Gaming: Call of Duty: Advance Warfare

I don’t know about you folks but when a new Call of Duty game comes out these days it just doesn`t have the same thrill as it used too, perhaps like the tv series Lost it kind of loses direction for a while.

Well Activision and sledgehammer games have decided to set the newest release Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in the future and they have pulled out their well-thumbed copy of the penguin book of clichés and thrown in as many as possible into the story line.

The addition of a big movie star like Kevin Spacey as the villain of the piece is an interesting move especially as they have used a cgi version of him in the game, admittedly it looks good, but to be honest his face doesn`t look as real as the other characters.

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Kevin plays Jonathan Irons who owns the Atlas Corporation the world’s biggest private military contractor (the character is basically Spacey`s Frank Underwood from House of cards) now the story begins in 2054 in Korea you play private Jack Mitchell who is involved in a battle with the North Koreans resulting in Mitchell losing and arm and Private Will Irons (son of Jonathan) is killed, Mitchell is discharged and Jonathan Irons offers him a prosthetic arm and a job with Atlas.

The story goes on and on with twists and turns all of which are pretty predictable and to be honest if you are a fan of Call of Duty the story won`t mean much anyway and with an ending straight out of Die hard.

The campaign which is basically an 8 hour training course for the multiplay is the best Call of Duty campaign since Modern warfare 4 and really does pack a lot into a small amount of space.

You get to fly, use a boat, a tank, skydive, swim under water amongst other things and there is a nice variety of weaponry available the problem is you only get to do all the non-shooting stuff only once.

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Each soldier is fitted with an advanced exo skeleton very similar to the one Tom Cruise has in Edge of Tomorrow, which enables you to do all kinds of things like jump higher (like Halo) or rip off car doors and use them as shields (bit pointless as you can`t use your weapon whilst doing this).

Each mission is set in a different scenario as you would expect from Call of Duty and the set pieces are impressive and work well just some of them are over before you know it, and then it’s back to a long cut scene before heading off into the next mission, I must admit the cut scenes are some of the best rendered I have seen in a video game and apart from Kevin Spacey`s wooden look it really drives the game forward.

There is no load outs on the campaign just have to use what you are given, you can upgrade your character after every mission but to be honest I didn`t notice much improvement in performance during missions. As all COD fans will know you can pick up weapons as you go along and the new grenade system is great you can toggle between a series of different types and you will need all of them during the game.

Gameplay itself is fluid and fast paced with plenty of action and variety the kind of thing you would expect from Call of Duty.

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Call of Duty has always been about the multiplay experience and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare does it in spades with plenty of different modes both on line and locally.

Graphics are superb especially on next gen consoles (I played the XO version)

Summary

Sledgehammer games and Activision has breathed new life into the franchise, the gameplay is excellent and so are the visuals, I thought the story was too cliché ridden but you can`t have anything.

Call of Duty: Advance Warfare is all about the action and it does that with spades.

Call of Duty: Advance Warfare

Developer: Sledgehammer Games

Publisher: Activision

PC

Xbox 360/ONE

Playstation 3/4

Genre: FPS

Release Date: 3rd November 2014

Gameplay: 5/5

Graphics: 5/5

Story: 3/5

Overall: 4.5/5

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