Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - PS4 - Review [View all]

Coming home tonight I stopped at the dispensary and grabbed some Cindy 99. This is such a favorite right now... Not the best when it comes to potency (still a 7 out of 10) but, at least to me, it has a very... Nostalgic taste. heh, reminds me of the weed that was always around when I was in high school

OK... So I gave in to the will of Sony and will curse myself for years to come, but I broke down and got a PS4. Holy shit, what a monstrosity of design it is... I hate the new menu system, pure crap... I don't want to go off on that tangent to much though. If I can get the energy I might do a review of it but onto Call of Duty...

I played one of these before, I think it was the first Modern Warefare, like a year after it first came out. It was still pretty awesome and the good news it that so far they kept a lot of it... The bad news for me was also that they kept a lot of it... Sheesh, let me start at the begging.

After the dispensary, I hit up a nearby pizza place that has slices to make a north east Jersey boy like me cry. Then off home to quickly smoke a joint of the Cindy 99 and chow down on the pie... A quick change into my Stewie sweat pants... Pop the disc into the PS4 and it launch into some stunning shots of game play... Holy crap, make no mistake, no matter how much bad shit I can say about the PS4 hating me on a personal level... It looks pretty fuckin awesome while it's doing it.

I didn't really follow it as I was getting my vaporizer ready with long time favorite Strawberry Cough but I did skip past some and tried to launch into multi player and got a message to the effect of - 'We strongly suggest single player first' - This was kind of a drag to me. I hated the single play of MW and really just loved the multi.... Ahhh, fuck it, i'll take their advice. Fuck.

OK... Out to single player just in time to start hitting the vaporizer... Nice... The video has launch into some kind of bad shit was going on somewhere so you were getting getting dropped from orbit or some shit into a combat zone... Wait... What? Really? That was the best opening to a story you could come up with? I shit you not, they did not even try. OK.. Wait.. I gotta do what? That went by to qui... I'm dead. Dropping again and trying to catch what comes by here... Ahhh, press the square button to close the shield or something. So I hit square like two or three times before I die again. Fuck... They gave me a tapping game as the first control to learn... This is going to be painful... We crash land on a building top and jump out just as the... pod... Ship... Whatever the hell that was I was just in... Falls over the side of the building... Very cool. Annnnd, I have control. I follow the other guys as they monolog away like evil villains, giving away our plans to cause murder and mayhem... They gotta find a better way to do that...

As we fight our way down and out, I am introduced a pretty cool new feature... You have some kind of exo-skeleton that gives you a jump boost and some other cool features (as you progress and un lock them) but I also noticed they were not giving me any HUD and I was getting annoyed and it was sucking so I stopped.

I packed up another bowl into the vaporizer, killed the game and went back to multi player. Into the menu, I jumped right into create a class and really felt myself go... Fuck-A right! This section is where you went in the old MW let you make a few pre-set characters so as a map was starting, you could quickly select the one best suited to the map... And here it was again, looking better then ever before. And slick and intuitive menu system that let me quickly and easily look at what I wanted to equip each character with. Very nicely done.

Of course... As I'm level 1 in rank of god know how many (and in MW you could 'prestige', not sure if thats available in this game yet) and only have base weapons, no attachments... So be it, into battle with default character one. I hit find a game, select Team Deathmatch and it puts me into... What the hell is this... A line up? It kind of looks like me and a bunch of other in a hanger or I don't know... There is the timer, 10 seconds... oh nice...

The map loads ok... 15-20 seconds to load and sync players, I can live with pissing and moaning about it just a little bit... Off I go as it occurs to me I probably should have taken a look at the controls before I started and then I think... I'm level 1 with base weapons, I don't think it will really make a shit if I know the controls or not, I'm gonna be fodder for a few levels.

It's not bad though as everything is where it should be, completely standard control layout as the default... Thank you for not fucking that up.

The map is fucking huge... Multi levels, bridges... I guess it's supposed to be some kind of middle east small town or something. I'm not overly worried, learning the maps is part of the process. I see my HUD has returned to where it should be... Almost... It's in the upper right and it should be in the upper left... Damn my anal tendencies... At least it's there though.

Man... This is controlling so smooth... It 'feels' right, everything clicks... I am getting slaughtered left and right, I have like five deaths in a row now with no kills but ok... I'm kind of feeling it now... And yes, there he is, nary a clue in the world that he turned the wrong way down the street without looking up it first...I zoom my sights in on him with my crappy rifle I notice... For just a second... That he is zooming in to look down the barrel of his rifle... And then I pull the trigger and he goes down like a sack of potatoes. A second guy comes around the same corner making the same mistake as his comrade, with me only noticing as he comes into my sight and I pull off the second head shot, and the second guy goes down.. And I drop immediately after, taken down by yet another enemy who apparently had more sense then the rest of us.

Holy crap though...

It was SO very cool. It shook off my newb timidity and I started to think... OK, I remember this. I forget the numbers but I ended the match with only a few more deaths than kills and also went up a few levels. Leveling up your character consists of checking what your characters have equipped, making sure they have the best... I probably won't start having more then one character for a bit, get used to map layouts and what I can set characters up with equipment wise... Thats for later. I check good old default character one and jump into another game of Team Deathmatch... This time when I enter the hanger, I notice I can see what the other players character level is and we are pretty evenly matched, levels 1-5 with me being a three. Good again.

This time the map is some kind of... Is this a ship I'm on... Or a remote silo of some kind... I don't know but it's huge and has some outdoor areas that look like loading docks of some kind, and inside areas that go up and down and all over like you expect to see labs but never really do... Just huge these first two maps have been... This time I end up with a good number more kills than deaths. I was happy

Graphics - Sheesh... Games keep getting better looking with each generation and there is no doubt this is yet another leap ahead. This is the first game I'm playing on the new generation and it is what you expect a new generation to be.

The Bad - I don't know how many maps it comes with but I see they have an offer for the 4 DLC map packs.... I hate that shit. You also HAVE to be a PS+ member to play online... Another 50 bucks a year... I really fucking hate that shit. Don't fucking make me pay a few bucks every time I turn around... Just tell me the fucking cost.

Control - Classic. Precise. This is control done right.

Fun Factor - Single player still is there for anyone who wants it... I think it sucks and get off of my lawn. Multi player is the shit. No lag (at least so far on night one). fast action, lots of modes (looked like a god 10 or so, if I get ambitious, I might list them), lots of variety in weapons (you could see how many were locked), huge maps with plenty more to come, good matchmaking... Every bit of it is what it should be.

Bottom line - If FPS multi play action is your thing... This game is the shit. It was well worth it to get past the parts that annoyed the shit out of me to get to the glorious game play that is here.

I've enjoyed another bowl off the vaporizer, I'm going to go outside and get a smoke in the freakin freezing cold we got, come in and go back out there and kill