Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Ascendance review: Gimmickry, guns and goliath zombies
National Post Tech Desk - Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:50
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s second major DLC dump, Ascendance, is slightly richer than its first, Havoc, which was released in January.
It delivers another instalment in the now ongoing adventures of a quartet of hapless Atlas Corporation employees modelled after and voiced by John Malkovich, Bill Paxton, Rose McGowan, and Jon Bernthal, plus four new multiplayer maps, a versatile new weapon, and a new “grappling” playlist that brings the campaign mode’s grappling hook to the multiplayer arena.
There are ups and downs, but on the whole it’s a worthwhile injection of fresh content.
Most of the new maps are oriented around gimmicks, but I’m kind of a sucker for gimmickry.
The most unusual – and entertaining – is the Australian-set Perplex, a five-storey lusciously detailed modular apartment building with the Sydney Opera House looming in the background. The modernist apartment modules are stacked like building blocks, providing a great opportunity to make the most of Advanced Warfare‘s trademark exo suit and its leaping capabilities. Most matches are a literal fight to be king of the hill, with teams vying to reach and hold the building’s peak.
Site 244, meanwhile, puts players at the base of Mount Rushmore, though you’ll only ever see the towering landmark if you make an effort to look up. Scattered beneath it is the wreckage of a space ship, the ruins of which divide the site into three rough lanes. This map will likely be a favourite for snipers, providing long sight lines and bottlenecks through which enemies will eventually be forced to run. Those who prefer to run and gun (like me) might have less fun.
Climate is the prettiest of the new maps. It’s set in a futuristic complex that looks a lot like something a 1950s conceptual space artist might have painted for a pulp sci-fi novel. Huge saucer-shaped living quarters set on thin spires loom over a utopian garden within an enclosed biodome with streams and bridges. Its layout feels a bit like a wagon wheel, with a killing floor hub and several spokes that lead in towards it. Lots of covered areas good for making stands make this a good map for capture and defend modes, especially Hardpoint.
The fourth map, Chop Shop, is a bit more traditional. Set in a robot manufacturing plant, it’s a big, sprawling maze of rooms, hallways, and outdoor pits. Much of the architecture is kind of same-y, so it took me a while to really get my bearings on this one. It favours fast, constant movement and quick reflexes. At first I thought it didn’t promote exo suit use, but after getting killed a bunch of times by players who boosted up through windows and past stairs I realized it actually rewards clever, skilled use of Advanced Warfare‘s signature leaping mechanic.
To go along with the new maps Sledgehammer has given us a couple of new toys: A grappling attachment for the exo suit and the OHM directed energy rifle, and both are welcome additions.
The grappling ability, originally only available in the campaign, can now be accessed via a special grappling playlist that includes all four Ascendance maps and a variety of play modes. Pick this playlist and your active exo ability will be automatically replaced with the grappling gun, which allows you to almost instantly scoot up walls and across gaps and hazards. And with rapid cooldown, you can use it pretty much whenever you like.
Grappling makes Perplex a joyful exercise in chaos, with players zooming and zipping all over the place. I also enjoyed grappling around Climate – especially once the biodome’s once-tranquil waters turn poisonous, creating deadly traps that can be easily avoided with a well-timed grapple.
Site 244 offers less opportunity to sling yourself around (I’m pretty sure I went a whole match without seeing anyone use their hook once), but Chop Shop, again, rewards experienced players who use grapple judiciously to zip up to balconies more quickly than enemies might expect.
You can also use the hook as a lethal secondary weapon, tagging players with its claw, but I had more fun with the brand new OHM directed energy rifle. I’m kind of a dyed-in-the-wool SMG guy, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the OHM, which delivers strong medium range bursts in its default light machine gun mode, as well as one-hit-kill power at short range after you tap the d-pad to switch to shotgun mode.
It’s not quite my new favourite weapon, but I was happy to switch to the OHM on maps like Chop Shop, where a mix of medium- and short-range power can be very effective.
I thought Ascension‘s biggest draw – as was the case with Havoc – would be the new Exo Zombie level, called Infection, but it turns out to be mildly disappointing.
As mentioned above, Havoc‘s original quartet of unlikely heroes returns to fight as a team against waves of undead, delivering a brand new series of memorable one-liners to match the action, which this time round is set in an enclosed chunk of small town America consisting of a parking lot, sewer, and a Burgertown restaurant. I’d gleefully play a whole Call of Duty game starring these oddballs – especially Mr. Malkovich, who clearly relishes his role as an F-bomb-dropping janitor-turned-badass.
But while most of the ingredients are here, the map’s design is a bit frustrating.
It takes a long time to figure out where basic locations like the exo suit station are, and even longer to get a feel for progression – where to go next and what to do there. This makes teams less likely to work as a cohesive unit. I frequently found my mates scattered all over the map rather than sticking together, which is the only way to succeed in Exo Zombies.
That said, there are some nice new touches, including the objective of protecting survivors – which I found helped bring everyone back together again – as well as a crazy powerful mech-armoured Goliath zombie. If you thought exo zombies were evil, this guy is basically Satan.
I still had good fun with Infection, but it took longer to get into than Havoc‘s Outbreak map and requires an experienced group. I have hopes the final two Advanced Warfare DLC packs, slated for release in coming months, will set Exo Zombies back on the right path.
