Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

The way Sledgehammer has integrated its enhanced abilities and choices into every aspect of how we fight went above and beyond.

This was quite the surprise. Sledgehammer Games proved that there's still ground to be explored in the Call of Duty franchise, by delivering a tight and fresh single player campaign along with the best multiplayer mode since the days of the first Modern Warfare.

This is the Call of Duty game fans have been clamoring for, and I feel sorry for the team that has to try and top it next year.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare offers a much more innovative take on the first-person shooter series than previous installments, but it's still shackled to the core recipe of forcing players to follow allies through set piece moments in the story campaign. The multiplayer offers a higher degree of innovation and it should certainly entertain quite a lot of fans who are open to trying the new mechanics.

Overall, Advanced Warfare delivers a complete and enjoyable Call of Duty experience.

Boasting the tightest multiplayer of the series and one of the strongest campaigns, Advanced Warfare proves that Call of Duty is here to stay — and it’s welcome.

If Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s storytelling ambitions disappoint, the same can’t be said of the upgrades to gameplay. In both campaign and single-player, the exoskeleton and other futuristic gadgetry breathe new life into a franchise that seemed increasingly trapped in the shadow of the original Modern Warfare.

One of the best Call of Duty games in a while, Advanced Warfare is a triumphant effort from Sledgehammer Games, whose storytelling nous and risk-taking in introducing the Exo pays off in spades. It's not the jaw-dropping reinvention that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was back in 2007, but Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the shot in the arm the series needed.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s single-player campaign is a ridiculous summer movie romp with sobering visions of the future of weaponry. Bring popcorn, because the real fun begins with the multiplayer, where the wealth of customization options should have players coming back for game after game.

For whatever minor missteps Advanced Warfare makes with its story, it more than compensates with vision and remarkable execution. The latter has never really been Call of Duty's problem — Ghosts notwithstanding — but Advanced Warfare adds enough and moves far enough forward with its new abilities to feel like a risk. Turns out, that's just what the series needed.

Technically speaking the game is the best Call of Duty to date and even the story issues can’t detract from that.

Advanced Warfare is Call of Duty’s true starting point for a new generation.

Advanced Warfare is the best Call of Duty in years. Kevin Spacey is brilliant and the multiplayer is just smooth. The best shooter of 2014.

If the regular Call of Duty formula has worn thin for you over the past couple of years, I strongly recommend giving Advanced Warfare a shot. The dramatic increase in speed makes it far more fun, and while I don’t think the parts gel as well as Titanfall, there is a lot more do to here. If nothing else, it’s worth a rental just to check out the campaign and see what multiplayer has to offer.

Sledgehammer's debut with Call of Duty doesn't bring the revolution some hoped for, but introduces some welcome changes to the multiplayer experience making it very entertaining and compelling to play. The co-op mode is somewhat of a letdown if compared to the excellent Extinction mode from last year, while the single player campaign proved to be on par for the series even if we would have preferred more open missions and more freedom for the player. It won't disappoint any fan of the series, but it won't convert any of its detractors either.

Advanced Warfare is about the most fun I have had playing a Call of Duty game in several years. Granted it remains very familiar but the leaps are significant and in the end pay off.

The game is damn fun. You’ve got a bit of everything that you’re supposed to have with a Call of Duty title. An entertaining campaign mode, a fast/furious MP experience and a co-op mode that does everything you’re used to doing with a bit of a change to keep it different from previous iterations.

It delivers with its story, great acting, dialogue, the realistic facial animations, cool weapons of the future, and the welcome change in pacing from combat missions to stealth missions. I welcome the idea of using great actors like Spacey in a big-budget game, and I look forward to future versions of the game that marry Hollywood blockbuster actors with the blockbuster-style game play.

Advanced Warfare creates the multiplayer shooter players have been craving for years. Inspired by the old guard and incorporating a host of new features, this is the new face and bright future of Call of Duty.

It’s the best Call of Duty since Modern Warfare and may in fact be better, but saying that isn’t because it’s changed the series’ formula the way that game did, rather that it’s refined it.

It is not a revolution, but it plays and looks great. It feels fresh, and the multiplayer mode is one of the best we've seen in a few years. If you give it a try, it might surprise you.

Power changes everything. Jetpack changes Call of Duty. The Sledgehammer team has made Advanced Warfare fresh and new. It's a frantic game with spectacular fire in the air. Kevin Spacey can be happy about his appearance, it's brilliant. Activision has rewritten the formula.

It's fresh enough to the point that it's alien, yet it's still Call of Duty underneath that futuristic surface.

With Advanced Warfare, Sledgehammer succeeds at something we thought impossible at this point: adding freshness to a washed-out formula, without breaking it. This is the best Call of Duty in years; it looks better, it plays great, and sounds amazing, even when it remains the same experience we've learned to expect. The real question now is if Treyarch and Infinity Ward will be able to emulate the same passion and creativity of Sledgehammer.

This game has a lot of elements that are not new, but Slegdehammer did change them a little. That is fine, although it could distract from how extremely well this game franchise is made. This is a great game, which is more dynamic thanks to the exo-suit.

Advanced Warfare is still Call of Duty, but it's more playful, knowing and refreshing than COD's been in years. [Christmas 2014, p.112]

In many ways, the game is the perfect distillation of the franchise's core appeal. But it's still just Call of Duty, don't expect it to revolutionize the industry. [Issue#118, p.61]

Advanced Warfare is extremely unfriendly to the newcomer, with busy, text-laden menus that aren’t explained well and speedy play that is difficult to keep pace with. The campaign is a worthwhile training ground, but it’s hard to apply lessons and feel progress being made when crack human snipers are gunning you down seconds after a respawn.

It might not be the turning point in the series, but still Advanced Warfare is a good Call of Duty, and were it not for the classic defects of the series, especially with regard to the single player campaign, this time we could really talk about a great success.

If you've felt that Call of Duty has been getting more than a little tedious in recent years, as I certainly have, then Advanced Warfare might just convince that it's something worth taking notice of once again.

A good Call of Duty, better than Ghosts. It's a nice step forward for the franchise, that will give hope to fans who were skeptical about its future.

Satisfying fans is one thing, but this one subverted my skepticism and brought me back.

Advanced Warfare plays it a little too safe with the campaign, but it feels like a real core entry in the series, and will please fans who are jaded after last year's release. While Treyarch is still the king of Call of Duty in my eyes, Sledgehammer Games has shown itself to be more than capable of taking over with its debut entry. Infinity Ward is now the odd man out.

Fast, frantic, pretty and pretty darn addictive. Call of Duty feels fresh again for the first time in years.

The EXO-suit makes the already very strong multiplayer experience feel fresh and new. We appreciate Sledgehammer for offering great maps, awesome weapons and the rough and tough vertical gameplay. This might be the best Call of Duty in years.

Kevin Spacey might take top billing, but it's the array of powerful PMC tech that's the real star of the show, making the stalest formula in contemporary videogames feel remarkably fresh.

Advanced Warfare's increased focus on player mobility makes a huge impact that freshens up the action and, in some ways, makes every other game in the franchise feel obsolete by comparison.

Multiplayer feels wonderfully fresh, thanks to the added agility of Exo Suit boosting. Sadly, though, co-op is unimaginative, and the story fails to satisfy when compared to previous installments.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is undeniably distinctive within the Call of Duty family. But it might take a game or two for Sledgehammer to start delivering on the same scale as its sibling studios.

One excellent new addition is the option to test weapons in a firing range before games begin. Having gone into many a battle with the wrong gun in the past, this is definitely something we found useful.

Despite the familiarity, it's been years since a Call of Duty campaign was as coherent and fast-paced as this one. Within the confines of its franchise, which has yet to make much room for a mature look at the subject matter, Advanced Warfare works with aplomb and, at the very least, plays its Big Dumb Movie card wisely.

The huge change in player mobility is less of a paradigm shift and more of an overdue retooling for an 11-year-old FPS franchise, especially in a year of mobility-focused shooters. Yet for all its predictability, Advanced Warfare is a deluge of action-film bravado, and it's difficult to not be carried away by its tidal forces.

Even though the addition of futuristic weapons and new movement options could mark a paradigm shift, the campaign is as always: explosive and well-paced but in the end meaningless and bar any surprises. The multiplayer on the other hand is exciting and fresh and will keep you glued to the screen for a long time.

It’s nice to see the series turn itself around a bit after the lackluster release of Ghosts, and if we’re going to continue to see yearly releases for this series, then hopefully more will turn out to be as fun as Advanced Warfare.

If you play Call Of Duty online all year round then Christmas has officially come early. But if you’re a sucker for the ludicrous, globe-trotting, re-skinned James Bond adventures that constitute these games in single player, you’ve picked the perfect year in which to take a twelve-month break.

While the multiplayer will still be the main focus for many players of Advanced Warfare, the campaign gameplay is solid. Despite its short length (6ish hours). You may never play the campaign again, but you probably won’t forget it either.

Advanced Warfare is one of the most interesting games in the series so far, mostly thanks to a futuristic theme and Titanfall-inspired mechanics. Unfortunately the game feels a bit unpolished when it comes to online battles and because of that it never reaches its full potential.

It's certainly not a bad game, at least in terms of core mechanics and functionality, but in terms of praise it only ever feels "good enough" rather than just "good".

Advanced Warfare somewhat breaks the infamous Call of Duty mold, mostly by delivering a surprisingly coherent story, some great new ideas, as well as an overly frustrating multiplayer.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the video game equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. There's a lot of flash and not much substance.

Call of Duty doesn’t just return to its explosive roots here; it manages to create a new metaphor for the American bang-bang shooter consumers who continue to drive sales of both it and other major franchises.