I'm starting to get excited for the new Call of Duty. I tried to avoid it, I tried to prevent it, but its happening all the same. As I've said before, my COD love affair is one I would like to rekindle, but it has become very difficult these past few years. Still, I feel like I can maybe break out my little black book this year, and give the old girl a call.
Sledgehammer Games seems to really be putting forth their best effort to make this a fresh experience. For those that don't know, this is their first full COD title. They assisted on Modern Warfare 3, but spent the following three years working on Advanced Warfare. I think a new studio and a longer development cycle is just what the doctor ordered, but I am still concerned about having three studios producing titles for the same franchise. Even with this new blood, I'm wondering how long it will take for the fatigue to set back in. On the other hand, its not like anyone has to either buy all COD titles or none at all. I've picked the titles I wanted to purchase on a yearly basis. I skipped Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Ghosts. The Black Ops franchise is more my speed. I understand people not liking the setting as much, but for me, it was always about the gameplay mechanics. Things like Black Ops 2's pick ten system and score streaks were large steps forward in my opinion, and I think many of the gameplay mechanics becoming a part of Advanced Warfare are great ideas.
First of all, they've added a whole new movement system to the game. They've added exosuits, which will be a standard part of your loadouts. They allow the player to move faster, jump higher, and enable abilities like cloaking for a short period of time. These core mechanics will help the franchise move away from "whoever shoots first, wins." In addition, score streaks have made a return. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Score streaks can now be modified by upgrades. For instance, you may equip a standard auto-turret as one of your score streaks in your loadout. You can then modify that turret by adding a rocket pod to it. However, this will also make the turret more expensive. This will hopefully prevent score streaks from becoming overpowered. Advanced Warfare also brought the pick ten system back, only they have expanded it to a pick thirteen. I would imagine this was done to make room for the exosuits and their abilities.
The biggest and most exciting thing for me, is the addition of supply drops. These act as random loot drops. They provide thousands of different cosmetic customization options, weapon variants, and reinforcements. The player will still unlock Advanced Warfare's 35 base weapons as they level up, but each weapon also has nine variants that are earned through supply drops, for a total of 350 weapons. All of the weapons are still customizable as well. Reinforcements, on the other hand, act as single-use boosters to help you out of a jam. Think of them as Titanfall's burn cards. I'm a bit of a loot fiend, and as long as Sledgehammer keeps their promise of not charging for any supply drops, I will be a happy camper. I'm still a little wary, though, as I know how Activision likes to monetize their products aggressively.
I read that Advanced Warfare's campaign is going to be longer than the past few in the series. Hopefully that means it will be at least ten hours. Recently a co-op mode called exosuit survival was announced as well, so it seems like there will be a huge amount of content available when the game launches. All of this is sounding really good. Hopefully its not too good to be true, but we won't know for sure until November 4th. Here's to hoping I can reconnect with my old flame, and begin our relationship once more.
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