Critical Consensus: Call of Duty finds its feet with Advanced Warfare

The internet has just received the first surge of what will be a raging tide of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare reviews, but several key outlets will be lagging behind the others.

As is tradition by now, Activision chose to restrict press access to a fleet of new generation consoles set up in hotel rooms around the world. This has happened with pretty much every major Call of Duty release since Modern Warfare 2, but it's only in the last year or two that disclaimers have become a common feature of the subsequent reviews. Polygon went to a review event, for example, but it paid for its writer's accommodation. Kotaku makes no mention of any event despite having played through the entire campaign (presumably in an Xbox One bedecked hotel room), but it is nevertheless holding off publishing a scored review until it has the opportunity to play the game's multiplayer in a live setting - "the way it was intended."

Eurogamer took a third route, attending the review event on Activision's dime but relaxing its critical trigger-finger until Advanced Warfare was released to the public and its true online mettle could be tested. Which is the right approach? Should a review prioritise accuracy or punctuality? No one person can provide a sensible answer to that question, but it seems that the task of the video game critic becomes thornier and more thankless with every AAA release.

One thing is roundly agreed upon, though: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is definitely better than Call of Duty: Ghosts, and most outlets believe that it's an improvement on Black Ops II. Indeed, even though Eurogamer's full review won't be published until later this week, it was enthusiastic enough to publish a score-free recommendation of what it did have a chance to play in the meantime.

"Easily the best entry since Modern Warfare's ceasefire"

Eurogamer

Advanced Warfare, the first full COD title from Sledgehammer Games, is, "the biggest shift for the series since the original Modern Warfare, and...easily the best entry since Modern Warfare's ceasefire." Here, Eurogamer argues, the series shrugs off the weighty, pained influence of films like Black Hawk Down and turns instead to science fiction romps like Star Wars and Halo, all exotic cityscapes, flying vehicles and elaborate weaponry - "Advanced Warfare impresses you with just how much fun war can be."

Polygon is with Eurogamer in spirit, but it's appraisal - based on a private playthrough of the campaign and closed multiplayer sessions hosted by Activision - has a 9.0 waiting at the end. This is exactly the sort of score that Activision and Sledgehammer have been working towards, and Polygon leaves little room for doubt that, this time out, Call of Duty has really earned whatever accolades it receives.

Key to it all are various "Exosuits," which imbue the player with a range of abilities that the (more or less) contemporary and (in a manner of speaking) historical settings of previous Call of Duty games didn't allow. For the most part, that means double-jump and boost mechanics, though there are different contextual uses for the suits throughout the game's campaign.

"All of this makes moment-to-moment navigation much more interesting in Advanced Warfare than previous entries in the series or its imitators have managed," Polygon's review states. "The exo conceit also allows Sledgehammer to vary up the single-player campaign's format and ideas in some exciting new ways.

"In fact, speaking strictly from level and encounter design and mission variety, Advanced Warfare is the best campaign the series has seen since Infinity Ward re-imagined the franchise with Modern Warfare in 2007. There's no muddy objectives to get stuck on, and at least on my playthrough on the "hardened" difficulty setting, there were very few cheap-feeling death loops to get stuck in. It balances fairness with enough challenge and sophistication to make success feel worth it, and I never felt like any one part overstayed its welcome."

"Advanced Warfare is the best campaign the series has seen since Modern Warfare"

Polygon

Joystiq - which has yet another distinct mix of review conditions to consider - is similarly impressed with the way Advanced Warfare enlivens the core mechanics of the Call of Duty series with its new bag of tricks, awarding the game a commendable four-stars. However, there is also the lingering sense that Sledgehammer didn't go far enough, assembling a clutch of innovative and empowering ideas but leaving most of them to bit-parts, cameos and walk-ons.

"On the one hand, you have the multi-function tactical grenade, which can either down drones with an EMP blast, stun enemies in a burst of light or paint targets through walls," Joystiq states. "Selecting the right option is a rewarding decision, and not always easy to do quickly under fire. It's a meaningful part of your arsenal.

"Less dependable are abilities like cloaking or a sonic pulse that disorients nearby enemies, which only appear for some missions. More exotic still are things like the grappling hook, a thrilling device that is first used in an awkward stealth mission. There's a brilliant urban level later where these futuristic devices open the game up: You grapple between terraces and a central train track, yank enemies out of their power suits and launch yourself into massive, emplaced turrets to tear things up. It's exciting, dynamic and as bombastic as any Call of Duty.

"It's a shame these mechanisms come across as guest stars, because their use feels so fitting with Advanced Warfare's unabashed science fiction shooting gallery... It just doesn't have the power to break through the expectations of the brand, often coming across as an expertly played round of Call of Duty Mad Libs."

This speaks to the concerns voiced by US Gamer, Advanced Warfare's harshest critic at present with a score of 7 out of 10. There are inventive touches here, the sort that Call of Duty's last few iterations have lacked, but this is innovation only in context. Advanced Warfare feels original in comparison to the series' previous entries, but Sledgehammer is only reinventing the bubble in which these games exist. US Gamer acknowledges the delight that will bring to, "those who view gaming through the prism of Call of Duty and little else," but the creative compromises made in the name of protecting the brand are all too clear.

"The tweaks in Advanced Warfare just don't do enough to mix up the formula, which is quietly becoming stale"

US Gamer

"In a setting rife with possibilities, Advanced Warfare proves surprisingly short on imagination... In terms of design, there's little to separate Advanced Warfare's campaign from previous games in the series; and indeed, it frequently recycles tropes from previous games.

"After all these years of playing Call of Duty, the tweaks in Advanced Warfare just don't do enough to mix up the formula, which is quietly becoming stale ... There was a time not so long ago when 'No Russian' was on everyone's lips, and Call of Duty was lauded for its daring and ambition in bringing RPG elements to multiplayer-a controversial choice back in 2007, when conventional wisdom ruled that XP would dramatically unbalance the action in favour of experienced players.

"There is a danger, however, in striving only to keep your core fans happy. Too often, it is easy for development teams to get lost in the echo chamber created by their game's most vocal fans, which has the effect of encouraging them to prioritise balance changes over more ambitious endeavours. That is what I feel has happened with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which tries very hard to capture the essence and the flavour of the series, and is ultimately a little too successful."