Our yearly instalment of Call of Duty is upon us, and while I’m taking a couple of days to play Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer the way it was intended before posting my review, I have conquered campaign mode, and learned so much in the process.
It took me around six hours to make it through Advanced Warfare‘s futuristic tale of military adventure, and I absorbed every Spacey-soaked moment of the campaign. They say no one plays Call of Duty for the story, but it’s generally the part of a COD game I look forward to the most — even if that’s because it serves as a buffer between my fragile self-esteem and the online hordes.
Warning: minor spoilers ahead, most of which have already been revealed in the course of the game’s lengthy marketing campaign. If you want a spoiler-free look at the story, stay tuned for the full review later this week.
Call of Duty. Call of Duty Never Really Changes.
It may take place four decades and change in the future and the toys have undergone drastic upgrades, but a Call of Duty story is a Call of Duty story. A man possessing a fierce patriotism on a mission to stop bad things from happening uncovers a plot to do incredibly bad things.
He must stop the bad person from doing the bad things, a goal ultimately realised after killing hundreds of people in a variety of exotic locations. Along the way, military men say things that have been said hundreds of times before.
Actually, this particular line is hilarious, given the context. He’s the guy from the game demo vid released earlier this year who gets his arm caught in a door and then explodes. Maybe hilarious wasn’t the word I was looking for.
No, I had it right. Hilarious.
OK, Call of Duty Changes A Little Bit
While Advanced Warfare‘s story does possess that same old Call of Duty flavour, the future setting actually affords the single-player experience a fresh science fiction slant. Kevin Spacey’s Jonathan Irons is CEO and founder of Atlas, a Private Military Corporation that’s grown far beyond headline news into a household name. His men wear advanced exo suits, which grant them enhanced strength, the ability to double jump and hover, and several other nifty upgrades to boring old humanity. They drive hover-cycles. They pilot relatively tiny mech suits. When his men are at the ready, he’s the trigger.
See?
Advanced Warfare manages to stay true to the series’ established formula, while at the same time being the most fantastical entry to date.
Warfare Changes Quite A Lot
Within the first 15 minutes of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare the player plunges out of the sky in a dropship, tosses grenades that highlight enemies on the battlefield or propel themselves at targets using jets, hovers their way down deadly drops and across wide chasms and gets to deal with something called a “Drone Swarm.”
The player also learns to double jump using their exo suit’s jets, which is the best thing to do in any first-person shooter. Destiny, Titanfall and now Advanced Warfare have ruined me for single-jumping first-person shooters.
It’s a manoeuvre that really opens up the game’s story levels. Sadly the story levels are often reluctant to open up, rewarding explorers wandering off the beaten path with “leaving the mission area” warnings. A double-jumper must jump, my friends. You cannot hold a double-jumper back.
I Don’t Like Having My Toys Taken Away
Advanced Warfare’s story introduces players to some pretty awesome tech. Magnetic climbing gloves. Mute bombs. Insect-sized spy drones. These neat little bio-sensors that can be placed on walls in order to see enemies beyond them.
So many cool toys to play with, but only at specific points in the game’s story. Some of them see play once or twice, others just get the one chance to be incredibly cool before wandering off. This must be how James Bond feels.
Future Heads-Up Display Communication Is Really Annoying
Thank you for obscuring a huge chunk of my vision, Kevin Spacey. This is exactly while we’re giving up on Google Glass.
These Guys Are Totally Best Friends
Pardon me while I nitpick. Jack Mitchell and best friend Will enlisted in the Marines six months prior to the game’s opening battle. It says so right in this cutscene.
Best friends who always have each other’s backs. This is a fact that is incredibly important, due to the whole arm/explosion bit I mentioned above. So why are they telling each other why they enlisted before going into battle? This bothered me far more than it probably should have.
Gideon Can Cross His Own Damn Street
In the middle of the third chapter of the story, Mitchell gets to enjoy a game of Frogger as his Captain, Gideon, gently encourages him.
When I first played through this level, I looked left, looked right, and then I loudly proclaimed “Go fuck yourself.” I got hit by busses, cars and bullets many times before finally making it across. You wouldn’t believe how many times I heard Gideon telling me to cross.
Next time he goes first.
This Is The Best Hair In Gaming
Time and time again as I played through Advanced Warfare’s story, I found myself marveling over these character’s hair. The faces are pretty great, the animations spot-on, but without proper hair they might as well be stick figures.
This is some of the best digital hair I’ve seen, period.
Troy Baker Is Too Pretty For War
Just look at this man. They tried to toughen him up for his role as Jack “The Player” Mitchell, but prominent voice actor Troy Baker is just to lovely for the battlefield. It’s like fighting terrorists with a majestic monarchy butterfly.
When It All Comes Together, It’s Like… Damn.
Maybe it’s been in a trailer I missed. Perhaps you’ve all seen it already, but there was this one moment in the game’s third chapter that had my young nephew and I exclaiming “holy shit” in unison, loud enough for the two impressionable three-year-olds in the other room to hear.
Yes, it’s just a quick time event, a series of timed button presses, but it felt pretty spectacular to be pressing those buttons, and really drove home the fact that this was unlike any Call of Duty that had come before it.
Look for more on Advanced Warfare‘s single-player campaign in my upcoming review. For now, it’s time to get shot at with fake bullets by real people.
Comments
24 responses to “Ten Things I Took Away From Advanced Warfare’s Campaign”
“They say no one plays Call of Duty for the story,” That is the only reason I play it. I dislike the multi player and let’s just say my experience with the community has been less than stellar. Little shits..
I have little interest in multiplayer too. SP is what I love to play. But at 6 hours…..pass.
This crap that I keep reading ‘no one buys CoD for SP’ has to stop as it promotes false truth.
Fine no one should buy CoD for SP.
I’m with you on that one. I too just enjoy the single player campaign, it’s like an interactive Summer blockbuster.
Andy, I too enjoy the SP. I like the over the top aspect to it. Its rare to hear this about cod.
Right on Andy.
Seeing that last video of the ‘holy sh*t’ moment just made me think how un-interesting quick time events really are and how much I cherish momenst of emergent gameplay that occur in games like GTA. That’s the interesting unique experience that games can offer, I don’t see the appeal of watching an action scene with my bluray remote pressing the play/pause buttons.
Got to say this is my favourite COD campaign. It’s actually one of my favourite FPS campaigns. I actually cared about these charecters.
I couldn’t be bothered with COD anymore, the single player is usually very short, and multiplayer is a massive pain in the arse with a bunch of 13 year olds yelling abuse into your ears, or worse, actual adults doing the same.
I don’t have a lot of time to play games anymore, so I choose carefully now. Saying that I am looking forward to Halo: MC Collection which no doubt will have wankers screaming abuse into my ears.
Your first paragraph… describes it perfectly. Well done
I assume every feature on the box is only used once in the entire campaign.
Major Frank Burns is in this game?
I was so keen to get this game. Then Destiny came along and despite all it’s flaws, I actually enjoy it enough that I don’t feel like buying COD just yet.
Destiny’s quality becomes more and more apparent the more games I play.
Shadow Of Mordor: Loved it. Passed it. Won’t play it again for years.
Evolve Alpha: Played a few hours of it today (after and during ridiculous server and connection issues, yes, post “fix”) and i’m already a little bored, I feel like i’ve seen it all and no amount of extra characters / monsters will improve that.
Destiny: Loved it in the Alpha and Beta. Was disappointed with the final game and its various, well documented flaws. Played everything within two or three days. Still playing now. Still waiting to come back to play more.
Destiny’s got its hooks in a lot of people, that’s not luck, that’s not “a lack of any other games to play” as its detractors may claim. It’s damn good, and it outshines its flaws big time. Pretty much everyone I know has gone through the classic stages of reaction to it. First they love it, then they hate it, then they find some friends to play with a couple of nights a week and it all clicks. Can’t wait for the expansions, and down the line, a sequel that perfects it.
Agreed on all counts
What is this, COD 10 or 11 by now?
Based on the wiki….. I count 22 different games and expansion packs across different platforms.
Based on just the major “numbered” releases my count has this as 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Call_of_Duty_media
I think after YEARS of making CoD they may have done it right this time. The only ones I have liked were 2, 4 and black ops 2. The others were honestly buckets of shit. Some people prefer mw3 or ghosts but….meh
Black Ops 2 was given to me as a gift and despite being over COD the multiplayer sucked me back in for the better part of 2013!!
I enjoyed the campaign arc across MW1, 2, 3.
CoD1 and CoD2 were amazing classics, especially since they took us to theatres of war other than D-Day and following that damned Airborne unit around France. The Russian campaign (which commences with you being handed a clip of ammo, no rifle, and charging into a killzone) was inspired.
Still rather play Goldeneye
I’d like to know how he smashed his way through the campaign in 6 hours? I played for 7 hours last night, and there’s still 5 more levels according to the game, so im like 2/3 ways through.
I guess i shouldn’t have actually enjoyed myself and got some achievements, I should have just run from checkpoint to checkpoint as fast as possible and then complained about the campaign lengh.
I thought Blacks Ops 1 and 2 were genuinely good games, they seemed to think everyone leveled up too easily in them though because they kept increasing the overall experience needed to reach that maximum for everything, ghosts was just overkill.
I didn’t have the time to invest in ghosts as I would previous installments but I didn’t feel like I could accomplish everything – it didn’t feel like I had a set goal because as soon as you level one character up you unlock another character to level up – it felt weird.
That’s why I personally enjoyed black ops 1 and 2 the most – they were easy enough to get to the max level without investing crazy amounts of the same boring grind… and they had zombies 😉
Pretty impressive graphics, it has to be said. Kind of gave up on CoD after MW2…