Review for Call of Duty: Warzone. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 10/03/2020
After a series of rumors, leaks and attempts to silence everything before the actual announcement, Activision finally releases Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play Battle Royale experience (which therefore does not require you to buy Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare) that attempts the climb to the success of the now inflated genre of Battle Royale.
Activision offers a renewed, non-trivial experience that manages to surprise with some mechanics never seen before. In short, yes, Call of Duty: Warzone is not an attempt to copy PUBG, Fortnite and all the other Battle Royale, but, a title capable of surviving (with due support) for many years. Let's understand why in this review together.
The Battle Royale
Call of Duty: Warzone offers two game modes: Battle Royale (classic) and Loot with up to one hundred and fifty players. The two modes are very different and you might prefer one over the other.
In Battle Royale, fifty three-player teams face off on the massive map created by Infinity Ward as they try to escape from a lethal gas. In the early stages of the game, if we fall to the ground, we will not lose the game immediately but we will be captured and sent into the Gulag. This Soviet prison will be our last chance to come back to life: to do so we will have to fight in a one-on-one battle. If we win we will be able to return to the game, otherwise our teammates will be able to bring us back to life by paying a ticket.
The Gunfight mode has been highly appreciated by the community and wisely inserting it into a Battle Royale demonstrates how the entire Modern Warfare ecosystem manages to function perfectly even in this context apparently foreign to the CoD universe. The clashes inside the Gulag showers are stimulating and electrifying thanks to the stakes that make the experience even more challenging.
We previously mentioned that in case we don't have to be so good in gunfight there is still a last glimmer of hope: our teammates. Through an interesting economic system, in the Warzone map there are numerous purchasing stations where you can buy bulletproof armor, UAVs, some Killstreak (which however do not excessively unbalance the gameplay) and, above all, the chance to bring one of our team mates back to life.
Unlike Blackout (the Battle Royale mode present in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4), there are no medkits, but the energy regenerates itself as in traditional multiplayer: you just need to take cover for several seconds and you can resume the fight with maximum health. The inventory has also been completely revisited in favor of a minimalism that we found to be perfect for the style of play. Forget complicated interfaces that are sometimes invasive: In Warzone, your inventory will be limited to counting money, armor, gas mask and ammo. A system that not only speeds up the loot collection phases - also no longer contained in crates or backpacks but simply placed on the ground - but makes the collection of weapons and ammunition an almost immediate process allowing to keep the gameplay focus always on the game.
Bottino
The other mode present in Call of Duty: Warzone is called Loot, where the re-entry mechanics disappear via the gulag, the gas disappears and all the action focuses on trying to reach the million dollar target first.
At first it might seem like a mode designed just to add that touch of variety to the free-to-play formula, but we were surprised to denote some very deep mechanics that even recall titles like Tom Clancy's The Division. Getting a million dollars won't be an easy challenge since in case we are killed we will lose all our loot in favor of the opposing team who can steal it from us; However, if we wanted to secure our heritage, we can do so thanks to two elements: the first is a sort of balloon, the second is the helipads. The player can use both aircraft to save the assets collected up to that point. Obviously these phases are highly dangerous because the air vehicles are openly visible on the map to all enemies: This will trigger a defense and extraction situation comparable to the black zones of Tom Clancy's The Division 2.
As if that weren't enough, the teams with the most money are permanently marked on the map, effectively making the mode a constant struggle to safeguard the loot, without ever having a moment of quiet. The coordination between teammates seemed much more relevant in this mode than in the Battle Royale, although we can still relax as there is no actual game over: if you die you return to the game (obviously without money). Also in Loot there are purchase stations with the ability to buy armor and series of kills, but keep in mind that spending too much money will not do your ranking good.
The war field
Call of Duty: Warzone has the largest map ever made for a Battle Royale, 9x9km in width and above all a wealth of content. The game map is not bare, but filled with numerous well-differentiated areas that together manage to be well connected to each other. Graphically it manages to surprise (especially in the PC version) with many of the areas already seen in the co-op missions (those who have already faced them will certainly have fewer problems finding their way around) but also with many new areas, enriched among other things with easter eggs not yet discovered ( who knows that a nuclear bomb cannot be activated by performing several steps in order).
It seems only right to make a mention of the time to kill in Call of Duty Warzone, certainly much more balanced than the multiplayer counterpart, thus making the firefights not excessively short but not too extensive. The mechanics of the bulletproof armor do not affect the clashes too much, you will hardly find situations of "omnipotence" in the case of enemies with full armor, indeed: the game system will warn you with a special graphic in case you manage to completely undress an enemy armor, allowing you to attack to finish off your enemy.
Call of Duty: Warzone has definitely convinced us. Having learned its lesson following the failure of Blackout, Activision has decided to extract from the equation of the classic Call of Duty a free stand-alone mode for all (and even cross-platform) to support for the next few years. A non-trivial, innovative Battle Royale with that unique touch that makes it different and allows it to stand out from all its competitors.
► Call of Duty: Warzone is a Shooter type game published by Activision for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 10/03/2020
