Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (PC)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the 11th instalment of the Call of Duty Series and is developed by Sledgehammer Games. The company had its first work under Activition when they co-developed Modern Warfare 3 Infinity Ward. Infinity ward at the time suffered staff lay off and other problems due to lawsuit between Activition and Co-founders of Infinity Ward Jason West and Vince Zampella.

I was one of the people who gladly did not purchase the last Call of Duty game, poorly named COD:Ghost, Unfortunately this year, I became a victim to the series latest release, thinking that a new developer and the poor sales of the previous game would make Activition try harder to make the game actually good.  I am wrong, and now I’ll move on to the Review of this piece of crap.

 

Game Engine

The game is using a custom IW engine, which it seems to be a slightly modified IW6 engine. IW6 is the engine that was used to develop Call of Duty: Ghost. I say slightly, because the modifications that I noticed were done in areas of Fire and graphics. This modifications can cause straint to your computer as it requires 6GB (Minimum)/ 8GB (Requirement) of RAM memory and 1GB(Minimum)/ 4GB(Requirement) Graphic Memory to work effectively. Not sure how his is arranged in the engine but most other shooter that have spectacular visuals don’t require that much from your machine (I get around 60 FPS on Battlefield 4 using the same Card on Ultra Settings, while I struggle on normal in this game).

Engine has terrible memory management

I like how this company modify their engine slightly and call it “New”. To be fair they are not the only company who does that……….yeah I am looking at you DICE, you sell outs.

 

Singleplayer (Spoiler, skip if you don’t want to know)

The singleplayer is OK, nothing special. It’s short, compared to other COD games, which is weird since Sledgehammer Games advertised that the story would be longer than others (false advertising). I think that they mean by longer story is that they do force you to watch the cut scene between each mission. The load bar won’t continue unless scene is finished, here is a video of a pre mission cut scene. Keep an eye on the loading bar in the bottom-right:

The story itself is OK. You play as Jack Mitchell, who is on the way to be dropped into South Korea, because North Korea (somehow) was able to get their hands on the latest military technology and decided to invade South Korea. America decides to get involved, because Murica always loves a fight (go figures). As Mitchell, you are joined by your BFF Will Irons, Jonathan Irons son (CEO of Atlas, and is performed by Kevin Spacey), and Cormack your Sargent and tasked to escort demolition squad to destroy an artillery type of ship. Things happen, everything goes wrong, demo squad dies, Will dies in a heroic fashion, at the same time you lose an arm and then dragged by Cormack to safety. (This is the only point in the game where you get major physical damage).

During Wills funeral, Wills dad (Kevin Spacey) decides to give you a second chance by giving you an arm and a place in his private company, killing brown people. So you are moving up from killing Asians to brown people, also you never know what happened to South Korea after the first mission.

You join Atlas looking for a fight and a bad guy shows up called Hades. Hades is leader of KVA, which is a terrorist organisation that doesn’t like technology (Don’t know why, maybe he has Apple problems. He doesn’t understand why his iPhone bends or why they keep releasing one every year. Then again I have the same feeling with COD). In Atlas you join your new friends; Gideon (a British Soldier), Ilona (An ex Spetsnaz. Russian love….) and Joker (not important, just ignore him) to do missions, yada yada and killing Hades. You do kill him and game ends……………………………………………………………………..Nope.

You find out that Hades was put into place by Irons, so that his company can grow and earn the worlds trust. As you find that out, you then go on the run from Atlas who are chasing you now, because they know that you know. Yeah. On the run, you are helped by your old Sergeant, Cormack, who has now made his own squad called Sentinels. Sentinels are tasked on go after and taking down Irons, but then you find out that Irons has developed a Bio-weapon that does not attack Atlas employees and that he plans to launch on the US.

Tank Mission, Jet Mission, and Yada yada yada….

You corner Irons in Iraq, but a twist, he uses the bio-weapon, and most of your team dies, except you, Gideon and Ilona (Ex Atlas employees). You are then captured, and just when you think its the end for you, you then escapes(What is wrong with bad guys, have they ever seen The Good, The Bad and The Ugly when Tuco says “When you need to shoot, shoot, don’t talk”, so just kill him please!).

After you escape, you head back to Irons stronghold while controlling mech, and kill Irons by giving him back the arm which he gave you when you joined Atlas. (I think Mitchell is a rude a** re-gifter)

Game ends with Mitchell saying the line “This wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning”. So this might mean that a sequel is in the works, where a member of Irons family steps in to take over Atlas and seek revenge over world for death of father and bothers. Yeah I know it sounds like a Sledgehammer Games Idea.

Things that I liked:

• No specific government country as the element of evil, but a private military
• The exo-skeleten at times does have quite neat gadgets
• Kevin Spacey

 

Things that I disliked:

• Constant stop points where the story could of ended. You seem indestructible
• You only play as Jack Mitchell. While other COD titles allowed to control different people
• Gideons voice
• Limit number of mission where you use machines such as the tank, mech and jet
• Mitchell is a re-gifter
• Killing brown people, standard COD idea

 

Co-op

I played co-op three times.

Things that I liked

• Nothing

Things that I disliked

• Bad connection
• Brainless players (not really the developers problem)
• Exactly the same as MW3 co-op, only with exo-suits
• No Zombies unless you have the Season Pass (Which costs extra £40 for more crap)
• Multiplayer maps.

 

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the biggest feature of a Call of Duty game. So you would think that team would perfect this part in development to make it ready at launch. Unfortunately this is not the case because it’s a Activision game. Companies spend thousands of dollars on marketing and advertising, but don’t put enough into actual development.

Let me list the problems that this game multiplayer:

• No dedicated server, everything else would be ok if they just could introduce dedicated server. So don’t expect a post launch, it will never happen
• Cheating – Nothing happens to them, they keep coming back
• Unbearable lag – They kinda solved his by making everyone’s ping bar higher, but the lag part is still there
• Spawning – Spawning, well you spawn in front of enemies, that’s cleaver
• Hit detection – Shots do not register at time, you fire four and only one of the four registers
• Matchmaking
• Perks – Are useless and at times seem not to work. I use low profile and blast suppressor to go all stealthly, but somehow every enemy knows where I am, because I still show up on the minimap
• Badly Designed Maps. Greenband in my opinion was the best, but it is worse than all the other COD maps (Not including Ghost), too small and confusing. It might be the confusing part the make the maps feel small

Here is a MP Gameplay:

The graphics setting are set to low due to the lag.

 

Conclusion is that this game is not worth the full price that I paid. The game singleplayer is ok, co-op is a pass and multiplayer is buggy and at times unplayable. The patches that were released after the games release did not improve much of the outcome that game promised to deliver.

Shortly before posting this, I deleted this crap of a game from my steam. Will return to it in 6 months, but I doubt it will be fixed by then.

If you are looking to play the SP then I recommend torrenting the game from one of the torrent sites, your choice.

VERDICT – TORRENT

Losing respect for Call of Duty

Last weekend, Call of Duty: Ghost was %50 off on Steam, this also included a Free Weekend trial where Steam users were able to play Ghosts Multiplayer for free for the weekend.

I was a fan of the Call of Duty franchise, until MW2 was released. (Black ops is still considered good, but not a good as the previous titles). The shift from gameplay and player requirements to pushing out content for investors is destroying franchise for gamers.

That said, I jumped on the opportunity to try out Call of Duty:Ghost. Hearing that how this is suppose to be next gen and new direction for the franchise I thought to try out to see if they were telling the truth. I had played around six hours of Ghost, and I can say the game was not worth it. Call of Duty:Ghost was not what the developers and publishers made it out to be.

So let me go through the list of problems that COD:Ghost has;

• Create a Class – From all the Call of Duty titles that featured Create a Class, I found that Black ops 2 was the best. Ten free slots that can be filled in a way that you want  to play. While in Ghost you provided with slots for weapons and attachments, and slot limit for perks (Each perk can take up a different amount depending on value given). Ghost also includes squad points which are used to unlock perks, weapons, attachments, killstreaks and loadout slots. Black ops 2 had squad points too but they could only be used to unlock weapons and perks when they were available when you reach a certain rank. Squad points in Ghost can be used on weapons and perks which are available to be unlocked from the start, ranking up only provides you with squad points. I feel that giving player everything from the start allow them.

• Weapons and Perks – The perks system is all over the place. There are so many of them, which spoils the game by making you and/or other players super soldiers. I prefer the Call of Duty 4 perk system where you are only given three slots without crossover perk selection and without perk pros. On the other hand there are a reasonable amount of weapons in the game but most of them are wasted because of the maps are stuffed with objects that could discourage you from using certain weapons. Weapon of choice in Ghost is an assault rifle, but overall the weapons are well balanced in terms of damage and recoil.

• Maps – There are two type of maps in the Ghost; maps with open mid-areas or very compact maps. The maps do may feel big, but it is actually an illusion, because they are quite small (Similar to the idea of meal on big plate). A few months back I watched a video on youtube that explain the map layout pretty well, unfortunately I was not able to relocate it. The video explains the difference of map development between standard mutiplayer map design (which I use when making CS:GO maps) and Ghost maps design ;

• Support – Zero. Just like MW2, MW3, and BO2. Matchmaking instead of dedicated servers, which means that you will be meeting cheaters, trolls, racists, brain dead players and more. I did not get to test out league games (if there was any) or Clan wars.

• Graphics – Next generation Call of Duty supposedly running on a new engine. When I first launched the game all of the video setting was set to low, this was recommendation setting. Played a few rounds and I found that the world seemed ugly and textures were rough. Then decided to set everything to high, and all I can say is that this was the outcome;

So from this I can say is that Call of Duty:Ghost PC is a cheap console port. Full of graphical bugs, cheaters, rude and naive players, re-used content and maps that have been designed horribly. Ghost is one of the Call of Duty game that you have to give a miss.

Call of Duty:Ghost is the number one most sold game on console, unfortunately not on PC, and after this player turn away from future titles. Ghost multiplayer was developed by Sledgehammer Games and with the announcement that they will also be doing the next COD game,  I have to say they will get very little or any at all support from PC gamers, after this ridiculous show of effort. That so, Treyarch now has an extra year to hopefully create a comeback. It’s too soon to say.

Thing they could do to make the next Call of Duty a success on PC;

1. Ranked Dedicated Servers (Let admins take charge of removing bad players. Also allow up to 32 for PC).
2. Mod Tools and Map Builder (Make good use of the Steam Workshop, allow players to help make the game grow).
3. Graphical change (Use modified Unreal or Cryengine, both have development kits that are free for the public to test).
4. Less Perks(Skill comes from the player not the game. No super soldiers).
5. Environmental Maps (Snow, Rain, Sand, Jungle. Add atmosphere. Different range of ideas).
6. Less Killstreaks (Don’t over reward the player).
7. Increase the number of weapons (10 per primary weapon class).
8. Player Customisation
9. New Co-op mode. (Similar to beast/zombies).
10. Singleplayer or Co-0p based storyline (Like World at War).

People say Call of Duty killed Medal of Honor, but in fact Medal of Honor was killed by EA. Now people say Titanfall will kill Call of Duty, but why all know Activision will do that job.

If everything fails there is always Valve with Counter Strike. Go download the Steam client and purchase the CS:GO for £11.99.

Why I won’t be buying Titanfall

In this post I will explain the reasons why I wont be buying Titanfall, which is set to be released for the PC, Xbox One and Xbox 360 this March.

Before starting, I would like to indicate that I did not buy Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Ghost, because I anticipated the problems that came with them when they were released. I will do a few comparison between Titanfall, Ghost/BF4 (using what information there is online) and Black Ops 2/BF3 (games that I have played).

So let me start with Content.

From reading the articles, playing the beta and watching videos of the game online, it appears that Titanfall will not have a great deal of content to keep me playing.

The game is mutiplayer only, but has singleplayer elements.  Following the same idea that was used in Brink, do you remember that game? Which was hyped to reasonable standard before release but unfortunately it did not live up to that hype.

While playing the beta I did not take notice of the singleplayer elements, as I was focusing on staying alive. This made me think of how many people will do the same thing? Think the story that someone spent great time working on will be wasted.

The beta only featured few amount of weapons, but yet again its a beta. Although there hasn’t been any information about the weapons in-game but from what I have seen and read  it looks like the game will only be having a few handful of weapons. Battlefield 3 in my option had a good number of weapons for players to select from. While Black Ops 2 had a reseasonable amount, good enough to last months.

As there will be no singleplayer, that then could mean more mutiplayer maps, right?. Well as I am writing this post I have discovered that there will be fourteen maps overall. The ones I played in the beta felt like a medium size map when I played as a pilot but felt small while in the Mechs. Compare the number of maps with other shooters (Not including DLC maps, just standard game copy maps) like Battlefield 4 which has ten maps (which are big but can be cut sort depending on the game mode) and COD:Ghost which has fourteen medium sized maps.

So by comparing three games; Battlefield 4, Ghost and Titanfall. You will notice that;

• Battlefield 4 has Lots of Guns, 10 Maps (Ranging in size), Singleplayer and Co-op.
• Call of Duty: Ghost has Good number of guns, 14 Maps (Medium size), Singleplayer and Extension (or Zombies if you’re a Treyarch supporter).
• Titanfall will have a good number of guns, 14 Maps and three Mech/Titan types.

It does not look like you get much with Titanfall. So this then allows me to move on to the second reason.

Price

The cheapest place to buy Titanfall is from Amazon, at the cost of £34.99 ($58.45) for PC. While the most expensive place to buy Titanfall for PC is directly through Origin (EA’s failed Steam clone) and it will set you back £44.99 ($75.16).

When COD:Ghost and Battlefield 4 were released, they had the price tag of £34.99 on Amazon. With Battlefield 4 costing £44.99 on Origin and Ghost costing £39.99 on Steam.

So the reason here that I do not want to pay EA and Respawn £34.99 for a game that has less content than other games. I also do not want to pay them to forcing me to use Origin.

Support

The final reason is support. I will not expect any. The game will have no dedicated servers as everything will be running on Cloud servers. So you are provided with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 style of matchmaking, which give you random bans, increase of cheaters and lack of good games.

Studio co-founder revealed that Titanfall will not support mod and map tools at launch, but then again as the game will require Origin, so do not expect support even after launch. This shows that the game will have no future in growing, compared to other titles such as Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament and Quake, which to this day are still played by millions, due to the fact of the community support creating free content for players to play.

Beta Opinion

This is based on my opinion, others may differ.

Things that I did not like:

• Matchmaking Sucks.
• Everybody gets Mechs, its not earned.
• AIs are useless.
•  Hit Marker Latency/Not registering.
• Climbing problems.
• Some weapons are useless and others are overpowered.

Things that I did like:

• Movement and wall running felt smooth.
• Wildcard boosts also known as burn cards.
• You always enjoy watching Mechs fall from the sky.

So to sum up Titanfall would be that it’s a over-hyped and overpriced game. This does not mean that game is not good, its just that you don’t really get much for your money. It’s a little pick me up that will only last couple of months before getting bombarded by DLC until Titanfall 2 announcement at E3 2016.

Titanfall Maps , Battlefield 4 Maps , COD:Ghost Maps