The “Call of Duty” franchise has been the subject of much attention throughout the years, both for good reasons as well as not so good ones. While “Call of Duty 4” became an instant classic when it was released in 2007, Activision subsequently made the decision to turn it into an annual series, releasing a new game every year. But according to critics and fans alike, each new installment saw less and less overall progress, with Activision clinging to the same old formula year after year, making minimal changes and then charging the same full price. This all changed this year when “Advanced Warfare” was released, as this was the first time in several years that fans have been expressing pretty much unanimous satisfaction with a “Call of Duty” title.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is also the first “Call of Duty” since 2007 that actually made serious changes to the gameplay. Introducing jetpacks gave players significantly more movement options than the previous games, and some have been comparing the gameplay style of the new “Call of Duty” to old fast-paced classics like “Quake”.
According to Activision, the game has been an immense commercial success, marking the tenth billion dollar in profits from the franchise as a whole, and scoring great reviews with a variety of critics. The company hasn’t released any official figures for the sales of “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare” specifically, though they typically do that at some point after each release, so it’s expected that this year will be no different.
Players on the PS4 and Xbox One should be receiving a new patch today, which makes various changes to the multiplayer balance, as well as fixes bugs on some maps. The “Exo Survival” mode has also seen some small changes, mostly related to bug fixes.
Still, this release has not been perfect. Although fans have been very positive about the new gameplay style, the game has reportedly been suffering from severe connectivity issues. Dedicated servers were supposed to be included as a feature in this year’s “Call of Duty”, but that’s not the case – the game works entirely on a P2P system, which has been leading to significant lag problems for some users. One of the things addressed in the new update is apparently related to that, although nobody seems to be reporting any changes in how smoothly the game plays so far.
One of the major changes that Activision did to the franchise was to switch it from a 2-year development cycle to a 3-year one, introducing a new development studio in the mix. Next year’s “Call of Duty” will be made by Treyarch, although it’s not known if it will be another entry in their “Black Ops” line, or an entirely new “Call of Duty”.