Heh. Surprising review. I tend to agree with your opinions, but this time, I feel the campaign kept me much more engaged than anything since Modern Warfare. It's a PMC Story, but it's a decent one, with a good villain and supoorting cast. Compare it to the sort of stuff in films that tackle the subject, and it's less flat out dumb than say, Elysium. Sure, it's scripted, but all the mechanics they introduced were solid and there were so many during the 6 hours that it kept me playing thanks to the variety. In terms of multiplayer, it's the best since Modern Warfare, and maybe this is a console thing since they probably have more people playing than PC, but with a decent ping the time to kill is negated with the movement more often than not. The maps are balanced and so are the weapons. Originally it felt like snipers were useless this time, but players found that because they're harder to use with the new pace, they're also guaranteeing one shot one kill that other weapons don't. These little touches of balance are all over the place, and even though it is Call of Duty with a double jump, it got me to love the game for the first time since...well, COD4. But anyways, great review as always. Cheers!
You know, I really dont get the whole backlash over the "Press F to pay respects" thing thats been going around lately. Its literally just "button prompt to advance plot and see scene". Sure maybe YOU dont care about the person who died, but your character does. Its consistency.
As the other reply said, if it's for the character's sake, it should be out of your hands. As it stands, when I'm told to Press E to pay respects I can spin in a circle for three minutes and bump into everyone else, and if there's jump and crouch enabled in that scene I could teabag the coffin.
Because it makes no sense on any level actually. Your character does not need to press anything, he has no agency, it's you doing the pressing. It's you who is supposed to feel something for a character. And as a button prompt it's mind boggling, you can't advance without pressing a button, but it does not offer any choice, any challange, nothing. You can't not press it, and unlike time events you can't fail it, it's just there. Question is, why is it there? Why was this not just a cutscene? You don't have anything to interact with, other than the coffin. Have we really sunk so low as to present this as interaction of some sort? It's not. I did not see any backlash, I saw people making fun of it, and rightfuly so, it's completly stupid. It has no reason to be there. If you want to convey emotions, you can do it in a cutscene, countless movies and games were able to do so. Having to press a button won't make people feel emotions.
Y'all have really good points. I mean, to me its just kind of "okay, whatever" but I can see where you all are coming from "Backlash" might have been the wrong word lol
Ah, don't remember that. I've gone off Jared. There's a surprising amount of thoughtful youtubers I watch who pronounce things weirdly. I find myself hypersensitive to them, but at the same time I probably do it in my videos and don't realise. Or maybe it's an American thing. *shrug*
For some reason I haven't watched any of your videos on the Metal Gear series, but for how often you brought up "Press F to Pay Respects" I was really hoping you'd talk about "press X to emotion" in general, maybe bringing up pulling the trigger on The Boss. Love the short segment where you showed your input. A very nice way to illustrate your point.
There is a difference, The Boss was an actual developted character through the whole gane while CoD tried to make us pay respect to a chunk of meat that died in the first mission
Yeah... I think the biggest problem with the scene on this game, compaired to MGS3, is the fact that player doesn't know much about this character who dies in the start of the game. So why should we care? With MGS3 it's a different story. We get to know the Boss trough the game.
SuperArppis On top of that, the two actions are different. Paying respect is something someone does internally - it's an emotion. Those words appearing on the screen doesn't actually make the player feel anything, whereas making the player shoot The Boss is something they're actively doing in the story world. It's making the player take control of the inevitable (in order for the story to progress), rather than saying 'feel something'.
I really do hate how every new feature in this game gets turned into a standardized gimmick. We had the Zombies game mode which is now expected in every game and even the Exo suit pseudo parkour thing is turned into a standard thing they use.
I actually like the ability to jump high since it adds a little bit verticality and maneuverability. However, these features only added the frustration of a largely linear game to which the added jump only enhanced my attention to. It's so annoying to want to explore only to have the "follow" prompt appear in the corner of the screen.
InStars I think that's why Lord Zephyros (and a lot more people) displayed his dissatisfaction. People buying SSDs and now they can't even fit 1 game in it because devs are too lazy to compress textures or audio files for the PC version.
I'm not sure where this ranks on my list of cCoD campaigns. I like the setting and premise but dislike the weapon selection. IMO the feature in Black Ops II where you could select your loadout before a mission should have been in every Call of Duty campaign after it was introduced.
I played on modded COD4 maps about three years ago where you could jump super high. I'm talking fifty foot something. It was pretty exciting to be up in the air with other players, using split second aim to ensure you hit the ground living and they hit it dead. Like playing the helicopter scene from Shoot 'Em Up again and again.
People praise the double jump added to CoD when is already implemented on other games years ago like Quake Unreal and Tribes so the only new good thing is an old mechanic. Just another success of millions on Marketing.
It's not just double jumping, its the whole new mobility system that changes up the formula enough to become something different, CoD4 wasn't the first to integrate RPG elements into FPS game, nor was it the first to introduce loadouts or iron sights, but its often credited/blamed for those things.
When I played through the campaign I found none of the difficulty issues or AI problems that he had. Maybe its because I didn't sit back and let it happen and instead actually used the exo boosts.
People keep reviewing the campaign like that's what people came to play CoD for. The campaign is always a joke lol, Multiplayer is where the fun is at.
Well, I bought it just for the multiplayer and I feel like i've had my money's worth already and still enjoying it a lot. That's a very opinionated thing about the value of game. Some people might think the multiplayer is worth the full price and others might expect more but hey that's not like a huge thing you can argue using facts or anything since it's all extremely opinionated.
Yeah, but once upon a time ago, you could still expect games like Unreal Tournament 2004 to have strong single player despite obviously being built for multiplayer. Hell, I'd say Gears of War and its sequel still had a pretty fun campaigns despite being firmly rooted in the the "modern multiplayer shooter" era. That's probably where SuperBunnyHop and others are coming from when they review in this mindset.
Good review! I know you don't seem too enthusiastic during the review, but I'm more interested than ever :P As a halo/titanfall/battlefield player it sounds like my skill for online PvP should translate easily. I just have to look at it like cod with a double jump!
Talk about a bait and switch between Ghosts and AW. In Ghosts the multi sucked but the campaign was incredibad, and now AW's campaign is plain boring but the multi is actually good.
They just need to stop being overly serious and leave the scripted shitfest on the cutting room floor without pretending to have a story by wasting money on a celebrity and instead let the player have all these gadgets for them to use as much as they want, how they want and when they want without a boring cutscene to keep the pacing on gameplay
Suwat Saksri But simply being given the gadgets without fun stuff to do isnt fun. As hokey as AW's story is, I doubt removing the story would make it any better (except from buffing up the multi)
Removing the story would leave room for more gameplay and it would get rid of a stupid reason to why you dont have specific gadgets in one mission from another, they shouldnt force the player about this and it would result in less scripted events, that would make the game replayable
You review and generally what you expect out COD campaign clashes with what Noah Caldwell-Gervais thinks and wants out of COD, and I for one agree with his views this time. I would recommend you watch his video on COD campaigns, he puts the game into a different perspective.
Just saying, Black Ops 2 introduced the Pointstreak system and helped balance multiplayer with the 10-point system. If you didn't know that of course. Just trying to help! :)
I agree with you. The problem is that you have these abilities... yet the game constantly tells you: "Wait you can't go there or GAME OVER!". It sucks. And everything has to go the way game wants it to go. Then we got the "Ramirez, do this fast or GAME OVER! I could do it, but I want player to do it instead, so you will feel atleast moderately as part of the game!"-bits. These things ofcourse has been there for every Call of Duty. But you'd think they'd try to expand upon the campaign a bit. And give player something to do, than do some annoying quicktime events. Like in the bit where you jump from one car to another: Why can't they let player to do manually the jumping? Why do they have to automate everything there? That sequence didn't feel like badass to me, it felt like cutscene that was hampered by QTE's. Best level on the game is sneaking section on that villa. Because it lets you choose the pace and route you want to take. I have to agree, this is my least favourite one out of all CoD campaigns.
oh shit! that vietnam level in black ops one that shit gave me an existential crisis. playing it at my friends house dying endlessly four like an hour. spent the rest of the afternoon like "there were real wars like this...just running into death over and over again". It was surreal.
Ironically enough the reason you didn't enjoy the campaign in AW and the treyarch games in general is the excact reason why i love them, I can't stand IW's campaigns, the onslaught of linear hand-holding scripted scenes just bored me into submission, ghosts literally put me to sleep
***** but that's exactly what bunnyhop's complaining with with AW, and CoD games in general. if you play crysis or half life, the game gives you a basic goal, some obstacles between you and it, and sets you on your way with some gameplay functions and abilities. in CoD, you're literally not left alone for more than 10 seconds. it's the one game series where the only thing that doesn't feel needed is the player itself. it's boring, easy, and linear to the point of it being mindnumbing.
EdEmKay It comes from the premise of the series itself, you're just one soldier in a bigger conflict, Infinity ward and sledgehammer overdid it a bit much The treyarch CoDs on the other hand actually let you play as opposed to being just another soldier, heck they even make your protagonist the leader to remove the need to be accompanied
***** the problem isn't whether or not it's in context, the problem is the context itself. treyarch and infinity ward's campaigns are almost identical. follow this person, follow these instructions, effortlessly kill these 20 people who's goals you're oblivious to, play with this game mechanic that you'll never see again, watch this NPC character do something that you can't do. i understand if you enjoy them, they can be fun, but i've played nearly all of them, and since CoD4 they all play virtually identically. the widely regarded "best" CoD mission is All Ghillied Up, and even that is literally copy catting an NPC character for an hour before they actually trust you to hold off a wave of enemies however you want. people seem to forget and drop their standards, these aren't how shooters are meant to be. this is a movie you are playing, not a game. Wolfenstein has you choose your path and take people out however you want, so do the Half Life games, even Doom and FEAR didn't have objective markers and people shouting at you every 10 seconds.
+roler42 Well in that case I predict he's gonna hate Black ops 3 because they've ditched the corridor crawl entirely for more open ended arena style levels.
Every time I played Black Ops, I slowly made my way down that hill, not knowing why it was so hard. It wasn't until my 3rd or so playthrough that saw a button prompt. I never played a video game the same way again.
"Bright yellow text on a bright brown background" Yeah, that's a white van. Not "bright brown", and it stands out pretty clear to me. Also, the E doesn't appear during the camera shake or the blur, and appears to be handled differently in the render. It is clear during the whole sequence, even after RUclips got their compression algorithms on it. Tons wrong with this game, and you pick this?
Here's another example of button prompt failure: The baseball scene from BioShock Infinite. The player is in first-person and are handed a projectile, so what is the obvious solution? Massive button prompts.
Scary thing that CoD:AW tries to tell us is that Private Militaries COULD actually take over the world. If you guys didn't know, the biggest company in the world (2nd to Foxconn) is G4S. If you guys don't know what G4S is, it is simply like Atlas. Yes, a Private Military company. It's crazy how they're given less attention that Foxconn. What happens when G4S gets bigger and bad people actually controls them?
Nice review, definitely summarizes my fatigue towards the franchise. Just seeing your hands while you played the campaign.. What a drag. Props to Sledgehammer for adding an extra layer of mobility to the multiplayer and I hope people enjoy their time with it, but for me this is another of skipping COD and not regretting it. On the other hand, got Titanfall for $10 and I'm having a good time.
If one wants to know how they wanted that game to feel- try vanquish. Its a great game, BUT it has a sharp learning curve AT THE BEGINNING. So you need to learn how to use your energymeter to slide, defend and boost, because you CANT stay in cover, the enemy will swarm you and rockets hone in on you. But that game is great once you get the controls and forget what you learned in 1pFPS. And the game does not take itself seriously, its over the top fun,
Thanks for the review. You enunciated my main problem with the COD games of the last 10 years: they're movies. At least the single player campaigns are. You have to play the game they way the devs want you to play to tell the story they want to tell. Not much fun, especially when I find the story silly, simplistic or preachy. Thanks again, I think I'll stick with Titanfall.
I miss Arcade Mode from CoD 4. It was a pretty neat idea with poor execution. Having a scoring system, as well as time and life limits, certainly made the single player gameplay much more interesting. People could have seriously competed for high scores if it hadn't been for the requirement to complete the entire game in one go. It works for shoot-'em-ups, because they only last 30 minutes. It takes at least about 4 hours to finish CoD 4 in Arcade Mode.
"Press F to pay respects" is a strong meme though. It's right up there with "Steamed Hams" and "Hi fellow kids". People who have never played a videogame in their life press F on news stories and fails and all sorts of shit.
Did you upgrade your system or you still have the memory issue you had with CoD: ghosts? Advanced warfare looks pretty good, but if the only "new" feature is a double jump....well...I guess I'll skip this one...as I did for Ghosts
He's looking for a fps that isn't shallow, bland and trite. Who knows why he's looking in the call of duty franchise. Maybe he just wants to highlight how call of duty's designers have made essentially no improvement to the series' system even though it's lacking?
You missed the whole part about that a thoughtless popcorn campaign means "good for COD game". Becaue COD already has enough design problems for them to try to take themselves seriously with the campaign. Besides, he said he was a fan of the tighly scripted Infinity wards games.
You nailed it. From the start of this game I felt the extreme incompetence of early Treyarch in this game's story and level design, but it makes the worst Treyarch game look good.
The double jump and other mobility increasing features might be small changes, but they're a magnitude bigger than anything that happened with the franchise since CoD4.
Most are scripted anyway, for a next gen CoD i expected less Kevin Spacey (i dont want to know how much money they wasted on him), less scripts and more playability
Suwat Saksri I meant in the multiplayer, since that's the only part of CoD that's wortha damn these days. If I played CoD I definitely wouldn't waste my time with the campaign.
The strange thing is that Sledgehammer could have been able to fix some of the problems by adding some small features. For example, make the enemies equip projectile weapons like plasma cannons (this time it's a sci-fi setting, so there's no reason not to put them in the game), since you have the option to meaningfully avoid enemy attacks, you can go straight gung-ho and that promotes twitchy high-paced actions that was advertised (kind of like how DOOM's gameplay worked out). Or, put an weapon that does an AOE attack that promotes assault maneuvers. Those simple things could have fixed the monotonous gameplay COD has been known for. But I guess the obsession with the "serious, pseudo-realistic scripted game style" made this campaign a wasted opportunity...
Maybe it's because Ghosts was absolute shite, but I found the campaign in this one to be engaging enough that I actually wanted to come back & play it, instead of making a B-line for Multiplayer. Speaking of multiplayer, it's fun, but it's flat out ridiculous that they didn't have dedicated servers at launch. Dat Lag-Comp is horrible.
When I was watching the Giant Bomb Quick Look I wasn't sure if the shoot outs looked dragged out or if it was just because the guys suck at games. There were also instances where there seemed to be no music in the background, which is something you've come to expect to be there, because it's always there, and without it the game seems unpolished in a way. This game looks like what I expected Black Ops 2 multiplayer to be like after playing the campaign, but instead it was just like a mix between 80s stuff and 2024 stuff, no wrist mounted grenades, crappy black ops 1 style crosshair, and a lot of old guns.
I really do hate how every game in this series' new feature turns into a standardized gimmick. Zombies came first and it was unique now people expect it. Even the whole Exo suit theme has carried over into being a standard gimmick.
What made this call of duty enjoyable for me compared to MW3/BO2/Ghosts, was that they cut down the ammount of 1 shot kill weapons drastically, making doing stuff other than camping viable again.
Scorestreak rewards were introduced back in Black Ops 2. And, yeah, they were a good thing there as well... I just think it's wrong to praise exclusively AW for them.
It's interesting seeing reviews from different perspectives. I do see your perspective when you say that AW is one of the best CoD games (for multiplayer, at least), due to it at least changing things up a bit, and re-introducing skill-based movement. But, it's arguably the worst CoD multiplayer. Well, maybe not counting the newest releases, which I've not played. If they gave you more health, maybe it'd be decent, but the added mobility basically just means that strategy and tactics are even less important than usual, with even more focus on twitch shooting and dumb luck. At the very least, by player count, AW multiplayer is the least popular multiplayer of the CoD iterations (excluding maybe the pre-Modern Warfare games). Hell, even Call of Duty 4 is more popular -- the original, not the remastered version.
*I haven't bought a Call of Duty since MW2 and I must say that I've been thoroughly enjoying my time with it - until better games come out, of course. The exo suits completely changes the game and makes game types like Domination so much more fast paced and thrilling. Nothing feels overpowered with all abilites all having some form of counter in one way or another. The level of customization has been largely increased, allowing you to decide your load-out like no other. Graphics have been noticeably bumped up, still running at steady 60fps. Maps are well designed, full of many flanking spots, almost completely wiping out people's ability to camp. Classic mode is a welcome addition for us COD4 lovers that just want gun on gun action. Also I haven't ran into any technical problems online or otherwise on the PS4* *Only criticism: Exo Survival is complete shit and barely worth playing and I didn't really enjoy the single-player. And the 9/10 reviews that it's receiving are ridiculous. 7.5 seems more reasonable, close to an 8.* *Edit:* Also the sniper gameplay has taken a fair hit with the increased speed of the overall gameplay. I could just be a terrible Sniper in this game (which is very likely) or it just didn't feel like a viable option like in the slower, older Call of Duty games. And as for "just COD with a double jump" why didn't you cover all the new perks that it adds to the gameplay using the EXO suit?
ErebosGR Never happened to me. Getting kills/getting killed is nothing like an almost instant death. Takes a decent amount of direct hits to take someone down, depending on the gun.
Good review. Not a fan of Call of Duty these days, but as someone who cut their teeth on UT99 I can appreciate the multiplayer stylings of AW much more than Blops etc. Multiplayer reminds me a lot of Armored Core. After trying out AW multi, I just wound up playing a crapload of Armored Core Verdict Day. People are way more boring than robots.
Holy shit. I have never seen a game where the single player and the multiplayer has been so dissonant and conflicting with each other, even for a Call of Duty game...
I really enjoy the double jump and exo suit maneuverability options that were introduced in this game. I do not like the jump jet/boost mechanic that was introduced in BLOPS 3 and continues into Infinite Warfare. It just felt good in AW to double jump into the air then boost to a side, as simple as that sounds. The BLOPS 3 version feels dull and tacked on.
I caveat this saying I haven't really taken a Call of Duty game seriously in years, much less the next generation of them. However I had to pause at the 5 minute mark thinking... Are we really more than half past a Call of Duty review still talking about the Single player aspect of the game? COD is basically a subscription MMO without the subscription. You mention going thru loops to get to the multiplayer... and many people just don't play the singleplayer anymore. I really don't see the irony in a new feature feeling more fleshed out in the multiplayer than in the singleplayer for a COD game, if anything, it's what I would expect. Valid complaints would likely be on the obvious omission of Zombie mode and lack of dedicated servers which you mentioned. However I seriously doubt people would have made such a big deal about the press X to pay respect if it wasn't for Conan's take on the game. I don't think anyone is a huge fan of the fact that COD games have turned into almost an MMO where instead of paying each month, you pay 60 dollars a year. However this just highlights a fundamental problem with games media... Why did you feel the need to spend 7 hours on the singleplayer? Reviewers will often spend 10-20 hrs tops in ridiculously deep games like say Civilization... But then will waste all this time on campaign content that was clearly filler/part of a check list of things...
He probably felt the need to spend so long on the singleplayer because it's... not actually filler. There is an enormous amount of time, money and effort put into the singleplayer campaign. That the end product is of crappy quality does not diminish that. The devs clearly meant for the singleplayer mode to be able to stand on its own. They wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of mocapping in Kevin Spacey if his half of the game was just.an afterthought.
I imagine with a shooter like CoD, higher framerate allows for faster response and smoother aiming. I've played plenty of first-person games at 60, so I can see 90 being a boon.
CEmanified Ah. I don't think RUclips has gotten off their lazy asses to implement it yet. EDIT: Disregard that, I'm a dumbass. I think George recorded this before the update.
***** I definitely feel that the high framerate is wasted with most Call of Duty games, since it seems to clash with the pacing of the games. I love it when a shooter has a commitment to being fast and makes great use of the fast framerate.
I'm one of the weirdos who will only buy a Call of Duty if the single player campaign is good. I usually get sick of multiplayer in these games once I level out to about 30. That's been consistent for the past few CoDs I played, so you really need to reinforce the multiplayer with a single player that keeps things interesting. I felt the first Black Ops featured that even with the gameplay issues outlined here. And I completely disagree with "taking itself too seriously". I've been waiting for a CoD that tried to be at least a little more realistic in terms of its story. Press E to pay respects is clearly the wrong direction but I still hold out hope that something like that is coming.
"Kevin Spacey was a kinda interesting villain." 2017 in a nutshell.
I'll press E to pay my respect to Super Bunnyhop anytime
E
E
E
E that shit
E
keep this going people
yeah, yeah, yeah ... but you overlook the real question everyone has ... how's the fish AI? :)
Call of Destiny : Advanced Titanfall
+Nineshadow Call of doge: much warfare
+Nineshadow CoD Blops 3: The Taken Frontier
Carl of Duty: Black Cops
You should make a video about the rise and fall of WW2 FPS games. Kind of like your Sonic and SNK videos.
You might be interested in Noah Caldwell-Gervais retrospective on the COD series. His videos tickle a lot of the same places Bunnyhop does.
Heh. Surprising review. I tend to agree with your opinions, but this time, I feel the campaign kept me much more engaged than anything since Modern Warfare. It's a PMC Story, but it's a decent one, with a good villain and supoorting cast. Compare it to the sort of stuff in films that tackle the subject, and it's less flat out dumb than say, Elysium. Sure, it's scripted, but all the mechanics they introduced were solid and there were so many during the 6 hours that it kept me playing thanks to the variety.
In terms of multiplayer, it's the best since Modern Warfare, and maybe this is a console thing since they probably have more people playing than PC, but with a decent ping the time to kill is negated with the movement more often than not. The maps are balanced and so are the weapons. Originally it felt like snipers were useless this time, but players found that because they're harder to use with the new pace, they're also guaranteeing one shot one kill that other weapons don't. These little touches of balance are all over the place, and even though it is Call of Duty with a double jump, it got me to love the game for the first time since...well, COD4.
But anyways, great review as always. Cheers!
Just to point something out, COD:BO2 had the scorestreak system.
You know, I really dont get the whole backlash over the "Press F to pay respects" thing thats been going around lately.
Its literally just "button prompt to advance plot and see scene". Sure maybe YOU dont care about the person who died, but your character does. Its consistency.
But if your character does care about the person who died then he doesn't need us to press F or E. :P
As the other reply said, if it's for the character's sake, it should be out of your hands. As it stands, when I'm told to Press E to pay respects I can spin in a circle for three minutes and bump into everyone else, and if there's jump and crouch enabled in that scene I could teabag the coffin.
Because it makes no sense on any level actually. Your character does not need to press anything, he has no agency, it's you doing the pressing. It's you who is supposed to feel something for a character. And as a button prompt it's mind boggling, you can't advance without pressing a button, but it does not offer any choice, any challange, nothing. You can't not press it, and unlike time events you can't fail it, it's just there. Question is, why is it there? Why was this not just a cutscene? You don't have anything to interact with, other than the coffin. Have we really sunk so low as to present this as interaction of some sort? It's not.
I did not see any backlash, I saw people making fun of it, and rightfuly so, it's completly stupid. It has no reason to be there. If you want to convey emotions, you can do it in a cutscene, countless movies and games were able to do so. Having to press a button won't make people feel emotions.
PoliteTimesplitter The twist is they didn't even program a corpse into the coffin. :P
Y'all have really good points. I mean, to me its just kind of "okay, whatever" but I can see where you all are coming from
"Backlash" might have been the wrong word lol
fin-ess
I really enjoy your commentary.
At least it isnt like saying Li-near instead of the proper lin-e-ar like some other people do. It's so annoying.
Strospiteri I have never heard anyone say that, I guess that's a testament to my good taste in youtubers!
El Rammo I think Pro-jared has said it from time to time. He's great but I cringe every time he says li-near.
Ah, don't remember that. I've gone off Jared. There's a surprising amount of thoughtful youtubers I watch who pronounce things weirdly. I find myself hypersensitive to them, but at the same time I probably do it in my videos and don't realise.
Or maybe it's an American thing. *shrug*
The syllable break is after the i, but the i is pronounced like a schwa (ə). Which sounds like 'uh'.
For some reason I haven't watched any of your videos on the Metal Gear series, but for how often you brought up "Press F to Pay Respects" I was really hoping you'd talk about "press X to emotion" in general, maybe bringing up pulling the trigger on The Boss.
Love the short segment where you showed your input. A very nice way to illustrate your point.
There is a difference, The Boss was an actual developted character through the whole gane while CoD tried to make us pay respect to a chunk of meat that died in the first mission
That's what I hoped he would've talked about, yes.
Yeah... I think the biggest problem with the scene on this game, compaired to MGS3, is the fact that player doesn't know much about this character who dies in the start of the game. So why should we care? With MGS3 it's a different story. We get to know the Boss trough the game.
The difference is the same between hammering a nail with a hammer or a bulldozer.
SuperArppis On top of that, the two actions are different. Paying respect is something someone does internally - it's an emotion. Those words appearing on the screen doesn't actually make the player feel anything, whereas making the player shoot The Boss is something they're actively doing in the story world. It's making the player take control of the inevitable (in order for the story to progress), rather than saying 'feel something'.
I really do hate how every new feature in this game gets turned into a standardized gimmick. We had the Zombies game mode which is now expected in every game and even the Exo suit pseudo parkour thing is turned into a standard thing they use.
What are your favourite lipbalms?
Kiflam
I actually like the ability to jump high since it adds a little bit verticality and maneuverability. However, these features only added the frustration of a largely linear game to which the added jump only enhanced my attention to. It's so annoying to want to explore only to have the "follow" prompt appear in the corner of the screen.
RAMIREZ, PAY RESPECTS TO YOUR FALLEN SOLDIER! AND THEN BUY ME LUNCH AT BURGER TOWN!
And this game just got even funnier now that Kevin Spacey's been really spaced out.
no one said anything about its GAME SIZE 48gb wtf!
lel, get a 3TB HDD now, scrub!
InStars Get a SSD, scrub.
ErebosGR Yeah, get SSD for OS, software and your favorite games and HDD for anything else ;)
InStars I think that's why Lord Zephyros (and a lot more people) displayed his dissatisfaction. People buying SSDs and now they can't even fit 1 game in it because devs are too lazy to compress textures or audio files for the PC version.
How many GBs of that do you wanna' bet are just old engine assets that they haven't cleaned out of their undoubtedly massive codebase?
This just in: Call of Duty is now Crysis.
I think you mean that Crysis turned into Call of Duty (in terms of campaign linearity).
ErebosGR
yup, the last one sucked.
IVIaskerade ironic given that when crysis 2 came out, it was bitched at for being call of duty with exoskeletons. And now Call of Duty is Crysis-lite
I'm not sure where this ranks on my list of cCoD campaigns. I like the setting and premise but dislike the weapon selection. IMO the feature in Black Ops II where you could select your loadout before a mission should have been in every Call of Duty campaign after it was introduced.
showing what your hands do during single and multiplayer sessions is absolutely genius, very effective at putting engagement in perspective. !!
this game is like poetry it rhymes
Another excellent review!!! I'm not even a fan of COD but i found this review both informative and interesting. Thanks!
I played on modded COD4 maps about three years ago where you could jump super high. I'm talking fifty foot something. It was pretty exciting to be up in the air with other players, using split second aim to ensure you hit the ground living and they hit it dead. Like playing the helicopter scene from Shoot 'Em Up again and again.
I loved the cynicism in this review, harsh but true as they say.
People praise the double jump added to CoD when is already implemented on other games years ago like Quake Unreal and Tribes so the only new good thing is an old mechanic. Just another success of millions on Marketing.
It's not just double jumping, its the whole new mobility system that changes up the formula enough to become something different, CoD4 wasn't the first to integrate RPG elements into FPS game, nor was it the first to introduce loadouts or iron sights, but its often credited/blamed for those things.
I wonder what George thinks about the campaign in Bland Ops 3.
Eileen Milligan worse than AW
When I played through the campaign I found none of the difficulty issues or AI problems that he had. Maybe its because I didn't sit back and let it happen and instead actually used the exo boosts.
People keep reviewing the campaign like that's what people came to play CoD for. The campaign is always a joke lol, Multiplayer is where the fun is at.
If people are paying 60$, they should at least expect something good from both modes since multiplayer is not free
Well, I bought it just for the multiplayer and I feel like i've had my money's worth already and still enjoying it a lot. That's a very opinionated thing about the value of game. Some people might think the multiplayer is worth the full price and others might expect more but hey that's not like a huge thing you can argue using facts or anything since it's all extremely opinionated.
Well, three modes if you count the Wave-based survival mode.
Yeah, but once upon a time ago, you could still expect games like Unreal Tournament 2004 to have strong single player despite obviously being built for multiplayer.
Hell, I'd say Gears of War and its sequel still had a pretty fun campaigns despite being firmly rooted in the the "modern multiplayer shooter" era.
That's probably where SuperBunnyHop and others are coming from when they review in this mindset.
LOL, great review. I never thought about how stupid the "pay respects" button was until you pointed it out.
Good review! I know you don't seem too enthusiastic during the review, but I'm more interested than ever :P As a halo/titanfall/battlefield player it sounds like my skill for online PvP should translate easily.
I just have to look at it like cod with a double jump!
Talk about a bait and switch between Ghosts and AW. In Ghosts the multi sucked but the campaign was incredibad, and now AW's campaign is plain boring but the multi is actually good.
They just need to stop being overly serious and leave the scripted shitfest on the cutting room floor without pretending to have a story by wasting money on a celebrity and instead let the player have all these gadgets for them to use as much as they want, how they want and when they want without a boring cutscene to keep the pacing on gameplay
Suwat Saksri But simply being given the gadgets without fun stuff to do isnt fun. As hokey as AW's story is, I doubt removing the story would make it any better (except from buffing up the multi)
Removing the story would leave room for more gameplay and it would get rid of a stupid reason to why you dont have specific gadgets in one mission from another, they shouldnt force the player about this and it would result in less scripted events, that would make the game replayable
Suwat Saksri True dat, infact I was going to say that in retrospect since CoDs story is not exactly worth salvaging anyway.
One of the reasons why i love the old CoD games, they were linear and scripted but not overblown like future titles
You review and generally what you expect out COD campaign clashes with what Noah Caldwell-Gervais thinks and wants out of COD, and I for one agree with his views this time. I would recommend you watch his video on COD campaigns, he puts the game into a different perspective.
@@AydarBMSTU Let me guess, Noah pissed you off by his comments on Postal or Depression Quest
it is literally impossible to to get to the warbird without gideon telling mitchell at least twice
Just saying, Black Ops 2 introduced the Pointstreak system and helped balance multiplayer with the 10-point system. If you didn't know that of course. Just trying to help! :)
I agree with you. The problem is that you have these abilities... yet the game constantly tells you: "Wait you can't go there or GAME OVER!". It sucks. And everything has to go the way game wants it to go.
Then we got the "Ramirez, do this fast or GAME OVER! I could do it, but I want player to do it instead, so you will feel atleast moderately as part of the game!"-bits.
These things ofcourse has been there for every Call of Duty. But you'd think they'd try to expand upon the campaign a bit. And give player something to do, than do some annoying quicktime events.
Like in the bit where you jump from one car to another: Why can't they let player to do manually the jumping? Why do they have to automate everything there? That sequence didn't feel like badass to me, it felt like cutscene that was hampered by QTE's.
Best level on the game is sneaking section on that villa. Because it lets you choose the pace and route you want to take. I have to agree, this is my least favourite one out of all CoD campaigns.
how come all the Marines reguardless of rank have the blood stripe on their dress blue trousers during the funeral scene?
Bad or no research done. Or they were too lazy to skin the junior enlisted's trousers without the stripe.
mate, call of duty always does that.
B-but Kevin Spacey!
Nice to see a review that doesn't just rag on the game.
Hey, Super Bunnyhop, will you make a video about Evil Within? It would be great, especially considering your Resident Evil 4's review
You know a thought came to mind while watching this. Would Titfanfall have done/do better if it were on Steam?
oh shit! that vietnam level in black ops one that shit gave me an existential crisis. playing it at my friends house dying endlessly four like an hour. spent the rest of the afternoon like "there were real wars like this...just running into death over and over again". It was surreal.
Ironically enough the reason you didn't enjoy the campaign in AW and the treyarch games in general is the excact reason why i love them, I can't stand IW's campaigns, the onslaught of linear hand-holding scripted scenes just bored me into submission, ghosts literally put me to sleep
***** but that's exactly what bunnyhop's complaining with with AW, and CoD games in general. if you play crysis or half life, the game gives you a basic goal, some obstacles between you and it, and sets you on your way with some gameplay functions and abilities. in CoD, you're literally not left alone for more than 10 seconds. it's the one game series where the only thing that doesn't feel needed is the player itself. it's boring, easy, and linear to the point of it being mindnumbing.
EdEmKay It comes from the premise of the series itself, you're just one soldier in a bigger conflict, Infinity ward and sledgehammer overdid it a bit much
The treyarch CoDs on the other hand actually let you play as opposed to being just another soldier, heck they even make your protagonist the leader to remove the need to be accompanied
***** the problem isn't whether or not it's in context, the problem is the context itself. treyarch and infinity ward's campaigns are almost identical. follow this person, follow these instructions, effortlessly kill these 20 people who's goals you're oblivious to, play with this game mechanic that you'll never see again, watch this NPC character do something that you can't do. i understand if you enjoy them, they can be fun, but i've played nearly all of them, and since CoD4 they all play virtually identically. the widely regarded "best" CoD mission is All Ghillied Up, and even that is literally copy catting an NPC character for an hour before they actually trust you to hold off a wave of enemies however you want.
people seem to forget and drop their standards, these aren't how shooters are meant to be. this is a movie you are playing, not a game. Wolfenstein has you choose your path and take people out however you want, so do the Half Life games, even Doom and FEAR didn't have objective markers and people shouting at you every 10 seconds.
+roler42 Well in that case I predict he's gonna hate Black ops 3 because they've ditched the corridor crawl entirely for more open ended arena style levels.
Every time I played Black Ops, I slowly made my way down that hill, not knowing why it was so hard. It wasn't until my 3rd or so playthrough that saw a button prompt. I never played a video game the same way again.
"Bright yellow text on a bright brown background" Yeah, that's a white van. Not "bright brown", and it stands out pretty clear to me. Also, the E doesn't appear during the camera shake or the blur, and appears to be handled differently in the render. It is clear during the whole sequence, even after RUclips got their compression algorithms on it. Tons wrong with this game, and you pick this?
Here's another example of button prompt failure:
The baseball scene from BioShock Infinite.
The player is in first-person and are handed a projectile, so what is the obvious solution? Massive button prompts.
Absolutely fantastic intro.
In 2009, we have Ramirez.
In 2013, we have Recker.
In 2014, we have Mitchell
Scary thing that CoD:AW tries to tell us is that Private Militaries COULD actually take over the world. If you guys didn't know, the biggest company in the world (2nd to Foxconn) is G4S. If you guys don't know what G4S is, it is simply like Atlas. Yes, a Private Military company. It's crazy how they're given less attention that Foxconn. What happens when G4S gets bigger and bad people actually controls them?
Nice review, definitely summarizes my fatigue towards the franchise. Just seeing your hands while you played the campaign.. What a drag.
Props to Sledgehammer for adding an extra layer of mobility to the multiplayer and I hope people enjoy their time with it, but for me this is another of skipping COD and not regretting it. On the other hand, got Titanfall for $10 and I'm having a good time.
the reason I like COD is the graphics and the level of polish and tight controls
Is no one gonna comment his name is "Super Bunnyhop" and he's reviewing this game? XD
If one wants to know how they wanted that game to feel- try vanquish. Its a great game, BUT it has a sharp learning curve AT THE BEGINNING. So you need to learn how to use your energymeter to slide, defend and boost, because you CANT stay in cover, the enemy will swarm you and rockets hone in on you.
But that game is great once you get the controls and forget what you learned in 1pFPS. And the game does not take itself seriously, its over the top fun,
What do you think of the FPS cap on your 144hz monitor?
Thanks for the review.
You enunciated my main problem with the COD games of the last 10 years: they're movies. At least the single player campaigns are. You have to play the game they way the devs want you to play to tell the story they want to tell. Not much fun, especially when I find the story silly, simplistic or preachy.
Thanks again, I think I'll stick with Titanfall.
You should make a video about point & click modern military adventure games.
One thing I do like about this game is that it makes a Veteran run easy as hell
nice barkley shut up and jam gaiden reference. You should review that game.
I miss Arcade Mode from CoD 4. It was a pretty neat idea with poor execution. Having a scoring system, as well as time and life limits, certainly made the single player gameplay much more interesting. People could have seriously competed for high scores if it hadn't been for the requirement to complete the entire game in one go. It works for shoot-'em-ups, because they only last 30 minutes. It takes at least about 4 hours to finish CoD 4 in Arcade Mode.
Is the MGS4 Critical Close-Up ever going to happen
hillarious a friend linked me the video because im running around in it 6:36
Chameleon_Silk
It's funny that in order to get fresh and new, COD turned to good old game mechanics like the double jump and air control.
I actually really loved this COD's multiplayer. Felt different and more fun without going overboard like Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare.
"Press F to pay respects" is a strong meme though. It's right up there with "Steamed Hams" and "Hi fellow kids". People who have never played a videogame in their life press F on news stories and fails and all sorts of shit.
Did you upgrade your system or you still have the memory issue you had with CoD: ghosts?
Advanced warfare looks pretty good, but if the only "new" feature is a double jump....well...I guess I'll skip this one...as I did for Ghosts
From watching this review, sounds like nothing is "good enough" for you...what exactly are you looking for in a COD game?
He's looking for a fps that isn't shallow, bland and trite. Who knows why he's looking in the call of duty franchise. Maybe he just wants to highlight how call of duty's designers have made essentially no improvement to the series' system even though it's lacking?
You missed the whole part about that a thoughtless popcorn campaign means "good for COD game". Becaue COD already has enough design problems for them to try to take themselves seriously with the campaign. Besides, he said he was a fan of the tighly scripted Infinity wards games.
SOOOOOOOO- we've finally arrived at a point where we've come full circle back to Quake II and 3.
Also, the fact that Kevin Spacey acts like Lex Luther in Bryan Singer's Superman Return seem to be funny.
the old call of duty engine is based on the quake engine, now its slowely turning back into quake
This game's multiplayer was the most fun I've had with a CoD game since MW2, sucks there are no PC players online anymore :(
You nailed it. From the start of this game I felt the extreme incompetence of early Treyarch in this game's story and level design, but it makes the worst Treyarch game look good.
The double jump and other mobility increasing features might be small changes, but they're a magnitude bigger than anything that happened with the franchise since CoD4.
Most are scripted anyway, for a next gen CoD i expected less Kevin Spacey (i dont want to know how much money they wasted on him), less scripts and more playability
Suwat Saksri
I meant in the multiplayer, since that's the only part of CoD that's wortha damn these days. If I played CoD I definitely wouldn't waste my time with the campaign.
I wouldnt waste 60$ for a half game anyway, i would rather play CoD 2 and CS GO, at least i can expect CS to be balanced
Suwat Saksri
Neither will or would I. I don't play competitive multiplayer FPS anyway.
The strange thing is that Sledgehammer could have been able to fix some of the problems by adding some small features.
For example, make the enemies equip projectile weapons like plasma cannons (this time it's a sci-fi setting, so there's no reason not to put them in the game), since you have the option to meaningfully avoid enemy attacks, you can go straight gung-ho and that promotes twitchy high-paced actions that was advertised (kind of like how
DOOM's gameplay worked out).
Or, put an weapon that does an AOE attack that promotes assault maneuvers.
Those simple things could have fixed the monotonous gameplay COD has been known for.
But I guess the obsession with the "serious, pseudo-realistic scripted game style" made this campaign a wasted opportunity...
Maybe it's because Ghosts was absolute shite, but I found the campaign in this one to be engaging enough that I actually wanted to come back & play it, instead of making a B-line for Multiplayer. Speaking of multiplayer, it's fun, but it's flat out ridiculous that they didn't have dedicated servers at launch. Dat Lag-Comp is horrible.
PRESS F TO PAY RESPECTS!!!!!
Great review. I knew even Kevin Spacey wasn't going to make the campaign good. Still all about the multi.
When I was watching the Giant Bomb Quick Look I wasn't sure if the shoot outs looked dragged out or if it was just because the guys suck at games. There were also instances where there seemed to be no music in the background, which is something you've come to expect to be there, because it's always there, and without it the game seems unpolished in a way.
This game looks like what I expected Black Ops 2 multiplayer to be like after playing the campaign, but instead it was just like a mix between 80s stuff and 2024 stuff, no wrist mounted grenades, crappy black ops 1 style crosshair, and a lot of old guns.
Scorestreaks were introduced in Black Ops 2
Drinking game: "Drink every time when mr. Bunnyhop says "Double Jump" "
I really do hate how every game in this series' new feature turns into a standardized gimmick. Zombies came first and it was unique now people expect it. Even the whole Exo suit theme has carried over into being a standard gimmick.
What made this call of duty enjoyable for me compared to MW3/BO2/Ghosts, was that they cut down the ammount of 1 shot kill weapons drastically, making doing stuff other than camping viable again.
That hoverbike sequence sucked. You would expect to drive it 200mph but it felt more like 20mph with no agility.
Crysis 2 did that 5 years ago and had a good single player to boot. Not surprising CoD is still behind the times.
Treyarch came up with the scorestreak system. It was introduced in Black Ops 2
A lot of the things you liked about the multiplayer was already featured in black ops 2
Scorestreak rewards were introduced back in Black Ops 2. And, yeah, they were a good thing there as well... I just think it's wrong to praise exclusively AW for them.
It's interesting seeing reviews from different perspectives. I do see your perspective when you say that AW is one of the best CoD games (for multiplayer, at least), due to it at least changing things up a bit, and re-introducing skill-based movement. But, it's arguably the worst CoD multiplayer. Well, maybe not counting the newest releases, which I've not played. If they gave you more health, maybe it'd be decent, but the added mobility basically just means that strategy and tactics are even less important than usual, with even more focus on twitch shooting and dumb luck.
At the very least, by player count, AW multiplayer is the least popular multiplayer of the CoD iterations (excluding maybe the pre-Modern Warfare games). Hell, even Call of Duty 4 is more popular -- the original, not the remastered version.
*I haven't bought a Call of Duty since MW2 and I must say that I've been thoroughly enjoying my time with it - until better games come out, of course. The exo suits completely changes the game and makes game types like Domination so much more fast paced and thrilling. Nothing feels overpowered with all abilites all having some form of counter in one way or another. The level of customization has been largely increased, allowing you to decide your load-out like no other. Graphics have been noticeably bumped up, still running at steady 60fps. Maps are well designed, full of many flanking spots, almost completely wiping out people's ability to camp. Classic mode is a welcome addition for us COD4 lovers that just want gun on gun action. Also I haven't ran into any technical problems online or otherwise on the PS4*
*Only criticism: Exo Survival is complete shit and barely worth playing and I didn't really enjoy the single-player. And the 9/10 reviews that it's receiving are ridiculous. 7.5 seems more reasonable, close to an 8.*
*Edit:* Also the sniper gameplay has taken a fair hit with the increased speed of the overall gameplay. I could just be a terrible Sniper in this game (which is very likely) or it just didn't feel like a viable option like in the slower, older Call of Duty games.
And as for "just COD with a double jump" why didn't you cover all the new perks that it adds to the gameplay using the EXO suit?
When you can get gun-down'd in 0.2 seconds by a lucky spray&pray, any perks are redundant.
ErebosGR
Never happened to me. Getting kills/getting killed is nothing like an almost instant death. Takes a decent amount of direct hits to take someone down, depending on the gun.
StopAskingMeToChangeMyName Were do you play the game?
Promethean Knight
You mean what console? PS4. I've heard the PC has a few issues, so I can't defend that by any means
StopAskingMeToChangeMyName Do you like it?
Good review. Not a fan of Call of Duty these days, but as someone who cut their teeth on UT99 I can appreciate the multiplayer stylings of AW much more than Blops etc.
Multiplayer reminds me a lot of Armored Core. After trying out AW multi, I just wound up playing a crapload of Armored Core Verdict Day. People are way more boring than robots.
Holy shit. I have never seen a game where the single player and the multiplayer has been so dissonant and conflicting with each other, even for a Call of Duty game...
Well don't worry guys, there is always hope for innovation next year, right ?
I really enjoy the double jump and exo suit maneuverability options that were introduced in this game. I do not like the jump jet/boost mechanic that was introduced in BLOPS 3 and continues into Infinite Warfare. It just felt good in AW to double jump into the air then boost to a side, as simple as that sounds. The BLOPS 3 version feels dull and tacked on.
I caveat this saying I haven't really taken a Call of Duty game seriously in years, much less the next generation of them. However I had to pause at the 5 minute mark thinking... Are we really more than half past a Call of Duty review still talking about the Single player aspect of the game? COD is basically a subscription MMO without the subscription. You mention going thru loops to get to the multiplayer... and many people just don't play the singleplayer anymore. I really don't see the irony in a new feature feeling more fleshed out in the multiplayer than in the singleplayer for a COD game, if anything, it's what I would expect. Valid complaints would likely be on the obvious omission of Zombie mode and lack of dedicated servers which you mentioned. However I seriously doubt people would have made such a big deal about the press X to pay respect if it wasn't for Conan's take on the game.
I don't think anyone is a huge fan of the fact that COD games have turned into almost an MMO where instead of paying each month, you pay 60 dollars a year. However this just highlights a fundamental problem with games media... Why did you feel the need to spend 7 hours on the singleplayer? Reviewers will often spend 10-20 hrs tops in ridiculously deep games like say Civilization... But then will waste all this time on campaign content that was clearly filler/part of a check list of things...
He probably felt the need to spend so long on the singleplayer because it's... not actually filler. There is an enormous amount of time, money and effort put into the singleplayer campaign. That the end product is of crappy quality does not diminish that. The devs clearly meant for the singleplayer mode to be able to stand on its own. They wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of mocapping in Kevin Spacey if his half of the game was just.an afterthought.
Because that's reviewer's job, maybe? If the campaign is shit, it's his job to tell people it's shit.
At least double jumping is better than a dog, moving fish and realistically jumping over low walls. Interactive smoke is still awesome though!
Can we get an infinite warfare review while it's half off?
George, i kinda expected a 60fps vid from the man who made The Maximum Hertz video.
Why not 60 fps?
And the review as always is great
I imagine with a shooter like CoD, higher framerate allows for faster response and smoother aiming. I've played plenty of first-person games at 60, so I can see 90 being a boon.
Bolt of Beef I'm pretty sure he was asking about the RUclips video itself.
CEmanified
Ah. I don't think RUclips has gotten off their lazy asses to implement it yet.
EDIT: Disregard that, I'm a dumbass. I think George recorded this before the update.
*****
I definitely feel that the high framerate is wasted with most Call of Duty games, since it seems to clash with the pacing of the games. I love it when a shooter has a commitment to being fast and makes great use of the fast framerate.
Oh wow, so the latest COD game's multiplayer is basically the same kind of gameplay as Hawken?
Black ops 2 was easily the best in the franchise in terms of everything.
I'm one of the weirdos who will only buy a Call of Duty if the single player campaign is good. I usually get sick of multiplayer in these games once I level out to about 30. That's been consistent for the past few CoDs I played, so you really need to reinforce the multiplayer with a single player that keeps things interesting. I felt the first Black Ops featured that even with the gameplay issues outlined here.
And I completely disagree with "taking itself too seriously". I've been waiting for a CoD that tried to be at least a little more realistic in terms of its story. Press E to pay respects is clearly the wrong direction but I still hold out hope that something like that is coming.
Your review gives the impression that the scorestreaks are a new thing, but actually black ops 2 introduced them first.
Score streaks have been in the game since Black Ops. Just saying it's not a new feature.
ssevf Black Ops 2 certainly did.
***** wasn't it kill streak?