It’s the year 2054 and tension between the Korean’s is at an all time high and we’re on the brink of a world war.  You play as Private Jack Mitchell (Troy Baker) of the Marine Corps and the U.S military have sent in the troops in a seemingly impossible task to bring peace between the Koreans.  However the U.S are not the only super-power or should I say, their no longer the worlds super-power, because now we have an almightily Private Military Contractor known as Atlas Corporation ran by  CEO Jonathan Irons (Kevin Spacey) and he believes he has the answers to finally bringing peace to our war plagued civilisation.  But is Iron’s the answer to world peace that we have longed for centuries and or does he have ulterior motives?

Visually Advanced Warfare knocks Call of Duty: Ghosts out of the park and then some, up until now the best visuals on the new gen for this particular genre were reserved for the likes of Battlefield 4 and Killzone: Shadow Fall, but Advanced Warfare is certainly in that pretty elite FPS club.  Sledgehammer Games vision of the not so distant future, does not seen too farfetched, other than Kevin Spacey owning a private military corporation of course or maybe he does?  This visual world that you find yourself within this game, is very believable to a certain degree.

The textures to the environments and the weapons around you are very detailed, even when you get up close to inspect.  The locations will also change quite often from being sunny and tropical, to Antarctic weather, derelict, rundown and quite frankly eerie locations make this one of the most varied Call of Duty games to date in terms of locations.  But it’s not just pleasing on the eye in terms of attention to detail, as it runs very smoothly too.  As you can imagine, events can get very hectic and explosive at any god given moment, but even during the most intense moments and considering how darn pretty the game looks, the game runs as smooth as a Speedo wearing bobsleighing penguin covered in baby oil.  I kid you not.

With previous games in the series and many other multiplayer games for that matter, when taking games online, the visual quality is dummed down to accommodate the fast and frantic action with your fellow online gamers.  When jumping into Advanced Warfare’s online modes, it might not be quite up to the standards as the singleplayer, but they certainly hold up better than any game in the series considering the graphic enhancements.  This is possibly more impressive when you think of how many other gamers are running, gunning, jumping and blowing shit up just like you.  A lot of fuss has been made about Call of Duty’s new gimmick, the Exo-Skeleton and there have also been a lot of comparisons to other games in the process.  But does this new “gimmick” add anything new to the franchise or is it a lot of old fuss about nothing?  Well the answer to that is that question is that if this is just a mere gimmick, it sure as hell makes the game a lot of fan, especially when being use to having your feet on the ground.

In essence the core run and gun gameplay pretty much remains the same, so you’ll know what to expect.  So I’ll talk about what the Exo-Skeleton brings to the table.  I should point out that not all the Exo-Skeleton features will be functional for each and every mission, as it will vary from one to the next.  I know I keep using this word a lot, but the Exo-Skeleton makes Advanced Warfare a lot of fun and that’s a vital element in any game.  While not all buildings or objects will be reachable during the campaign, the vast majority will be (within reason).  With the Exo-Skeleton you can jump high, shimmy to either side, front and back in an instant, which is particularly handy when trying to avoid explosions, you can even super punch the enemy for some comical results.  Depending on the mission, you will also be able to scale some walls too.  Later in the campaign, you will also be able to propel buildings with an awesome grappling hook (more on that little later).

Quite soon on, the Exo-Skeleton will become second nature and going back to other games in the FPS genre may take a little getting use too.  As usual as the Exo-Skeleton is, for me the most useful tool comes in the form of the Variable Grenades,  which gives you the pick of Lethal and Tactical.  Essentially each of the two types of grenades is carried as one, but they are both 3-in-1 grenades (now that’s practical).  The Tactical Grenade will allow you to switch between Flash, EMP and Threat.  Threat is particularly useful as it will reveal enemies within your radius for a short duration, including those behind cover, which is great as some weapons have the ability to fire through walls.  The Lethal Grenade will allow you to switch between the standard free-aiming Frag Grenade, Contact Grenade which acts almost like a mortar and will stick to a surface and explode on contact.  The personal favourite of mine from the Lethal Grenade is the Smart Grenade, which is basically a heat seating grenade that you can aim via your crosshair.  It is worth noting that the Lethal Smart Grenade is not available in the multiplayer.

Other then upgrading most of you weapons, attachments and perks within the multiplayer aspect, RPG (not the rocket launcher) elements is not something that is often associated with a Call of Duty singleplayer campaign, but it is in Advanced Warfare.  With each mission you will have a series of Exo-Challenges, which range from Kills, Headshot Kills, Grenade Kills and Intel.  By completing these challenges you will earn upgrade points for your Exo-Skeleton to be used in the singleplayer campaign.  You can upgrade many aspects such as weapon efficiency, Exo battery life, the amount of Smart Grenades you can carry and much more.

As fun as the campaign is to play, I doubt it will offer too many surprises, but there was one mission in particular that was a welcomed surprise.  I won’t go into too much detail, but there is a stealth mission later into the campaign that is awesome and feels like it was ripped out of a stealth specific game.  You will make your way around this mission in the bushes (not in a creepy way) as you aim to remain undetected and tag the enemies around you.  Your grappling hook during this mission will be used as both a tactical and lethal tool.  It will be used to not only gain a vantage point above the enemy, but it can also be used to grab the enemy from distance and pull them towards you Scorpion style, giving you the strongest of urges to shout “GET OVER HERE!”.  The grappling hook later in the game also has a very cool way of extracting the enemy from AST Exo Suit, but I will say no more.

The Call of Duty series has been known in recent years for its Michael Bay-esque over the top storylines and fans of the series will expect nothing less.  But as of late while I’ve enjoyed the games, a gripping storyline has not been the series strong point, well not at least since the days of the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  So while Advanced Warfare has had me intrigued since its announcement earlier in the year, this is an area that I’ve not expected too much from (though I always had some hope).

Thankfully I can report that in my opinion, that while you can see some of the alleged twists coming from a mile off, the storytelling in Advanced Warfare is the best since the days of the first two Modern Warfare games.  Just about every aspect in this department is superbly executed in its popcorn movie kind of way.  For starters we have a well written script that seems less Michael Bay, but rather more towards the 24 TV series.  In fact the story is that well presented, that for the first time in years I actually care about the characters in the game.  All these ingredients are no mere accident however, because if you look at the creative quality that has been involved in this project, it’s no wonder and much credit has to go to the games writers, John MacInnes, Eric Hirshberg and Mark Boal.  One area the storytelling really shines is with the composer, who is none other than Harry Gregson-Williams and fans of the Metal Gear Solid franchise will be very familiar with this amazing work over the years.  While no particular musical scores stand out like a sore thumb, the soundtrack subtly provides its essence, aiding the story progression in the background by adding tension and energy when needed.

If you have been watching the trailers building up to the release of Advanced Warfare, then you would know that the game stars one of Hollywood’s best actors in Kevin Spacey and he delivers a solid performance as the head of Atlas Jonathan Irons.  Then you have the videogame voice over legend in the making with Troy Baker playing as the lead protagonist Jack Mitchell who is supported by Gideon Emery as Jack’s campaign companion and brother in arms Gideon (yes the man playing this role shares the same name as the character that he’s playing).  I must also mention Russell Richardson who plays badass Major Cormack and hard as nails Angela Gots who plays Russian Special Forces Ilona, as both individuals (along with Gideon Emery) provide superb supporting performances.

As with all Call of Duty games, there is heaps of replay value to be had.  Each year the series comes under some unfair and perhaps fair criticism from gamers, more so then most games.  Whether you believe that criticism is warranted is down to you, but if there’s one area that would be very difficult to fairly scrutinise, it would be the amount of ‘flash’ bang you get for your buck.  If I was going to take a rough guess, I would say that the singleplayer campaign took me around 7-8 hours to complete.  Some might say that’s short, but I believe it was about the right campaign length, as it didn’t feel too short, nor did it over stay its welcome.  You could always play the campaign once and be done with it, but if you’re willing, you will get plenty in return from the singleplayer mode.

For example, you have 45 Intel’s to find that are hidden throughout each mission.  Then you have the Exo-Challenges that will you see you rewarded with Exo-Skeleton upgrade points to use during the campaign.  For the completionist’s out there, you also have the bog standard difficulty settings to take on and from my experience; this is one of the most challenging Call of Duty games in terms of difficulty for some time, even on the normal setting.  It’s fair to say that as exciting as the singleplayer campaign is, for many the Call of Duty series is all about the multiplayer and as expected, it is here where it really shines.  Fans of the series will feel accustom to how the game plays pretty much instantly, but there are a few tweaks and additions that has been enhanced on the somewhat expected experience.  Much like with the singleplayer campaign the Exo-Skeleton is arguably your biggest asset.  For example when being chased by an opponent, when you run around a corner (momentarily leaving the line of sight) you can leap into the air, shimmy back (while in mid-air) and get the drop on your opponent to really catch them off-guard.

For me however, while the Exo-Skeleton has many perks, by leaping into the air, you will show up on your opponents radar, thankfully you can get a perk to counter that.  So for me, I like to keep the majority of my combat on the ground and I only take a higher vantage point when I really have too.  Also it is worth noting that during the early stages of AW’s multiplayer shelf life, some had experienced some lag issues.  I’m not exactly sure as to whether that was an issue with a particular format or not, but I had experienced no problems myself play the multiplayer on the Xbox One and it ran as smoothly as I could ever hoped.

I know the Exo-Skeleton will draw comparisons to other shooters on the market such as Titanfall, but it was revealed that this gameplay mechanic was first dreamt up around four years ago by Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey.  If I was going to draw some comparisons to a certain shooter, I believe that the multiplayer of Advanced Warfare is leaning towards Halo than anything else.  This is fine, because everything is inspired by something and there’s more than enough in Advanced Warfare that allows it to stand its ground as one of the best shooters in recent years from the series and all pre-mentioned games have their own unique features and gimmicks that the other might not have or do quite as well.  Other then how the combat feels during a competitive match, one of the other big improvements to the game has to be with its customisation options that feature in AW.  I believe that I am right in saying that Advanced Warfare has more customisation options than any other game in the series, by quite some stretch.

 

In total you can pick from thirteen custom options within your online loadout and how you choose them is entirely up to you.  You can mix it all up to suit your needs from weapons and their attachments, perks, streaks, wildcards and more.  As usual depending on what weapons and perks etc that you use, will all depending on the extra goodies that you unlock with your multiplayer progression.  In terms of weaponry one new addition to the series that I love, is that you can now try out a weapon before you commit to unlocking with your in-game currency.  We’ve all been there before when a weapon catches our eye, the stats seem to measure up and it looks quite bad ass in the process, but sometimes when we choose to unlock them, it just doesn’t feel right.  Thankfully now you can try before you buy at the online firing range, this new addition could save wasting a lot of in-game currency.

As you may know you can also kit out your characters look from the head gear, clothing, Exo-Skeleton and more.  The same rule applies with items in your weapons and perks department, as you will unlock more character gear as you progress towards that prestige ranking.  However you can also unlock some character gear too during the singleplayer campaign by completing the Exo-Challenges and earning supply drops to be used in the multiplayer.  If I was going to have one request for future instalments, it would be to have the option to upload your very own face-scan similar as you can do with some EA and 2K Sports titles.  Having that addition would truly make for a unique online character like none other than we’ve seen in the series before.

For those of you that might not be too keen on the more traditional multiplayer matches or if you fancy a change of pace, you have the customary wave based survival mode with Exo-Survival.  It’s the usual formula of surviving as long as you can with up to three friends or random’s online players.  Also as revealed just before the games launch, if you complete all the Exo-Survival waves and maps, you will be greeted to a playable teaser for the ever popular zombie’s mode (which is kind of a shame, as this would have been nice as a unlockable mode from the menu with at least one map, rather than just a tease), something that has always been reserved for Treyarch games.  It will be interesting to see what can be done with this popular mode in the new-gen era, but we’ll have to be a little more patient on that one, as more zombie content will be released with forthcoming DLC.

This series will always have its haters for the right and wrong reasons, after all, we’re all each to our own.  While over the years the franchise has always had solid FPS gameplay and a multiplayer that many have tried to replicate, the series has somewhat taken its fan-base for granted as their product always sells incredibly well.  This even more so during the week that it was announced that Advanced Warfare has not only knocked FIFA 15 off the chart top spot (which is no small feat), it’s also sold Activision’s other product Destiny quite convincingly.  Last year sales were not as expected for Call of Duty: Ghosts, this however has had a positive knock-on effect for Activision, as they could no longer take their fanbase for granted as they perhaps once did and it was time for the series to have a little shake-up.

Now it would be mad for any company with a successful product to shake-up something so much that it would alienate its core fanbase, so you have to keep traits that loyal fans would welcome, all while trying to keep things feeling fresh.  This is where Advanced Warfare comes in.  Advanced Warfare started its very early stages of development around four years ago and that time and dedication is showing.  For starters, while the campaign will offer no major shocks, especially as you can almost see what’s coming before the game has even begun, it’s what I’d call the videogame equivalent of the popcorn movie, as it’s over the top, action packed fun.  Also in this day and age of online only games, it nice to have a game that’s clearly had time devoted to both offline and online play.

The use of the Exo-Skeleton especially in the multiplayer helps keep the game fast, frantic, fresh and more importantly fun (the four 4’s).  Advanced Warfare has done enough to revitalise the franchise all while maintaining what made the series so popular to begin with. I’ll openly admit that I am a Call of Duty fan and always have been, but while I’ve enjoyed the games in recent years, I’ve not been in denial with knowing that the series has been getting a little stale.  It was for that reason that I’ve not really devoted much of my time with its multiplayer since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, no matter how hard I have tried.  Advanced Warfare has reminded me of why I enjoyed the series in the first place.  Shoot me down if you will, but I believe that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the best in the series for many years and for the first time in a while; it looks to be building for its future.

• Editor Note: The multiplayer section has been played on Xbox One.

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