Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Multiplayer Review

Another year, another Call of Duty has landed onto my desk. Having not really followed the production of the franchise for the past two years, I got the game installed and jumped in without too much thought. Four hours later, I realised it was 2 AM and I should probably go to sleep.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is quite possibly one of the most fun multiplayer experiences I've ever had with a Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare. I spent the first twenty minutes or so of my multiplayer experience just setting up my character, classes and calling cards because I’m just that sort of guy.

The customisation system has had quite the overhaul and you can now pick and choose everything from the hat atop your beefy soldier head, down to the shin guards and shoes which show off just how L337 you are. You can also choose whether you’d like to murder other players as a man or a woman, which is a nice touch. We’re still stuck with default head choices but hey, I can’t expect a fully fledged customisation system when you rarely see your own face.

There’s a decent amount of options of clothing to choose from straight off the bat and, as you play, you can unlock more via Supply Drops. You get awarded these for doing a variety of things such as completing challenges or your overall playtime within the game and, once opened, they award you with a random assortment of items which will either be in the variety of clothing, weapons or reinforcements. The weapons you unlock are variations of the base guns available to you with slight changes to base stats, skin and sometimes attachments. The reinforcements are the rarest of the trio and are used within your multiplayer matches. They come in the form of perks, scorestreaks, XP multipliers, and rapid supply drops (the scorestreak). The loot that you get from Supply Drops comes in three rarity values: Enlisted, Professional and Elite. If you’re not a fan of the item you've received you can exchange it for XP instead by selling it with the prices being 500, 1,000 and 2,000 respectively. Personally, I really enjoy this new system as it’s sort of a little gift once you get out of game. I’m also a bit of a sucker for loot.

Once you've completely customised your soldier, also known as an Operator, in the clothing department, it’s time to move into your gun loadouts because everybody knows, if you don’t have the right loadout, you might as well be wearing a beacon that constantly reigns missiles down atop your precious little noggin. Whilst the loadout screen is pretty much the same as in every other Call of Duty game, there’s a few differences. Advanced Warfare has adopted the Black Ops point system using 13 instead of 10. What this means is that you can pick and choose what you want to take to the battlefield with you, providing you don’t have more than 13 items. Would you rather have an extra grenade than a sidearm? Go for it! Scorestreak items are also part of this point system so, if you don’t really get very high on your scorestreak usually, why not exchange it for some perks?

On the note of the scorestreak, you can now add modifiers, also known as Modules, to them which will change how they work but increase the price. For instance, if I wanted to make my UAV last longer, I could add that module to it, but it would make it cost another 100 points when in-game. The final big change in the loadout screen is the Exoskeleton. This is the pièce de résistance of Advanced Warfare and the biggest change from previous titles in the franchise. The Exoskeleton (here on out known as Exo) attaches to your Operator and gives them extra abilities. Every player, by default, can use boosters to Boost Jump up and also use the boosters to dash in any direction whilst in the air. The addition of the Exo has, for me, made the game a lot more dynamic and made me play a lot more cautiously. Early on in my time with AW, I would constantly be shot from above because I never really thought to look atop a seemingly harmless ledge that, in previous games, I would have ignored. It was around about the seventh or eighth time of dying that it began to click that I had to look up.

Players can also add one or two (if they have the Wildcard added for it) Exo Abilities to their loadout. There are abilities for pretty much any playstyle such as going invisible, running faster, silencing your footsteps and even conjure a shield in front of you. Now, before somebody reaches for the OP bell, these Exo Abilities run off an internal battery which, once out of juice, does not recharge. The player will need to respawn before using the ability again. Each ability also has it’s own drain on your battery so, for instance, invisibility will run out the battery a lot faster than silent footsteps. This creates a more balanced environment for the players overall.

So now you've gotten yourself a dashing outfit and a deadly loadout and you’re ready to jump into the game! Luckily, there’s a lot of different game modes to choose from, along with your standard ones. Some of note are Uplink and Momentum. In Uplink, players have to either carry or throw Satellite Drones to their Uplink Station whilst avoid being killed by the enemy team, and Momentum tasks each team with collecting all of the flags placed within the game (a new take on Capture the Flag (which is also in the game)). Unfortunately for me, a primarily Hardcore game mode player, these new game modes are only available in the Core variety but it’s a nice option to have and mixes things up a bit from the standard run-and-gun kill-fest.

I choose quite regularly to play Hardcore Team Deathmatch and, upon entering the battlefield, I noticed a couple of things. Firstly, I spent a long time painstakingly creating my perfect Operator and yet none of your modifications are shown within the game. I assume this is so you can easily tell between the two teams, but it was a bit of a blow nevertheless. The only time you can see your Operator is either in the lobby or whilst playing Exo-Survival. The second thing that I noticed was that there is practically no real place for a Sniper. There are snipers available within the game and, being somebody who primarily plays Sniper classes, it was a bit of a disappointment to discover this. This is mainly due to the design of the maps and the fast-paced gameplay. Not necessarily a bad thing exactly, but a little bit disappointing all the same. The final thing I noticed was that it’s very difficult to tell when you unlock something new for you weapon. At the end of the round, if you've unlocked either a new weapon or decal etc., you get a pop-up alerting you to this fact. With guns however, you get a pop-up when you’re in the match to say that you surpassed a challenge with no real context. The only way to see new attachments or skins for you guns is to check yourself. Whilst not game breaking by any means, it’s a minor annoyance.

In terms of maps, there are 13 available from the get go with more being added via DLC at a later date. The maps are fairly diverse and I have no doubt that you will find your favourite for your specific play styles pretty quickly. I, for instance, don’t get on particularly well with Defender as my two play styles are either run and gun or look through my sights a lot. Neither of these seem to work very well on this map and I've yet to find a style that does.

The maps themselves seem very polished and are well designed allowing for combat to take place both atop buildings (accessed via the Exo jump) and on the streets/lower tiers. A lot of so called “camping spots” seem to have been eradicated on most maps and those that remain leave you reasonably open for being attacked still. The general feel of the maps is that you shouldn’t be camping and instead, running around seeking out your prey. This sort of leads back to my point about the snipers being somewhat irrelevant within multiplayer at this current time.

Everything from the Operators to the guns to the maps seems incredibly polished and Sledgehammer Games have done a fantastic job on the models for everything. My only gripe would be that, on occasion, if you make eye contact with an operator, they seem somewhat dead inside due to their eyes. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is; it’s just not quite right and falls very nicely into the uncanny valley. Apart from this, everything looks great and hasn't seemed to affect the performance of the game overall.

I have no doubt that, for most people, the main attraction of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is it’s multiplayer aspect. If you’re wanting to drop $50+ on it simply for the multiplayer, I say go for it. You won’t be disappointed whatsoever, even if you don’t touch the Exo-Survival mode or Campaign. It’s both fun and a breathe of fresh air that the franchise desperately needed. Not to say it’s revolutionary because it’s far from it. A lot of the aspects seen within AW have been seen in other games before (TitanFall (mech suits/parkour) and Killzone (futuristic weaponry) to name only two), but it’s nice to see Call of Duty begin to expand a bit more too. You still get to mow down strangers on the internet; you can now just do it whilst flying through the air and, occasionally, stomping on their heads.