Call of Duty: Buzz Lightyear Warfare!
The 13th installment of the Call of Duty franchise takes place even further into the future than some preceding titles that were already futuristic enough; this caused heavy criticism by critics and gamers alike. The futuristic setting, while good, it's rather unfitting to Call of Duty franchise. What's worse is that this game was released at a horrible time in a horrible year for what it is, Call of Duty fans like me were sick of futuristic Call of Duty at the time, and to add insult to injury this game takes place further into the future (around 2080, I think). The game started development in 2013, when people were getting tired of modern day shooters and going for a futuristic setting was likely the devs attempt to address this complaint. Unfortunately, players attitudes had turned against futuristic shooters in the three years between start of development and release, making the devs attempt at addressing fans' complaints backfire in a major way. While still far from perfect, it's not nearly as bad as most people (especially those who haven't even played the game and based their thoughts on the initial trailer) make it out to be. To quote Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, it was "the wrong game at the wrong moment".
This is the first Call of Duty game by Infinity Ward which has medals, emblem editor, and combat record, although the last two weren't available at launch. In fact Infinity Ward has been opting less for recycling content, for example, they bring new breathing and regeneration sound effects, as they were using the same samplessince Call of Duty 2.
The file size is incredibly absurd; thanks to the bundling with MWR and the texture resolutions (most of them being at least 4K), it comes up at an atrociously huge 130 gigabytes. Of that, IW takes up at least 55GB (confirmed on Xbox One).
MWR on the PC shipped with a broken config file which, for many players, caused the game to crash on startup, flashing an "out of memory" error, requiring the player to faff around in safe mode to actually get the game to start. Regarding the PC version, there is no cross-play between the Steam and Microsoft Store versions. On the other hand, there are far fewer players in the Microsoft Store version compared to the Steam version.
It's graphically beautiful. The space battles, in particular, look great. The soundtrack is awesome, too. The same composer is making the music for the new Modern Warfare. Even the loading times are surprisingly short!
The game includes a remastered release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the current-gen consoles and PC, if you pre-order a legacy edition. However, it suffered the same fate as any current-gen Call of Duty titles by adding microtransactions and Supply Drops to a remaster of a nine-year-old game and releasing DLC map packs that were fully unlocked from the original PC release ($10 for Xbox 360 and PS3 version) at a higher price ($15) for all platforms than the one from the original releases.
The multiplayer is so bland that it makes the campaign more enjoyable than the multiplayer, as the hit detection is from BO3, the supply drops are from Advanced Warfare, and the specialist abilities are also from BO3. In general, it just didn't do much different from Black Ops 3 to differentiate itself, while Black Ops 3 did a lot to differentiate itself from Advanced Warfare and other Call of Duty games in general. The Multiplayer Beta wasn't available for PC, probably due content fromBO3being leaked from the PC version of the Multiplayer Beta. With the Season Pass (excluding the UDM) and challenges in multiplayer, all supply drop fire weapons are unlocked. These are also unlockable in zombies once you get them in the magic wheel.
The Combat Rigs in multiplayer were much better and had better customization than the specialists in BO3. You can choose between three payloads (the IW version of specialist weapons and abilities from BO3) for each rig and three different traits (similar to the traditional perks) for each rig. You can also switch between combat rigs during a match.
The game had a notorious reward system: when you unlock a camouflage with supply drops it will be for one type of weapon instead for only one weapon like BO3, you have the option of purchase specific weapon and scorestreaks variants (with some limitations), supply drops sales are purchasable with in-game currency (unlike BO3 which the sales were only purchasable with real currency), weekly contracts to get in-game currency and quartermaster content, and Mission Teams to unlock exclusive content.
There are balance issues: several guns, one example being the NV4's Flatline variant, can be rather overpowered and were frequently used as crutches in multiplayer. Guns with a higher rate of fire and the Akimbo M.2187 almost always dominate the others. It's almost like the Akimbo FMG9 from Modern Warfare 3.
The visual variation in weapons is poor, despite bringing the weapon customization system from BO3, you could attach a long barrel, an extended magazine, a quickdraw and the weapon doesn't even changes visually. Additionally, duplicated weapon variants in supply drops exist with a small bonus, becoming more improbable to get new stuff. The "Nuclear" Killstreak aka the "De-Atomizer Strike" is harder and more limited to obtain, you need to do 25 kills with specific weapon variations instead with any weapons like in former games.
The Zombies Mode is pretty Good and worth checking out. The Fate and Fortune Card system in Zombies is slightly better than the GobbleGum system from BO3. The leaning system is back from Ghosts but not totally, as it's available only in single player mode.
Just like many games in the series, it has a brief campaign, but, despite being short, the primarily Gundam-inspired campaign is passible, though it does depend very heavily on the good guys making dumb decisions, usually followed by the Olympus Mons randomly appearing and undoing whatever they just did. The campaign is considered a major improvement over the one in Black Ops III. In addition, the campaign features side missions for the first time in the series and while some of them are just quick battles with little context, the side missions with context are great, arguably even better than the main missions. Even the sequence in singleplayer where the player has to hold pressure on a comrade's wound and slowly feels their heart stop via the controller vibration is a pretty creative use of force feedback.
The use of celebrity actors is very poor, with the exception of Kit Harington (best known as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones), who plays Admiral Salen Kotch, the main antagonist of the campaign.
- Even then, his character has no apparent motivations behind what he is doing, and he doesn't exactly fit the role of Space Hitler since he always looks like he's about to cry.
- To make matters worse, despite the massive publicity he got in the trailers, he only gets roughly six minutes of screen-time. This is much less than half the amount of time Jonathan Irons (voiced by Kevin Spacey) had in Advanced Warfare.
- UFC Champion Conor McGregor appears in the game as Bradley Fillion, a high-ranking SDF officer, but gets no real development. In fact, he does not even get to speak a sentence.
- Peter Weller (the original RoboCop) also appears as Caleb Thies, another SDF high-rank, and despite having a speaking role in a trailer and being built up as a major threat, he gets even less screen time than Kotch. He doesn't even get any lines, either; he's introduced and then thrown away in the span of one mission.
Nick Reyes and Ethan are likable characters. Reyes in particular gets props for being the first player character in an Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty game to be something more than a faceless, voiceless player stand-in. The robot character, Ethan, is more human than any of the human characters excluding Reyes.
Akeel Min Riah is terrible, and perhaps the worst villain of the Call of Duty franchise. He basically achieves what he does because everyone else picks up the Idiot Ball whenever he is present. Also because of the integral "target the wrong things" and "blow up" functions of the Earth's defense cannons. The way the SDF acts are more akin to Cartoon Network villains than video game villains.
The heroes often do idiotic things throughout the campaign, for example, in fleet day, the UNSA sent out their entire fleet in one location!! It went as well as you'd expect. The main story-line has some seriously hamfisted moments:
- At one point Reyes is blasted out into space, and is left floating with no oxygen for long enough for E3N's arms to freeze around him... and he not only survives, he wakes up with a clean bill of health and goes right back to shooting people. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
- The game tries to paint the death of Omar as a tragic, shocking and sad moment - which is somewhat jarring considering his death was his own damn fault for doing something absurdly stupid at the worst possible moment.
- Everyone except Nora dies in the end, in some of the most contrived manners possible.
- Ethan's death was, however, an emotional moment.
Compared to Black Ops III, the holiday events had more rewards, like a nuclear variant for the M.2187 shotgun, unlike BO3 which had nothing. Also, as with previous games in the series, the online community has all but vanished. This one in particular, however, vanished much faster.
I'm not saying that not everyone will enjoy this, as some feel the same as I have, but Infinity Ward should do what they have been trying to do best.
