Call of Duty: Warzone (2022)

BATTLE ROYALE - Players are dropped into the fictional region of Al Mazrah, where they must fight to be the last team or player standing.

PROS:

++ Execution. As a whole, I think the execution of it is quite solid. For the most part, I didn't lag or stutter in gameplay. Gunplay was still fun. The technical performance was solid even in a large map with 120 players. I liked all the different systems such as contracts, buying custom loadouts, and even the Gulag. And for a free game, you get a lot of content such as the new DMZ mode which I ended up liking more than the traditional BR mode.

CONS:

-- Not for me. The Battle Royale genre is just not for me. I'm not a particularly good gamer, especially when it comes to shooters. So what always ends up happening in these BR games is I drop in, loot for like 10 minutes, and die in my first or second firefight. Rinse and repeat. For someone competitive and for people who like the genre, I think Warzone would be a great option. But for people who are not that good, or not a fan of the genre, Warzone won't change your mind. I can definitely see this being much more fun with friends, but to be fair, most games are obviously more fun with friends.

I just watched this video:

about MWII & I've realized that at this point Call of Duty (multiplayer and Warzone anyway) is more of an addiction than a game for me at this point (especially with all the manipulation going on in the form of RBMM (Retention-Based Matchmaking)).

So I'm going to try to ween myself off of it. I'm uninstalling Warzone 2 & Modern Warfare II today & will be trying PUBG again to see if that does it for me and will be switching from MWII to XDefiant when that game comes out. In the meantime, I'll probably play Rainbow Six Siege instead. It's not quite the same, but it's not a drug disguised as a game like COD multiplayer is at this point.

Warzone 2 feels like a case of "One step forward, one step back" right now, but Raven are doing the work to get it back up to the level the final months of Warzone 1 were at. DMZ is a cool addition, but I'll admit to mostly sticking to Battle Royale (please add a solo mode to DMZ Raven, it would make it a better experience for lone wolves like me).

There are also a shit ton of technical problems. So many crashes, bugs & general technical issues. It just feels like yet another game that got rushed out the door to meet a release date.

Conclusion: Honestly, while I'm enjoying Warzone 2.0, I also am a heavily entrenched Warzone vet who's stuck with it through thick & thin. DMZ is worth trying (if only bc it's the most accessible way to try out the Extraction Shooter genre that seems set to be the next big thing), but Battle Royale is in a rough spot right now & Infinity Ward did make quite a few bad design choices when making this game. Hopefully Raven will continue refining this game into what it should have always been & that Infinity Ward is never given so much control over Warzone's direction ever again. They may have conceived this mode, but Raven has proven to be better at shaping Warzone into a fun & enjoyable game that its fans can play for weeks or even months on end…

Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 5/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, optimization): 7/10 (While the graphics & audio in this game are phenomenal, I have to dock points for Engagement Optimized Matchmaking, the instability, glitches & crashing issues))

Business Practices score: 4/10 (Not terrible, but exclusive content on PlayStation, microtransactions & a FOMO-inducing Battle Pass do knock this game down a few notches (without even getting into the terrible practices of Activision as a company)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 6/10