Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare: Too Little Too Late

COD:AW is ostensibly  set in the near-ish future of 2050, where Metal Gear Solid style PMC’s are fighting wars on behalf of countries until a single PMC, ATLAS, becomes the big dog. Led by a scenery chewing House of Cards style Kevin Spacey doing as easy day’s work, ATLAS is the macguffin on which the plot revolves.

Playing a forgettable soldier (played by Troy Baker) whose defining characteristic is being the best friend of Kevin Spacey’s son, when not waiting for a character labeled by the word “follow” to trigger the next Bay-tastique  scripted event, one pushes forward on the stick and left trigger/right trigger’s the way through a brutally linear experience for the entire middle chunk of the game.

Powered by EXO suits that provide abilities like rocket jumping, grappling and other neat gizmos, the opening mission of the game is an exciting piece of world building that not unlike Titanfall has enormous vertical and horizontal mobility. 

The final missions of the game also unshackle the player and become Just Cause 2 type experiences of launching across a battlefield and hopping from ledge to ledge via grapple. This mobility and constant movement is refreshing even within the constraints of a relatively small arena. Unfortunately there is a mediocre slog between these experiences that is by the numbers COD, including a requisite stealth mission through roaming patrols.

At 6 hours, the campaign is short enough not to be offensive but while other shooters evolve around COD one wonders if this is the beginning of the end for the franchise as the incremental changes create a sum that is less than its parts.