For a franchise that releases a new installment every year, “Call of Duty” was expected to go stale pretty fast but that wasn’t exactly the case – after the rather unsuccessful “Ghosts”, the game returned with a very strong installment by Sledgehammer Games which introduced various new gameplay elements and really improved the overall formula. “Advanced Warfare” brought the game into modern times quite successfully and helped it discover new points of interest for both fans and developers.
Players have been asking for more advanced movement for some time now, and while the addition of leaning in “Ghosts” was met with rolling eyes by the community, “Advanced Warfare” really stepped things up by adding the exo-suits that allow players to boost around the maps.
The game is now even more varied in terms of its gameplay and it allows players to run and jump around severely vertical maps and explore various new ways to dispose of their enemies that were not available before. At the same time, new updates keep coming out periodically, with the most recent example being a new set of gear that was released adding the M16 and various other pieces of content.
Weapons keep getting rebalanced too, and the maps have been getting more and more polished with various minor issues getting resolved. All in all, the game is pretty much the best installment in the series so far in terms of quality of its gameplay and overall variety, although of course its release didn’t match the excitement that surrounded the launch of “Call of Duty 4” a few years ago.
Thinking ahead, what could the developers of the franchise keep from “Advanced Warfare” and carry it over into the next installments in the series? The game added a lot of fun new elements, and of course it’s pretty obvious now that Activision want to retain the boost jump ability. This has been expanded even further in the upcoming “Black Ops 3”, with the addition of wallrunning and various other gameplay elements that are going to make the title even more fast-paced and explosive.
The visual style of “Advanced Warfare” was taken pretty well by the community overall and players were happy with how the game moved into the future, including the ability to customize their characters and the overall visual style of the maps. Gone are the days when brown and dark green were the dominant colors on levels, the game is now focused on bright, vibrant color schemes with lots of variety and different styles.
The style of the game’s killstreaks is something that can be preserved with a good impact on the franchise as a whole, according to players and critics alike, and it would be fun to see the developers experimenting even more with slightly more unusual streaks, instead of sticking to the same old airstrikes and similar rewards that have gotten a bit clichéd at this point.
Another aspect that fans have been discussing is the average duration of a single shootout – it looks like with each new installment in the series, the kill time has been getting lower and lower. Most weapons take 2-3 bullets to kill now, even some in the SMG category, and while this was expected to be taken negatively by the community, it actually had the opposite effect. Most players were happy with how the game progressed in this regard and seem to wish that this trend would carry over to the next installments.