Revisiting 13 March 2020, 13:25

author: Darius Matusiak

Call of Duty Warzone in Free-to-Play – Finally, Mature Fortnite!

Modern Warfare: Warzone is a correct royal battle, with all the burden and blessings of this genre, and a few interesting solutions. Still, it's biggest advantage is that it's a free and modern Call of Duty!

The review is based on the PC version. It's also relevant to PS4 version(s).

Developers hate them: they found a simple trick to have a new Modern Warfare without having a new Modern Warfare! The newly released Warzone has become available for free. And although there are only two game modes, it offers the quintessence of the new CoD: the sensational gunplay, truly one of the best out there. Recoil, reloading animations, weapon models and customization; sound design, feedback after a precise hit – all this creates an extremely satisfying combination, regardless of whether we're playing an online match, or going through the single-player campaign.

So, if you always though Fortnite a little too infantile, Apex: Legends too cartoonish and not military enough, and PUBG too crude, Modern Warfare: Warzone seems perfect to fill the gap in free battle royale games. It really smells like dust and dirt here, a series from AK-47 rolls through your cochlea like it was really made by the Russians, and character look like genuine, modern commandos or mercenaries. And I assume that if I didn't have the full version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare installed; I would probably play Warzone all the time. And so pretty soon I'll forget about CoD's battle royale (although I'll still definitely recommend it to everyone). But why?

Battle Royale with raisins

The main reason is very mundane and highly subjective – I'm just fed up with the gameplay concept of regular battle royale, and Warzone, although it introduces a lot of variety, still offers a painfully formulaic last-man-standing games, with all the advantages and disadvantages of this genre. There are no even slightly revolutionary solutions that were featured in the Survival mode in the first part of Tom Clancy's The Division. The most interesting option is the so-called Gulag (and I'll note that the name is quite unfortunate, bringing rather gruesome associations with the darkest chapters of Stalinism), where we have to win a duel to earn the right to respawn. The idea itself is really great, and the place is very atmospheric, but it's only two minutes out of the entire match, and after a few identical duels, I'll probably stop paying any attention to it.

I have similar feelings about other solutions. I like the introduction of virtual cash that can be used to resurrect comrades or buy kill-streaks (the presence of which doesn't seem to spoil the balance – for the first time in Call of Duty) and the various mini-quests associated with it. Not having to manage the backpack is awesome, and ammo auto-loot is a godsend; the creators also made the right decision by emulating Apex' system that allows instantly setting markers around the world. Unfortunately, though, all these good, albeit minor, design choices become somewhat irrelevant in face of bigger issues – an infestation of campers, and... monotony.

Battle royale looks great on trailers, where a helicopter flying just above the rooftops chases a speeding car, and everyone just fires their weapons in all directions. And that's the Paris syndrome of this battle royale – if you can survive the first five minutes, then the only thing you can expect is stagnation until the finale. Even considering that the poison gas limiting the play field grows fairly quickly. That's why I still ended up keener on playing the standard team deathmatch in Modern Warfare, where games are shorter and exponentially more intense. The thrills per second meter is truly massive, although obviously not as overwhelming as in the very last minutes of any battle royale. The free-to-play Warzone will always be at an advantage here, but this is a reward that only persistent players can claim.

Battlefield: Hardline XXL

Activision and the people at Raven Software seemed to have been aware of this battle royale routine, because they added a second mode – Plunder. This is generally a copy of the Blood Money mode from Battlefield: Hardline (collect as much money as you can), except on a larger map and with a larger number of players. Aside from the size, this has little in common with of battle royale, but because of it, it's fair to say the Plunder is less playable than Hardline. This is where the biggest flaw of the entire Warzone becomes very apparent – it's the fact that you can only play in teams of three, or face such bands singlehandedly.

Plunder is only fun for those teams that collect the lion's share of the cash. The obvious reason is that it's fun to win; the less obvious is that these players are marked on the map, so the action is focused around them. With a good team, you can have plenty of fun, but when you're paired with people who don't care about cooperation and communication, the gameplay becomes tedious. At some point, the players are divided into haves and havenots, and the fight becomes unfair – maybe the devs were inspired by real life?

Constant respawns, and a permanent, hand-picked loadout only exacerbate the feeling of idleness, and even the themes borrowed from The Division's Dark Zones such as the ability to call in a helicopter to extract the collected money to the base. Landing instantly become riddled with campers, which is more often upsetting than adding excitement the gameplay. I felt that this mode would be more interesting on a smaller scale, and that the entire Warzone would benefit greatly if it was possible to choose matches between single players, pairs and threes. This option will probably appear sooner or later, but it should have been there from the start.

Modern Warfare for free? I'll have three!

So, the biggest advantage of Warzone seems to be the fact that it's a free Call of Duty. Not only that – it's also new, on a buffed engine with a great audio-visual quality, excellent gunplay, a rich set of famous guns and the best damn gunsmith mode, second only to Escape from Tarkov. This is exactly what battle royale needed: whilst providing a more realistic envelope, and a taste of the modern battlefield, it still provides an experience familiar enough so you can hit the ground running. It will be certainly appreciated by fans of the genre and close-knit teams.

I'm very curious about how the creators will develop and support Warzone. The cosmetics and Battle Passes are a cool addition. But I would much prefer it if the devs introduced story elements, similarly to the core game's coop mode, and told a story through environment – exactly like Fortnite does. And although it may seem unlikely due to the short cadence of individual titles in this series, the free-to-play formula has a chance of mixing it up a bit – the publisher might just opt for more extensive support of this iteration?

I doubt that battle royale will suddenly enter its renaissance with this game, but looking at how successful the mobile version of Call of Duty is right now, Modern Warfare multiplayer being available is enough of an advertisement. No matter how we feel about the ultimo hombre battles, it's worth downloading these whopping 90 gigabytes of F2P-code just to feel yourself how astonishing a shooting system the new CoD achieved.