Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - PS4 - Review
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
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Match-ups - Above, I thought it was great I was matched with people my own rank... phooey... It was coincidence and I was wrong about it. You will be matched against people of all levels that have a variety of set ups. And it rocks.
You are going to die... A lot... It's ok, everyone does. Get used to it or move onto another game. Moving on...
I've decided for now that I want to try and see how far up I can get on a leader board, so I've picked Team Death Match and my place to play. After a few weeks of play I'm up about 300,000th place of over 3,000,000 players... Sheesh. Even worse, my kill/death ratio sucks ass, around a .71. It is moving in the right direction though, over the last few hundred kills/deaths it's moved up from a .59.
I've picked up a few ways I'm using to really keep it moving in the right direction... First, don't really camp (stay in one place) or run about non-stop, use a combination of both. Go from one choke point directly to the next, pause long enough to get a kill or two, or move on to the next (but do give it a moment to see if someone moves into view). For the most part, the maps may as well be circular tracks... The middle is a death trap almost always (look there for a kill when you pause in your laps) to be avoided unless suicidal or in the rush of the moment
Don't bunch up with team mates, leave some distance... It makes it hard for the enemy to get multi-kills and easy for you to know where to aim when the guy in front gets killed... As a side note here, I love semtex grenades (they stick). Even if you have crappy team mates who walk into gun fire, use it... Stick em with a grenade when you see them about to walk into their doom... heh, make them walking grenades... I'm going to hell.
Don't agonize about knowing the maps, just follow the outside track and even a noob should do decent.There are not a crapload of maps (though more are coming with the fucking expansions they suckered me into buying, no clue when they come out or how many there will be) so you will learn quickly when, where and why you would go into the middle and think you might survive. Still enough maps for a good variety though... What? 6 or 7 I think. Somewhere around there.
Stats, stats, stats! So many fucking stats i'm in heaven. The only problem is they are not organized the best and it's often hard to find something specific but I do find myself sometimes spending a lot of time just going over stats 
Best thing to do is stick with certain items until they are maxed out... Remember that if you don't complete something when you prestige, it gets reset and you start over. I try to stick with something until I max out it's achievements and then switch things out.
Check your loadout every few matches if you see you have earned new items or finished achievements for the reward... Or gotten random loot during the mission (I've not yet figured out how you get random chests when you kill or die but you do). You will find a lot of crap, I sell all the clothes for experience points unless it's something real cool looking, they don't appear to give any play bonus (though maybe camo in some levels), and I also sell off duplicates of weapon loot, keeping only the best... You have precious little space so hoarders will be very un-happy.
The biggest thing that sucks ass... No way to have it default to mute all... I freaking hate having to individually mute everyone every time I join a game. I have never heard anyone be anything but silent or fucking annoying (more often fucking annoying) while using the mike in these games. Fuck 'em, I'm done, I want an option to turn them off once and never hear it again.
OK... enough. I'm going to smoke up another joint and see if I can get my rank up to 270,000 place or better tonight 
The way they do the scoreboards for online is, one for everyones total score and then one for each of the game types. It kind of sucks that the main board is already compromised and cheated scores are showing up and not being deleted... At least the individual boards still appear clean. Blech...
Anyway... I've been playing Team Death Match. I suck but I play a decent amount so I'm steadily moving up the boards, I just got into the top 100k. What I am using is:
Primary Weapon - HBRa3 - An elite version of the weapon with extra damage (+1) and fire rate (+2) as well as lower handling (-1) but it's fully auto with 30 rounds before reload... Enough to take out two. I vary two attachments, swapping out as I complete the challenges but once I have them all, I'll stick with the Quick Draw Grip, that lets me aim down the sights faster and the Foregrip to reduce recoil. Makes it very accurate, even at a good distance, plus you aim wicked quick.
Secondary Weapon - I leave this empty... You can only use 13 slots and you can always pick up the weapon of the fallen, they are plentiful.
Perks - Again, all of these rotate to get the cards from the challenges (the cards are displayed if you get something special during the match or the round ending kill and I guess bragging rights go to those with more difficult ones to get... Like fucking pokeman, I gotta get every fucking one, heh) but I'll settle on either Danger Close (more explosive/score streak damage) or Flak Jacket (explosive protection) for the first... Gung Ho (shoot while running) for the second... And Hardline (score streaks cost 100 less)
WildCard - (skipping the swapping part) I really like Bombardier... It makes me give up an exo suit ability but I get an extra grenade and it can be different from my other two, so I use a Stun (great for clearing fortified positions)... Which leads to my main two grenades... I love, love, love semtex baby 
Two slots of sticky joy.
I also use three score streaks... The first at 300 points (100 per kill, 50 per assist)... This shows everyone on my team where the enemy is... Helps me find one more kill to lead right into Orbital Package at 400... A gift from the skies that could be almost useless or freakin awesome but always a bonus you hope leads to Goliath (a very cool armored suit of death) 
I've been using this set up for the last few days and it's been a vast improvement in my scores... It's not exactly made me good but I'm confident the issue is no longer my set up