with a radical revamp to the visuals that modernises the game, delivering more of the visual bombast and more of the blockbuster thrills — but comparing current-gen to last-gen demonstrates pretty conclusively that the gameplay hasn’t evolved in step, something we hope to see addressed with next year’s offering.
new demo from gamescom, bundle from Xbox One
During gamescom, Microsoft held a new demo of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which showed us the Collapse level — it takes place in San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge.
During gamescom, Microsoft held a new demo of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which showed us the Collapse level — it takes place in San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Also announced was an Xbox One bundle with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, 1TB hard drive, limited edition gamepad and console with unique skins and sounds for $499.99.
Microsoft did not forget to remind you that additions for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will be released initially on the Xbox.
2014-08-12 17:53:00
Editorial
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Gamescom Trailer Below
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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare update released — [email protected], sports, esports
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare update released — [email protected], sports, esports | ICT News on json.tv
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- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare update
released
30 September 2015 07:46
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Popular shooter Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare received a new patch, which is currently only available for users of PC , Xbox One
3 and PS4 .
The new patch does not bring anything fundamentally new to the game, but fixes a number of errors in existing elements.
— Fixed bugs in displaying some textures.
— Fixed problems with the functioning of Aerial Assault Drone and Recon Drone on maps Swarm and FRACTURE , as well as zipper0062 Overload .
— Dozens of improvements to various maps, such as fixes for passing through walls and lighting problems, adding missing elements.
— In the Exo Zombies mode, the problem with playing music in the easter egg was fixed, the cost of upgrading weapons was adjusted, and the bug where zombies did not attack the player was removed.
— Many other minor improvements.
Developers primarily focus on current generation consoles and PC , but they promise to prepare a patch version for PS3 and Xbox 360 in the near future.
