War has changed, or maybe it's advanced? So the title slogan of this game might suggest.
The Story story has you playing as a protagonist named Mitchell, voiced and mocapped by the Troy Baker. Along with a cast of squad members, you find yourself in the American Military at the start of the campaign. During an early mission, the U.S. military and the private arms corporation Atlas work together to eliminate a terrorist organization known as the KVA, led by a man named Hades. Through a certain chain of unfortunate events, you find yourself leaving the U.S. Armed Forces to become a contractor for Atlas. To give you a little more context without trying to spoil too much, Atlas's owner, Jonathan Irons, is voiced and mocapped by Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey. Your character Mitchell and Irons' son, Will, were close friends who are in the military together .Events occur, you leave the military, become a contractor with Atlas and travel the world to combat, disrupt, and eliminate the KVA terrorist organization. About halfway through the game, a series of events occur that leave you with more questions than answers. Questions that you and your team must work together to unravel.
Gameplay, this is classic Call of Duty. If you've played the franchise before, you'll have a good idea of how the campaign is going to go. It's a First Person Shooter, with aiming down sights. You can crouch, and crawl. Most game switches between shootouts in tight corridors and halls, and rooms, streets, and plaza's. Along with the shooting there will be cinematic sequences, like breaching rooms, and other Hollywood style scenes that you get to participate in. There are no open world spaces like the more recent titles have introduced it is mostly linear with flanking opportunities in just about every single firefight. There are a handful of vehicle sequences more than I anticipated but overall the game is paced well enough. You'll also encounter a few non dynamic, scripted stealth scenarios. Generally, I found most firefights to be engaging. At times I felt like there were a lot of enemies, but then again, I could have just been too impatient. The guns feel great and the gadgets are pretty neat. Since this title takes place a few generations in the future, soldiers use "Exo" suits. Think Elysium with Matt Damon for reference. Attached to the suits are gadgets and abilities like a double jump, faster regenerative health, a grapple hook, and even a slow-motion mechanic you can activate called Overdrive.
There are also stastitics that the campaign save about your performance such as kills and and inbetween mission youll have points that you can spend to upgrade some mechanics, such as how many grenades can you carry, and or how many times can you use certain suit abilites, a very simple system but it's okay. Overall, I thought the sequences and missions were alright. There are some very impressive looking scenes, despite the game being over ten years old, which is crazy to think about. If you look at today's top titles you'll see its age for sure, but it still looks great. The campaign missions themselves are okay some were not great, some were decent, and some were getting close to being actually good.
I've got a few concerns that alter my perspective a good deal with this game.
The story is really incohesive. So much of the directing, character actions, and plot progression just make very little sense. At times I wondered if I was playing a B horror movie with how dumb certain moments were. Now, you can counter that this is a Call of Duty title it’s an action game and doesn't need a good story. I'm perfectly fine taking that perspective and agreeing with it. But there are bits of the story here that are just so forced it's really hard to ignore. Other COD titles might not have great stories or make total sense either, but they are still cool. There is a flow to the corny action where you’re like, "Okay, this is dumb, but I’m still on board." If you like Michael Bay movies, you know exactly what I’m saying. The story for Advanced Warfare is just degrading to itself to the point where I couldn't ignore it. I reset my mind a few times to try and be lighthearted, forget the flaws, and move on to see if there was something there. The answer is no, there is not.
Another matter that drove me near the brink is that the loading is tied directly to the cutscenes. Every time you start or resume a mission, you have to watch the same cutscene over again. Even with modern SSD computers, the loading still takes a bit of time and the cutscene almost always plays all the way out. It’s a clever idea on paper, but if you don't enjoy the scenes, it just pushes you to want to get to the next level just to avoid seeing that darn cinematic again.
My final and biggest concern is the stability of the PC port. This game clearly feels like it was developed console-first. I saw a bunch of negative reviews discussing PC performance, but I didn't have too many issues until the second level. From there, I hit a lot of framerate dips. A handful of times the dips got so low I was worried the game would crash (which, surprisingly, it didn't do in those exact moments).But then came the general crashes. The game crashed suddenly and without warning about a handful of times. And guess what? Because it crashed, I'd have to go through the unskippable loading cutscene all over again. The stability felt so thin that I genuinely felt unsure if I would even be able to finish the campaign. That frustration was probably another major factor making me want to push through the game as fast as possible.
I very much wish I could leave a recommending review. It is a solid enough Call of Duty title and the missions do enough justice to the formula. But the factor that stops me from recommending it is the stability. While I was able to successfully complete the campaign, there was just too much unknown for me to feel completely comfortable while playing. I don't want to recommend a title if someone purchases it and it gives them a ton of trouble or outright doesn't work.
Note, I didn't play Exo Zombies or online multiplayer, so I can't speak to those modes,
Buyer beware. If you decide to purchase this for PC, get it on a deep sale, or buy it on a console where it likely performs much better. If you do play on PC, just take notice that it might give you some trouble. Hopefully not!
