Each mission gives you a different exosuit to use during it, and each exosuit has a different set of three or four powers. That means that across missions you’ll be alternately able to double-jump, magnetically climb metallic surfaces, turn invisible, hover, drag yourself or enemies great distances with a grappling hook, and more. It seems on paper like a genuine attempt to mix up the cover-pop-shoot rhythm of Call of Duty movement from the past ten years, and an opportunity to offer players more freedom as to how they approach different challenges.
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. To start, the abilities available to you are introduced during a briefly visible pre-mission loading video, and then there’s no way mid-mission to check what you’re currently capable of. This will put you in situations where you attempt to double-jump, only to discover you’re not currently able to even scale shin-high rocks.
Even the powers you do have in any given moment can’t actually be used at any given moment. Your ability to scale vertical walls, for example, only works when the script says it does. The game demands you use it three or four times over the course of the campaign, each time either to reach the roof of a building or clamber over a route-blocking wall. This means that your climbing ability amounts to little more than a ladder and door in thematic clothing.
Almost all of the abilities are like this. Want to turn invisible and sneak close or around your enemies? Then you better wait for the defined stealth mission. The ability to vanish adds nothing as you crouch in bushes or hide behind rocks while enemy patrols drive by, in a poor imitation of Modern Warfare’s first stark, exciting Chernobyl mission. Want to detonate a mute charge and go in silently? Only in the breaching scenarios the level designers have laid out for you.
It is as it ever was, of course. Since Modern Warfare and arguably before, Call of Duty has always been about following the beats laid down for you by its creators, but it’s never felt so jarring. Now that you ostensibly have a toolset which should allow you to pick your own routes, to approach scenarios in your own way as you do in so many other games, being unable to do so feels more than ever like having your robot arms tied behind your back.
The game is consequently at its best in the few instances when it does open up, just a little. There are two later missions which offer you an open space and give you the grappling hook, which is able to rapidly pull you between ledges. In the first mission this is used for stealth, giving you a destination at the other side of a large compound home and leaving you free to sneak your own path across it. In the second, you’ve a number of turrets to destroy in a medium-sized section of city streets, and the grappling hook lets you hurl yourself around above the fray and take those turrets down in an order you choose.
These tantalising glimpses of what Advanced Warfare might have been are all too brief. You’re otherwise reliant on the same sort of scripted missions Call of Duty has always had, in which you push forward against waves of enemies or in which you’re given some briefly usable gizmo. The latter includes a low-flying sniper drone in a mission where you have to provide cover for an advancing team of squad mates operating on the ground. That’s fun, though I feel like I’ve done it before. Elsewhere you’ll pilot hoverbikes, speedboats which can plunge underwater, bulkier mech suits, a tank, and the aforementioned fighter jet. None of these feel good to control, and have only destructive power or extreme brevity to commend them.