Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on Xbox One (Review)

Like every year, we awaited another season of Call of Duty. This time Sledgehammer was the developer of this game instead of the usual Treyarch and people (just like myself) were skeptical after the poor release of Infinity Ward called "Ghosts" and the previously released game were both IW and Sledgehammer worked on: "Modern Warfare 3". Is this the game that will put some change into the series or is it just another casual release that disappoints as a AAA game?

THE SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT - 4.5/5
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare kicks off in the future. 2055 to be very specific. You play as a Jack Mitchell, a private that just joined the U.S. Marines that just finished his training with his best friend Will Irons. His first real mission is to fight Korean troops in Seoul and that's where the new game-play elements and the story come to live.

The first big change in your load-out is the Exo-suit. This has 2 different "Classes": Specialist and Assault. Obviously the Assault class wants you to fight straight to the point whilst the Specialist class is usually assigned for special missions where stealth is the basis of the mission. Michael Condrey, Vice President and CEO, said that "This toolbox that the Exoskeleton brings to you as the player, redefines how you're going to play Call of Duty" and I believe this is very true. You have so much more possibilities to play your missions then it was the case in all the older entries in the franchise. The missions can be played with a lot more possibilities which can allow for more replayability.

Another big change in your load out are the tactical and lethal grenades. In all the other entries you started with a standard load-out of Frag grenades and the usual Flashbangs. This game on the other hand lets you choose what grenades you want to use during your campaign which allows the person behind the controller to have a lot more fun whilst completing their objectives. With a single press of the action button, there's a much wider assortment in how to successfully complete your tasks.

I'm not going to reveal how the story plays out, but I can say that this is exactly what gamers should expect from a AAA-game such as Call of Duty and they seems to have found a second breath with this entry. Whilst the Treyarch games were always great in terms of the story line, Sledgehammer picks up where Infinity Ward left off with Modern Warfare 2.

GRAPHICS & SOUND - 5/5
I can only judge from the Xbox One version so far, but the graphics look absolutely stunning. From rendered cut-scenes to the world in which you step foot during your adventure, you will enjoy everything this game has to offer. It isn't as dark as Modern Warfare 3, and it looks quite realistic and vivid compared to the aforementioned game. The locations feel real that once again allows the player behind the controller to enjoy their environment.

The sound is similar to the graphics; the guns sound a lot more realistic. We all know the difference between the previously released entries and the Battlefield games, and this game can easily follow the greatness of Dice's game. Due to how the graphics, sound and the story-line come out, this can easily be one of the favourite shooters in any gamers collection, even those who have been avoiding the COD-series ever since Black Ops or any game that came before that.

MULTIPLAYER & EXTRA CONTENT - 4/5
I'm going to be honest here, since reviews are mostly based on a persons' opinion. I've been avoiding the Ghosts multiplayer ever since release day. It felt unbalanced, the system of Squad Points was unfair and everything about it was just bad. It wasn't like Black Ops II and this game picks up where Treyarch left off: classes that need to be customised based on your performance (read: your experience) and score streaks that actually reward you for what you've done in-game. As an added bonus, you can customise those score streaks as well to add something more to them. If you want to add a faster scan to your UAV, feel free! All the added features in the Single Player such as the Boost Jump and the Hover ability are added in as well which enables a more dynamic play to every map. There's still a "Classic" Playlist which disables all these abilities, but sadly there's no Hardcore option in this one. A small thing Sledgehammer missed were my personal favourites: the so-called Party Games. No Gun Game or One In The Chamber is something that was looked over but can hopefully be re-added with an update.

Note to the devs: Don't make the same mistake as IW to add game-modes in with paid DLC just like in Ghosts. It smells like money grabbing for those people who supported your work.

As extra content, we receive Survival based on what they've done in Modern Warfare 3. Again, I'm going to be honest; it's not one of my top add-ons a game could bring. I loved Zombies and Extinction was received well among the COD-community but sitting in a room waiting for the AI enemy to come over? No thanks. The extra objectives during your play mix the gameplay up a bit but there's no real reward or punishment when these are not fulfilled. I hope to see other content with DLC, since this survival is the opposite of what the Single Player and Multiplayer brings us.

ACHIEVEMENTS - 4/5
On a site like this one, this has to be part of the review. First: there are no achievements attached to the multiplayer. No Clan Wars, no prestiges, no League Play; absolutely nothing. Whilst this is okay for achievement hunters who don't love multiplayer, this is a missed opportunity for having full servers or to attract new people. We don't need an achievement for prestige 10 or 15 (which is now the maximum prestige level), but an achievement for prestige 1 wouldn't hurt since there's only 50 levels to complete before hitting that.

For Exo Survival there are only 5 achievements. All of these achievements are a bit time consuming but still easily unlockable when you are playing in a great team (read: no randoms). Due to the amount of achievements are what this game mode really brings you, I'm not seeing this being popular in the next 2 or 3 months.

Since there are 50 achievements to obtain in this title (not considering DLC that will be released at some point), the maths are easily done for the Single Player achievements. 45 achievements can be obtained quite easily. There are 2 achievements for collecting all 3 intels in each mission, 2 achievements are based on the difficulty you are playing on. 15 achievements are story related for completing the missions which leaves another 26 achievements for completing miscellaneous things such as using your grenades in a certain way or doing some mission specific things like not taking damage whilst on a vehicle.

All in all, this achievement list can be counted as one of the easiest ones featured on a COD-game but this still requires some time and effort to be able to add this game to your trophy case.

CONCLUSION
As said before, this game can easily compete with other successful entries in the series or with other franchises. The single player is great and the multiplayer finally feels dynamic again. All new features work great and are fun to use although the Exo Survival could get boring quite fast. If you are on of these people who love to play a game with a decent story and not too difficult on the hardest setting then this will be your game to play on the cold December-nights.

My overal rating is is 17.5/20 and can be rated 4.5 stars out of 5.

Have a chance of winning Sniper Elite V2 (GOTY), Forza Motorsport 5 and Destiny (Xbox One)!

Hey all,
I'll be giving away some games as a prize for your good hearts. Yes, you heard it right: I'm not asking money for them directly, I want you to make a donation to a good cause. Below, you can find a summary of all these games!

1. Sniper Elite

The rules:

- You need to have a registered account on TrueAchievements.com; don't have one? Sign up here!
- You need to make a small donation to my Extra Life page ranging for $2 to $8 dollars.
- There are 3 different donations with the following set rule: A donation of $2 will put your name in a cup once, $5 will put your name in it twice and $8 will put your name in it three times.
- A donation higher then $8 is allowed but your name will not be put in more then three times.
- The winner will be picked by the use of random.org and will be notified through PM on TrueAchievements.com. Obviously he or she will still be announced in my next blog as well.
- Add your gamertag (NOT your real name) to the comment box and mention "Sniper Elite V2 contest".
- You can only win one prize during the entire duration.
- Shipping costs will still need to be covered by the winner. The game can be won at a steal of a prize, so it's just a small thing to do; right?!
- This contest ends on September 30th, 2014.

Note:

- This game is from the PAL region but is supposed to be region free.
- All DLC is on the disc.

2. Forza Motorsport 5

The rules:

- You need to have a registered account on TrueAchievements.com; don't have one? Sign up here!
- You need to make a small donation to my Extra Life page ranging for $2 to $8 dollars.
- There are 3 different donations with the following set rule: A donation of $2 will put your name in a cup once, $5 will put your name in it twice and $8 will put your name in it three times.
- A donation higher then $8 is allowed but your name will not be put in more then three times.
- The winner will be picked by the use of random.org and will be notified through PM on TrueAchievements.com. Obviously he or she will still be announced in my next blog as well.
- Add your gamertag (NOT your real name) to the comment box and mention "Forza 5 contest".
- You can only win one prize during the entire duration, but off course you can participate in multiple ones.
- This contest ends on September 30th, 2014.

Note:

- This game is from the PAL region and is supposed to be region free (since it's Xbox One).

- The game will come in form of a code and requires 40GB of free space on your HDD.

3. Destiny (Xbox One)

The rules:

- You need to have a registered account on TrueAchievements.com; don't have one? Sign up here!
- You need to make a small donation to my Extra Life page ranging for $2 to $8 dollars.
- There are 3 different donations with the following set rule: A donation of $2 will put your name in a cup once, $5 will put your name in it twice and $8 will put your name in it three times.
- A donation higher then $8 is allowed but your name will not be put in more then three times.
- The winner will be picked by the use of random.org and will be notified through PM on TrueAchievements.com. Obviously he or she will still be announced in my next blog as well.
- Add your gamertag (NOT your real name) to the comment box and mention "Destiny (Xbox One) contest".
- You can only win one prize during the entire duration, but off course you can participate in multiple ones.
- This contest ends on October 25th, 2014.

Note:

- This game is from the PAL region and is supposed to be region free (since it's Xbox One).

- Shipping costs will be covered by the winner.

4. Closing information

I'm also selling a few games, and those profits will go to Extra-Life as well. You can find the list by clicking this link.

Again, if you are not interested in winning this game, share this blog among your friends so they know! Make sure you start following me on Twitch.tv, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube; that way you'll be the first to know about any upcoming events!

Start making your donations through here to have a shot at winning this game!

Thanks for reading and as always; stay awesome!

- MC0REBE

RAGE - Ultimate Nightmare guides mixing down!

After uploading some achievement guides for Enemy Front, it's time to play one of the greatest games out there once again. Currently mixing down the Ultimate Nightmare guide for RAGE; which will include all collectibles and Easter Eggs as well as all DLC- and side missions. Later today, I'll be recording the co-op missions with AFatalTouch which will also include all collectibles! Fun times, stay tuned for the walkthrough coming to my very own YouTube channel!

Ultimate Nightmare cover

Legends of The Wasteland CO-OP cover

Review: ENEMY FRONT

Hey all,
This will be my second review (first one is only published on TrueAchievements.com and can be found here) and I apologize if I missed anything. Just felt like writing a review for this game, since I have some mixed feelings. Please note that at the time of writing, I have progressed through the first 5 missions in the single player campaign on the Expert difficulty and played the multiplayer close to 2 hours (or at least tried to play it). Spoilers will be kept to a minimum.

1. Single Player

The single player campaign kicks off with your main character, Robert Hawkins, and a group of soldiers discussing the next move of their resistance against the Nazi Reich during World War II. Off course, you will be ambushed and you will need to make your way to the resistance camp underneath the city. From this point on, you have your options on how you want to handle your missions. But is it really that easy?

Short answer: no. Why? As a big stealth lover, I tried to approach this game with stealth as much as I could. But it just doesn't work. For all of you who played Sniper Elite V2 where you could sync up your shots with the sounds of a plane flying over or a thunderstorm; you will recognize the noise indicator at the right hand side of your screen. First I thought this would be awesome, but the game proved me wrong. Every time I tried syncing my shots, they spot me because of where the bullet came from which shouldn't happen. To make things worse, none of the weapons are silenced. My friend said "Do you think every foot soldier had a silencer on their weapons?" No, but in this game you are not a foot soldier. You need to infiltrate camps and sabotage Nazi equipment. Off course I will expect the stealth to work a little bit better.

I thought "Let's try running & gunning then". This does work nice, I have to be fair. There is almost no recoil on any of the weapons, which makes it fun. On the downside, taking cover is not an easy job. When going in, you might at least expect the cover system to be a little bit different but instead you need to crouch and hug the small obstacles in order not to take damage. Leaning from cover is not featured either, which makes you vulnerable for enemy bullets. Expert difficulty doesn't show you whenever you are close to dying, but you can take a fair amount of damage before you do. Enemies don't seem to take a whole clip to give them their pass to the afterlife, and it doesn't take 2 headshots to kill one either. I'd say this is realistic in some way, but you need to watch out since I had a couple of instances where they rushed to your hiding or cover spot.

The weapons are World War II and are correct in my opinion. There is no weapon too overpowered and each of them allow you to change the way you play a mission. You want to play safe and snipe them from a distance? Works for the first enemy and maybe the second but to dispose the rest you will need to wait until they are out of cover. Sometimes the enemies glitch, but it's not gamebreaking. They just stand still where they were standing which allows an easy kill. As advertised on the box itself, the game includes "Advanced Sniping Technology" which basically only includes that you can hold your breath or focus which slows down the time a bit. Nice addition, but nothing that we haven't seen before.

During your main objectives, you get several side missions which always rewards you with an achievement and/or weapons. This makes the game a bit more enjoyable and not the usual run from point A to B while blasting the enemies. I noticed that I look more at my surroundings when doing these side missions, where it's easy to kill an enemy or two by throwing a grenade underneath a car.

2. Multiplayer

This is the reason why I bought this game. I love the multiplayer in Call of Duty: World At War (if it wasn't for hackers and modders) and I thought it would be a great experience to be able to play it without having to worry about people flying over the map. I was wrong. There are no hackers so far in this game, but the multiplayer itself is poor and feels like something I need to complete as soon as possible.

The hit detection feels off, there is a lot of lag and the menu makes things complicated. There are only 3 modes, and 4 different maps. Loadouts needs to be during a match, there is no map rotation and it's impossible to join a game in progress. You need to wait until a lobby consists of at least 8 people before the host can decide to start a match. If you pick Quick Match, you would at least think that you can choose your game mode and be placed in a lobby but nothing is what it seems. You need to pick your game mode and map and hope for other players to join in. This is what makes the multiplayer a poor addition in comparison from what the single player offers you.

On top of that, there is a respawn delay and a lot of lag which suggests that this game isn't run on dedicated servers. True, it's still a young game and additions might come along and the fact that this is a budget game should allow me to rethink what convinced me to get this game, but if you advertise the multiplayer as "original modes which provide interesting twists on the MP mechanics", the developers need to show me a bit more.

Something that frustrated me a lot, and felt like Medal of Honor: Airbourne is that when you reload your gun and quickly want to shoot somebody from the opposite team, your gun just doesn't respond. You can hold RT as long as you like, shooting won't happen until you release your finger from that trigger and press it down again. Nothing they can't patch, but annoying while going for the medals.

3. Visual, sound and controls

Let me start off with a big positive to this game: I love the graphics. The landscapes (in which the enemies are hardly detectable) are beautiful and destruction is shown as is should be. The fact that the single player covers more then one country is great and allows you to meet the less known regions during World War II such as Denmark, Poland and France.

On the other hand, you have the sound. Sometimes the sound of shooting bullets drops, which confuses me from time to time. While being sneaky, the same tune loops and will drive you crazy. I can say with honesty that I would disable sound if I could, but it does help to locate enemies from one time to another when you hear them talking.

The controls are pretty much like any shooter, although you can carry up to 2 primary weapons and they are easily accessible by using the D-Pad while toggling left or right. To have your side arm ready, you can still press Y. Aiming and shooting is still with the triggers (LT and RT accordingly), throwing grenades is with the bumpers (RB for lethal, LB for tactical). You are able to highlight enemies with your binocular (D-Pad up) and you can get stealth kills when throwing rock (D-Pad down).

4. Achievements

This is probably what you guys have been waiting for, and I can't blame you. Let me kick off by mentioning that 10 out of 45 achievements are multiplayer related. All can be obtained in Private games except for Sir! Yes Sir! and Jackpot. This spans playing and winning each multiplayer mode, but also getting a set amount of headshots, not dying while playing FFA (thank god for Private games) and being the most valuable player 10 times in TDM (most kill, least deaths)

The other 35 achievements are unlocked while playing through the single player. Some are cumulative and require you to get a number of kills with a set weapon or exploit (grenades under cars helps for the explosive ones [wink]), collecting the secrets (which carries over from one playthrough to another) and no achievement is tied to the story with the exception of the 3 difficulty related ones (from which I suspect that they stack). All achievements that are related to a single mission are missable but can be unlocked by using Mission Select from the main menu. I wouldn't say that this is a hard achievement list, but it doesn't look very easy to me either (especially the ranking and the medals in multiplayer).

5. Conclusion

The campaign is one I can recommend until the point where I am at, and is enjoyable to play even on the hardest difficulty. Stealth is something the devs could have approached better, and the multiplayer is in one word disappointing. The game looks finished but it needs some cleaning up. This is by no means a bad game, but isn't GOTY material either. Picking it up for full price might be overkill, so I would recommend waiting for a sale or permanent discount. With all these 'modern' war games out today, this game is a relieving experience and will keep the Word War II enthusiasts busy for about an hour or 10. I'd give this game a rating of 72 out of 100, which reflects to 3.5 out of 5.

Thanks for reading!
- MC0REBE