Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer - the Shacknews analysis

Shacknews not only had a chance to go hands-on with Advanced Warfare's multiplayer, but some footage even made its way back to the Shack offices, where our own Joe Tirado put his Call of Duty knowledge to work with a savvy analysis.

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Activision and Sledgehammer Games showed off all the bells and whistles from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's global multiplayer reveal earlier today at Gamescom 2014. That's all fine and dandy, but let's strip away all the fanfare and the bombast and ask the crucial question: How does it actually look in action?

Shacknews had the opportunity to go hands-on with Advanced Warfare's multiplayer last week and even had the chance to bring back some footage to the Shacknews offices. That's where Joe Tirado of the Shacknews video crew (and Call of Duty fan) comes in, as he's here to offer a close analysis of the gameplay footage and compare it to previous games in the series.

Get a look at this footage from Team Deathmatch in Biolab, along with Joe's commentary, in the video below. For more on Advanced Warfare's multiplayer, check out our breakdown of the new features and our interview with Sledgehammer's senior development director.

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

From The Chatty
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    August 11, 2014 3:00 PM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer - the Shacknews analysis.

    Shacknews not only had a chance to go hands-on with Advanced Warfare's multiplayer, but some footage even made its way back to the Shack offices, where our own Joe Tirado put his Call of Duty knowledge to work with a savvy analysis.

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      August 11, 2014 3:42 PM

      2014, the year of the jetpack.

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      August 11, 2014 6:06 PM

      Doesn't look like you were using the new abilities and movement mechanics much. Looks like people are trying to play it like they played older CODs. I guess there will need to be time to adjust.

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        August 11, 2014 6:29 PM

        Same exact thing happened in Titanfall. First few days and even weeks you saw people just jetting around on the ground like it was COD and the folks who actually abused the wall-running and ziplines and stuff were SMOKING them. It really takes a little time to wrap your head around that kind of shift in play style.

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      August 11, 2014 7:24 PM

      A couple of notes from someone who has played far too much Black Ops 2 and has followed some of the Advance Warfare stuff:

      A) The map is smaller than he's thinking. It seems larger because the boundaries are not obvious at first (as is shown when the player goes out of bounds in the video)

      B) What makes the maps far more interesting than previous titles is the vertical aspects. Just there I saw most areas had at least 2 vertical levels, many had three, and I noticed at least one with 4

      C) What Joe took to be a care package was actually a supply drop. I'm not 100% clear on how these are obtained but any player can recieve one regardless of loadout. In Ghosts there was a similar type of thing that came from completing dynamic objectives that dropped around the map, called field orders.

      D) While I can't point to a specific source I'm relatively sure that the different exo-skeletons allow different types of loadouts. So the guy dual-wielding machine guns probably had a heavier exo-suit which likely made him move slower or limited his dodge / double jump battery.


      A few other notes and questions:

      1) I didn't notice skulls for friendly deaths. This is something that is insanely useful in Black Ops 2. Maybe they exist and I just missed them? If they were purposely left out I would be curious to know why.

      2) Is there more information available about the wrist launcher? Is it just a replacement for grenades?

      3) The zoom levels when ADS seemed way more intense there than I'm used to. It could be the scope being used, the FOV on console (vs PC where I play), or something else. That is a huge negative in my head though.

      4) The mini-map seems to operate exactly the same as previous titles which kind of sucks given the new vertical nature of maps. It would have been nice to have some method of giving a relative vertical location for friendlies at least.


      Still looking forward to this. Hope there are more reviews and stuff from players I know and trust before launch so I can decide whether or not to purchase the deluxe version. I wish I had for Blops2 but am super happy I didn't for Ghosts. So we'll see.

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        August 11, 2014 8:01 PM

        After watching some of the other videos out there I can say that I did see some of the death skulls out there but they are far less noticeable.

        Also sliding is back (from ghosts) and the wrist launcher is indeed the grenades.

        It also seems that the exo-suits have some other abilities, I know I saw cloak and sprint for sure, I'd imagine there are others.

        I'm probably the only person here that gives a damn but I found it interesting.

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        August 11, 2014 8:24 PM

        Have you played it at Gamescom?

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          August 11, 2014 8:41 PM

          I wish =(

          I've watched a lot of videos now and am getting a pretty solid grasp of it though.

          Kind of weird that they're limiting the length of individual videos but not the number of videos; as all the information is out there it is just taking longer to find it.

          Also some of the other maps are pretty large, but nothing as big as we saw in ghosts.

          There are some videos of the capture the drone gameplay (whatever it's actually called) and while it looks neat I can't really imagine people playing it too much as most people won't want to pick up the damn drone.

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      August 12, 2014 9:33 AM

      Lets copy titanfall some more...

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