Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5 /10

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is a first-person shooter game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. The Call of Duty series originated on October 29th 2003 with the release of the very first version of the game on Windows in which the Call of Duty brand has since spanned numerous consoles and become one of the most successful and highest grossing entertainment franchises of all time as proved by the close to 200,000,000 units sold across all eleven major entries into the Call of Duty series between the original in 2003 through the story arcs of Modern Warfare trilogy and Black Ops games to Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013 and Advanced Warfare having already sold millions itself with many spin-offs along the way too, alongside the billions of hours of online multiplayer gameplay logged throughout the series. The major question entering Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare must be if the new iteration brings anything new to the table to genuinely reinvent the series.

North Korea is invading Seoul in South Korea and America has to provide assistance to protect the democratic country in which the lead character Mitchell serves with his best friend whose father runs Atlas Corporation. Atlas Corporation is the world’s largest company for highly sophisticated military prosthetics and weaponry systems that can help injured soldiers to not just walk again, but actually join Atlas Corporation’s very own military unit.

A major evolution of Call of Duty is the Exo Skeleton technology, which is essentially game changing and based on real life arms machinary that has many real world applications to help people with various muscle, ligament and limb injuries to be able to move as they were once able to do so. This has been demonstrated publicly at many events around the time of launch of the game which is quite appropriate as it demonstrates this repeatedly in major sequences, while providing an outlook on the technology from a military standpoint.

The story campaign is as gripping as a Hollywood blockbuster action movie and spans 15 breathtaking chapters while crossing worldwide destinations as players execute orders in a variety of missions. There are other activities that will not be provided as an order, although you should certainly look out for within the missions, such as finding 45 pieces of intel that comes in the form of laptops hidden throughout each mission, which is a Call of Duty tradition and a great design choice as it encourages exploration of the surrounding environments.

Exo Survival is a game mode which can be played in split-screen or online co-operative or even single player akin to the Spec Ops missions in the likes of Modern Warfare 2 that sees waves of enemies wearing Exo Skeletons and being equipped with plenty of artillery along with help from canines that are collectively flanking the positions of the player and co-operative partner as they attempt to inflict enough damage to kill both characters as players participate in varying mission objectives spread across as many rounds as they can hold out and survive for. There are three types of Exo Skeletons available for selection with each one having their own sets of abilities including: Light Exo which has the fastest movement and a full range of boost abilities but with the lowest amount of armour with SMGs and assault rifles and the UAV class Scorestreak; while the Heavy Exo has the slowest movement, limited boost abilities, highest amount of armour with high damage impact from heavy weapons and a Goliath class Scorestreak; and the Specialist Exo which has normal movement, limited boost abilities, normal armour with shotguns and sniper rifles and a Sentry Gun class Scorestreak. The Exo Skeletons can be upgraded as players make it through each round by purchasing them via upgrade points. These points are awarded for progressing specifically in the Exo Survival game mode; therefore providing new Exo abilities, stats, weapons, Scorestreaks, the ability to change Exo classes and a variety of enhancements to both the Exo Skeleton and selected weaponry. There are 13 maps split into four tiers with four tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 maps, while there is only one tier 4 map, however there is a clever approach to unlocking the nine maps from tiers 2, 3 and 4 as each tier requires a certain amount of rounds to be played from the previous tier before the four maps are unlocked from the following tier with 50 rounds required to be played in tier 1 to unlock tier 2 which rises to 75 and 100 for the following tiers, alongside the ability to set your difficulty level and choose to have support drops enabled or disabled, while for those missing the zombie survival modes of previous Call of Duty games; fear not as this can be accessed in the 11th round of the Riot map on tier 4. The Exo Survival game mode provides something different in comparison to the other single player and multiplayer offerings and the excellent design choice to have three separate types of Exo Skeletons really gives players the opportunity to strategise in regards to which Exo Skeleton is best for the play style and the map being played.

There are various Exo Challenges for each mission, such as the amount of kills; headshot kills; grenade kills and intel with players percentage achieved from the maximum amount of each Exo Challenge being displayed. There are a range of Exo Skeleton upgrades that can be earned by obtaining upgrade points from successfully completing Exo Challenges with the Exo upgrades including: an improved battery for an increase in the amount of Exo ability uses; reload for an increase in said speed; recoil to reduce weapon kick; quick aim to increase the aiming speed; flinch for reducing any flinch when shot; sprint to increase sprint time; and much more besides, while each upgrade has two upgrade steps with the first upgrade step costing one upgrade point and the second upgrade costing two upgrade points as it doubles the effect of the first upgrade, therefore costing a total of 33 points to completely upgrade every area of the Exo Skeleton.

There is a range of different Exo Skeleton types with each having their own unique abilities, offensive and defensive capabilities, such as the Assault Exo which has Boost Jump allowing you to jump as though having the thrust of a jetpack, Sonics such as muffling a team’s footsteps and Stim to produce a health boost by temporarily regenerating health; while the Specialist Exo has a Riot Shield which deploys  protection attached to the arm providing cover from incoming fire, Overdrive provides the opportunity to engage a high level of focus and reflexes and Mag Gloves allows players to climb walls; alongside the Heavy Exo Skeleton type with another range of abilities.

There is a wide variety of weapons including entire ranges of assault rifles, submachine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns, heavy weapons, pistols, launchers, specials, grenades, drones, melee weapons such as tactical knives, customisable weapon attachments, Exo launchers, Exo abilities and much more besides. Each category has a plethora of weapons; the grenades have a threat grenade in them which you can throw one out from behind cover, while the threat grenade paints all hostile targets in red to provide you with the best opportunity for constructing an ambush from behind cover as some of the weapons will penetrate certain surfaces giving players the tactical advantage of an enemy not being able to see your character even though as a player you can see them, alongside a smart grenade that will move in the direction instructed to and an EMP grenade that will take out a drone when perfectly aimed.

The character design is much improved over previous Call of Duty games as it realises a real world level of detail which can be especially witnessed by Kevin Spacey as Jonathan Irons and Troy Baker as Mitchell with supreme lifelike expressions emphasising their emotions, which can also be said for every character in the cast across the various factions that cover both good and bad intentions between allies and enemies.

The environment design is just as amazing as the character design with war torn environments during the heat of battle and how they look afterwards has taken place to post-epidemic contaminated and quarantined environments as the locations take players not only across various states of America, but also across the globe to South Korea, Greece, Bulgaria, Nigeria and more countries besides.

The developer Sledgehammer Games has worked on third-person perspectives for Modern Warfare 2 and 3 in the past, although that was not included in the story campaign instead only making it into the Spec-Ops and multiplayer game modes; therefore it would be truly great to have a third-person perspective patched into the game post-launch to provide more freedom for players to play any game mode in a first or third-person perspective including the story campaign for the very first time.

The share feature and share play are both limited to particular scenes being blocked to prevent spoilers and while this is a reasonable decision regarding the block of any potential spoilers to the story campaign itself; it is still disappointing to have the share play feature receiving such limitations when it effectively provides a one hour demo for the game to anyone who were unsure of their purchase, although this will not be of any real impact to the enjoyment of the game if intending to or already have purchased it already.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare supports the remote play feature that allows players to participate in almost any PS4 game on PlayStation Vita via a Wi-Fi internet connection by pairing up the PS4 and Vita via configuring the settings on the PS4 to enable the Vita to connect to it, then entering the code provided from the settings menu on the Vita’s PS4 Link application with the initial setup taking around only two minutes. The performance during remote play is stunning with the same quality of graphics and audio as the PS4 version with plenty of positive optimisations to the controls to make the controls feel as natural as they do on the DualShock 4 controller as aiming has moved from L2 to L and shooting has been mapped to R instead of R2 which was important for two of the fundamental areas of the control scheme, while Exo abilities are now mapped to the bottom left of the touch screen and throwing grenades is now mapped to the bottom right of the touch screen, alongside sprinting of L3 now being moved to tapping the left of the rear touch pad, although players do not have to hold the touch pad and the melee has moved from R3 to the right of the rear touch pad.

There will be downloadable content available in the year following the release of the game with a season pass available to effectively pre-order each of the four content packs at a cheaper bundled price of £34.99 including new weapons, maps and much more such as the possibility of new characters and even a fully fledged zombie mode, therefore it would be great to see a return to something along the lines of the star studded Call of the Dead downloadable content from Black Ops.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller with the control scheme consisting of pressing R2 to fire a weapon; pressing L2 aim down sight; pressing R1 to throw a lethal grenade; pressing L1 to throw a tactical grenade; pressing X to jump or pressing X again at the peak of the jump to perform a boost jump; pressing square to reload or use an object such as opening an unlocked door, breaching a locked door or entering a vehicle; pressing O to crouch, slide or go prone; pressing triangle to switch between primary and secondary weapons; pressing left on the d-pad to use the underbarrel of a weapon; pressing up, down or right on the d-pad to perform an ability with your Exo Skeleton; pressing L3 to sprint, dodge or hold your breath; pressing R3 to melee an enemy or change the zoom of a scoped weapon; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move forward or backward and strafe left or right; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to look up or down and rotating left or right; pressing the share button takes players to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. The touch pad implementation displays the scoreboard in split-screen or online multiplayer games, while the DualShock 4 vibrates for every bullet wound inflicted upon the character, heavy impact landings, explosions and the recoil of the weapon as it is fired and there is no light bar implementation which is surprising as it could have produced various tones of green through yellow, orange and red to show your condition along with flashing red for near death.

There are a number of alternative control schemes to change the feel of the controls to precisely how you prefer them with four options for the stick layout and ten choices for the button layout, which is an excellent design choice as it provides the player with the confidence of knowing that there is a definitive control scheme that will perfectly match your play style.

It is immediately noticeable that the graphics are on another level beyond that of the PS4 version of Call of Duty: Ghosts as they are of such a quality that they realistically portray human emotion and facial expressions in the physical likenesses of Kevin Spacey. However, the cast of the game is not the only area of emphasis as the particle effects such as sparks and dust as well as the lighting, shadows, water and other various effects look absolutely stunning too as it certainly provides the best looking Call of Duty game throughout every aspect.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, mission select, intel, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad and the right analogue stick. The background of the main menu reinforces the notion of the cinematic experience the game provides by showcasing a range of emotions on the character’s faces while in the heat of battle or strategy.

The voice-over cast provide the air of a cinematic Hollywood blockbuster story with the two main stars featuring Kevin Spacey performing in his videogame debut and Troy Baker who is most popular for videogame roles such as Joel in The Last of Us; Delsin Rowe in Infamous: Second Son and Infamous: First Light; as well as Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain as both stars shine brightly with genuinely emotional and believable performances from Kevin Spacey talking about his son to Troy Baker’s quiver when discussing a lost friend. The sound effects include the Exo Skeleton, weapons firing from the team and enemy forces, explosions and ambient sound effects when objects are moving, a door is shut, an alarm is sounded or a building collapses, alongside atmospheric and climactic music. The DualShock 4 speaker implementation produces the sound effect when players navigate along a menu, toggling an option or opening the supply drop description menu. Despite putting the DualShock 4 speaker to at least some use; it is not as ambitiously used as it should be in a game with an atmosphere as big as this as it could have produced the story based and in-game dialogue of such characters as Jonathan Irons and Mitchell or perhaps even the Exo Skeleton, gunfire, explosions, ambient sound effects or the communication of your team orders and the enemy forces.

The trophy list includes 51 trophies with 42 bronze, 6 silver, 2 gold and 1 platinum trophy. There is a wide variety in the trophy list with some of them requiring exploration such as the History in the Making bronze trophy and Ferrum Absconsum silver trophy for collecting 23 and 45 pieces of intel respectively, while there are trophies which require players to spend one, 10, 20 or even all of their upgrade points from the start of upgrading your Exo Skeleton to having completely improved it. There are also many objective based trophies such as a total of 13 bronze trophies for completing each of the missions and the A New Era silver trophy for completing the story campaign on any difficulty level, although there is also a Hard Hitter silver trophy for completing the story campaign on hardened difficulty and the SP Prestige gold trophy for completing the story campaign on veteran difficulty. There are many trophies on offer for various combatant techniques while using weaponry, the Exo Skeleton or a combination of them both such as the Never Saw It Coming bronze trophy for boost jumping, dashing forward and stomping on an enemy using your Exo Skeleton’s range of abilities; the Escape Artist silver trophy for avoiding 20 grenades by dodging them with your Exo; the Maximum Overdrive silver trophy killing 50 enemies while using Overdrive; the Threat Detected bronze trophy for painting 10 enemies with a single threat grenade; and the Fly Swatter bronze trophy for knocking 25 Drones out of the sky with EMP grenades. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 15 to 20 hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are four difficulty levels including: recruit, regular, hardened and veteran with the major differences between each difficulty level being a certain increase in the amount of damage received from every enemy, while the damage dealt out to enemies is decreased to such a point that players will have to consistently maintain better cover and increase the accuracy of your shooting as the artificial intelligence will become even more aware of how best to flank the selected position and will shoot with a much greater level of accuracy and an immediate shoot on sight policy particularly while playing on the veteran difficulty level.

The local and online multiplayer components consist of 13 maps based upon areas from the story campaign which are accompanied by an absolute plethora of game modes spread across a variety of categories including: standard modes, bonus modes, eSports modes, classic modes, recent modes and my modes. Each category may repeat some modes for ease of access and for the purpose of clearly identifying which ones will be prefered if wanting quick access to particular game modes or want to practice for potential participation in eSports competitions. There are classic modes such as Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, Domination and Kill Confirmed to eSports favourites such as Momentum, Uplink, Capture the Flag and Hardpoint as well as bonus modes such as Infected and standard mode such as Free-for-all and Search and Rescue, which all feel incredibly different to one another in their approach and potential play styles.

Deathmatch style modes include Free-for-all in which it is every man for himself with the first player to reach the score limit ends the game or otherwise the highest scores are counted after the time limit has expired with the top three players on the podium winning; Team Deathmatch is a team based version of Free-for-all in which both teams are attempting to win the game by reaching the score limit or having the most kills when the time limit expires; and Kill Confirmed seeing everyone attempting to recover dog tags to score for the team and deny the enemy from scoring. Capture the Flag variants such as the original Capture the Flag mode sees both teams vying to claim the enemy team’s standard, take it to their base and complete the capture by touching the enemy’s ensign back at their base; Domination sees players attempting to capture and hold the designated positions to gain points against the competing team; Momentum sees the attempt to capture all of the flags to win, although killing enemies increases the momentum of capturing flags at a faster speed; and Hardpoint sees two teams attempting to capture and hold hardpoints. Mission objective based modes include Uplink that sees both teams throwing or carrying the Satellite Drone to the Uplink Station; Search and Destroy in which both teams take turns to defend and destroy an objective; and Search and Rescue which sees both teams take turns to defend and destroy and objective with the twist being the recovery of dog tags allow or prevent respawns. A bonus mode is Infected which sees eliminated survivors become infected with the aim being to infect every player in the game or survive the longest duration of the game to win.

The Combat Readiness Program provides an arena for players to sharpen their individual or team based performance in both single player against bots or online against real life opponents in any given game mode and map before going into larger scale or higher risk battles.

The two player split-screen multiplayer performs flawlessly even when the maximum capacity of ten bots in individual competition or eight per team in team based competition is on-screen simultaneously with plenty of destruction and chaos happening all at once. The online multiplayer performs the same even during split-screen online multiplayer with just as much destruction taking place at any given time with a maximum of 18 players participating in the same game, although there are two sets of minimum and maximum players which are adjusted specifically for each mode such as 8 to 12 players in a normal Team Deathmatch or 1 to 6 players in a party size.

While there are 11 modes of play in split-screen multiplayer with a suite of options to vary the rules of each game mode; there are a few more alternatives in online multiplayer that are already created such as Ground War which comprises a cycle of Team Deathmatch, Domination and Kill Confirmed modes; Atlas Gorge containing a mix of game modes played on Atlas Gorge map; and a set of hardcore modes including Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination and Search and Destroy with the added twist being a limited HUD, extra damage and friendly fire enabled. Arguably the most important online game mode is the ranked play mode which allows progression through divisions and unlock exclusive content as you play against players of the same skill level while playing by the traditional eSports rule book and game modes.

The only negative of the entire multiplayer component is that the split-screen multiplayer is for only two players; despite the complaints regarding the reduction of four player split-screen to just two players in the first new-gen entry to the Call of Duty series in the form of Call of Duty: Ghosts. However, there is two player split-screen online multiplayer across all game modes which certainly improves the social aspect of the multiplayer component; regardless of if you want to play in a private lobby and invite people into it from your friends list or search for a game online.

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 having introduced the pick 10 system; Advanced Warfare now ups the ante by introducing a new system called pick 13 which effectively allows each and every player to choose 13 customizations for their very own created class of which there are 10 fully customisable loadouts that can even be renamed for immediate access to exactly what you have included in each loadout. Players can customise their primary weapon by choosing a weapon from assault rifles, submachine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns, heavy weapons and specials as well as the attachments for chosen primary weapon; choosing a secondary weapon from pistols, launchers and specials and selecting the attachments; alongside a multitude of perks, scorestreaks, Exo abilities, Exo launchers and additional perks in the form of wildcard perks, whilst players can even visit the firing range to test out which primary and secondary weapons best suit play style and preferences.

The XP and levelling up is heavily connected with the online multiplayer as players will earn XP for killing enemies and finishing the game as high up the scoreboard as possible. The rewards for earning XP and therefore levelling up includes unlocking new weapons, armour, abilities and drones for use in online multiplayer with better results providing more firepower to select from in the future, although even if players do not have the best of games but pick up a few kills, then it will still count towards levelling up towards the next rank and some new unlockable equipment and firepower.

The replayability is strong as it involves many areas of the game such as an engaging story with world class performances by Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker, four difficulty levels to adjust the experience appropriately to an acquired skill level, collecting intel by exploring more of the environments and the unpredictability of chaotic multiplayer with over a dozen multiplayer modes as well as the Exo Survival co-operative multiplayer which are also complimented by character customization and created classes.

Overall, with the innovative technology; there is certainly reason to believe that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has not just re-invented the Call of Duty series, but has genuinely taken it up a couple of gears in regards to the quality in almost every aspect compared to recent games in the series and will take some beating for the crown of not only the best Call of Duty game, but also the best new-gen first-person shooter; therefore making Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare a must purchase for fans of first-person shooters and action games.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
• Developer: Sledgehammer Games
• Publisher: Activision
• System: PS4
• Format: Retail/PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS3 to PS4 Digital Upgrade available until March 31st 2015)
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1-2 (Split-Screen Multiplayer)/2-18 (Online or Split-Screen Online Multiplayer)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 43GB (Version 1.05)