I wasn't going to get this game. The previous CoD game, Ghosts, was terrible, and revisiting the older CoD games (as I've done since I got a PS3) has been kind of annoying as they've all been hacked/modded and are flooded with cheats who ruin any kind of enjoyment of playing multiplayer on them.
But then Advanced Warfare came along and got good reviews, reviews which say things like it's refreshed the series, or is the best CoD since whatever, and I thought, why not get in there early before it gets hacked like all the other games, maybe I can get some enjoyment from it?
Set roughly 40 years in the future, AW features all sorts of futuristic enhancements, like special armour that lets you double jump (like in Destiny) and guns that have ammo readouts on them (like in Destiny) and guns that fire energy beams (like in Destiny). Most guns are the same though and don't seem any different from previous CoD games.
The campaign starts off woefully. The first 5 missions are terrible, really boring, and actually quite empty. The game picks up after that though, once the main story and antagonist are revealed. The middle third of the campaign is actually pretty decent and good fun. It's a bit hit-and-miss after that though, with the token death of one of the good guys (who just happens to be the one black character in the game) and a final mission kind of similar to the final mission in Modern Warfare 3.
Multiplayer is always the big draw for CoD games though, and I've played it quite a bit over the past week. Firstly, the maps are pretty decent. The bigger maps of Ghosts have been abandoned meaning you don't spend loads of time wandering about looking for enemies, and they seem a lot less formulaic than on the more recent games.
The exo suit's special abilities (double jumping etc) come more into play in multiplayer, but it's a double edged sword; while they add more verticality and play styles, what it adds most is that lots of players just get on the roofs and shoot down on everyone. I'm calling these people "roof campers", if no-one else has come up with this already, which they probably have. It means you spend your time looking up for enemies, or having to get on the roofs yourself to stop the other team from doing it. Then feeling bad about yourself for being a roof camper.
In addition to all of this, the game handles very similarly to Infinity Ward's recent CoD games (MW3 and Ghosts), which I don't see as a good thing. This means you basically kill someone as soon as you hit them (or get killed when they hit you), and there's very little recoil on many of the guns, especially the assault rifles, and quick-scoping on sniper rifles is rife. Also, there seems to be little penalty for using suppressors on guns as well, which is a personal gripe of mine from CoD games, though some effort has been made to offset this by giving you the option of adding some sort of microphone to your guns which show up suppressed fire (I forget its name). On the subject of guns, there's one assault rifle in particular that is by far the best gun in the game [BAL-27], and pretty much everyone uses it.
The biggest problem with multiplayer is the terrible lag. This could be put down to early teething problems I suppose, but for an established franchise like CoD, it's just not good enough. Pretty much every other game I've played has been affected by it, I would guess. The worst examples are when the game seemingly freezes for a second or two, then it unfreezes, often to find yourself having been killed in the meantime. The killcam also then shows you were indeed frozen as the opposition player kills you. What also happens is that you'll be in a shootout with someone, you get hitmarkers to show you've at least got a few hits on the opposition player before you die, but the killcam shows the other player killed you before you even raised your gun. Before you try to suggest this is my internet connection, I've played Destiny quite a bit online lately on PS3, and Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Mario Kart 8 on Wii U and those games don't really seem to be affected by lag at all. Also, this seems to be affecting other PS3 players too...
Overall, Advanced Warfare is a fairly mediocre game, neither particularly good or bad. The futuristic setting and exo-skeleton armour doesn't really add anything to the mixed bag of a campaign, though its interesting ideas about private militia companies (helped by a charismatic Kevin Spacey) at least add something new. The multiplayer is only slightly better than in Ghosts (which isn't really saying much), mainly due to the exo suit abilities and better maps, but worse than in every other PS3-onwards CoD game, and the lag is unforgiveable. Meh.
Rating: 2.5/5
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