Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Is Very Serious And Cross
Co-op modes in CoD are often great
Call of Duty games aren't any more stupid than most action games, but there's an adopted seriousness to its bombast that makes me want to prick its balloon at every opportunity. In this latest Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare trailer for example, they throw up the quote "TRANSCENDS THE LINE BETWEEN GAME AND FILM", then a few seconds later cut to Kevin Spacey's uncanny, screaming, plastic eyes.
Yet then there's guns and exo-suits and double-jumping and ooh, I do like a bit of an action romp sometimes and the multiplayer's always worth a spin. The back half of this trailer even introduces a new mode, Exo Survival, which is four-player co-op.
Exo Survival is about making a stand against waves of enemies, where those enemies are drones, turrets, maybe sometimes some mechs. It's hard to tell through all the quick camera cuts and smoke particle effects.
It's interesting to see Call of Duty move beyond the modern day setting into a scifi future with a significantly more acrobatic movement system, because it provides a lens through which to think about what shapes the core Call of Dutyness of a game. I'm betting that it's the quick pace, rattle of machineguns and the perk system, and that you could set it in a magical fantasy kingdom and it'd still feel right.
Advanced Warfare is out November 4th.