Activision's new free-to-play title breaks into the Fortnite and PUGB genre landscape.
It doesn't take a week, but Call of Duty: Warzone has become the phenomenon of these early bars of 2020. Activision's new Battle Royale, free and with independent download – you don't have to have Modern Warfare to enjoy it – was announced and was published last week. Since then, more than 15 million players have gone through this bet that aims to compete against Fortnite, with PUGB, with Apex. Its irruption has overcome the impact of the Respawn Entertainment title, and the combination of Call of Duty, Battle Royale and free is being unstoppable. But what are your keys to success? Is it a temporary ‘boom’? What is new and fresh for players? These are the keys to its success and the reasons why you should try it.
The concept of Battle Royale revolves around several simple ideas: A huge group of players in a limited space where the last one standing wins. During the game, the game pushes you to a smaller and smaller radius of action, damaging and penalizing those who are outside the circle. While playing, survival is as important as equipping ourselves well to be more successful. From these pillars, each one seeks their differentiation. The construction in Fortnite, which is intermingled between the action; in-house classes and tools in Apex or a more realistic and demanding PUGB shooting system. And Warzone? The Call of Duty Battle Royale wants to be just that: to be Call of Duty. But in this kind of mode. Of course, against all odds and for the moment, it only allows games with teams of three. There is no lack of the battle pass with rewards of all kinds and the interesting presence of vehicles. But Warzone stands out for many peculiarities of its own. These are.
More players and more action
One of the interesting points about Warzone is that it targets 150 players per game. This means that the action is much more present from the first moment. It is difficult to find places where there is nobody, and it is not usual to do loot and search for resources alone, without confrontations. The high number of players is what causes that, but not only: the possibility of reviving and having new opportunities to return to the battlefield makes killing and dying much more present from the first bars of the game.
An accessible and uncomplicated loot
If you look at Apex or Battlegrounds, you realize that the loot, that is all that first part of equipment and search for weapons, accessories and others, is much more complex than in Warzone. Here we do not have tiered armor, and the defense is reduced to plates that we can equip ourselves as bulletproof vests and a gas mask for when we are outside the delimited area. Furthermore, it is relatively easy to find enough to be equipped with maximum defense. Weapons are divided according to the accessories they carry. The white and common ones are peeled, while as we find other types we have improvements in grip, the type of peephole, etc. Epics (lilacs) are the best grips, biggest boots, and best grips they wear, while golds are the most legendary – they come with five accessories. This makes looting easy, because you don't have to worry about whether or not that peephole you've found matches the weapon you're carrying.
The Warzone money system and contracts
Another key to Warzone is the money system. As we are opening boxes, killing people or solving contracts we are making money that we can later invest in certain improvements. Money management is important because it allows us to distribute it among the team, something that pushes us to think about medium-term strategies: that the entire team has enough money to revive a fallen person, for example, it allows us to maintain the victory options with greater ease. Added to this is a system of contracts that gives us mini objectives on the battlefield: search for specific chests, secure areas or kill a marked enemy. In exchange for loot and money, something that also serves to stimulate our actions during the game.
Advantages and weapons made in Call of Duty
It is relatively easy to get a certain amount of money shortly in our first bars we finish off some of the enemies that have fallen near us and we solve some contracts. Money allows us to buy many of the proposals made in Call of Duty: this means some advantages such as UAV, shield turret, cluster attack and others. It is true that the usefulness of all this is somewhat more limited than in a 24-player map in Modern Warfare, but they are tools that, well used, can change a game in advanced moments of them. In addition, for a price of $ 6,000 we can buy our multiplayer weaponry: the loadouts that we have predefined with our weapons, accessories and advantages (some of them adapted to the Battle Royale). If you feel powerful with your M4, second weapon shotgun, excess means and claymore to protect your back, you can equip it with just that amount.
The gulag: another opportunity
One of the mechanics that is dividing the community between those who love it and those who hate it is the Gulag. When we die for the first time in Warzone, we are sent to a prison where we will have an opportunity to return to the battlefield: there we face each other one-on-one – Warzone Gunfight-style, precisely on one of the game's maps- before another enemy that has fallen. Whoever wins of the two returns to the game, the other dies. It is a way of maintaining the link with the game and having options to continue in it, and as in many of the other keys, a way of making our passage through the genre accessible and bearable, which is sometimes excessively demanding in other proposals.
Loot, another way of understanding Battle Royale
And after all this, there is still room for a loot mode in which money is the key element of the game. The teams fight to find money, looting other teams and sending the dough to safe areas through extractions. In this mode there is not a single death or gulag, but the players appear as if it were a multiplayer, but losing 50% of the money they had to their credit. The management of the same, knowing how to safeguard it or deliver it to other colleagues, as well as the search for new boxes or rich equipment make it a different experience, although it is true that the length of these games – many are resolved by time because they do not reach the objective – they can back down in the long run.
Conclusion: a very Call of Duty Battle Royale
The sensations after these first days is that we are facing a Battle Royale that adapts to the Call of Duty formula and not the other way around. The accessibility and immediacy of many of his proposals evidences this in comparison with others of the genre. Direct action with a familiar gunplay that establishes the basis of its success for years, simplicity to get money and advantages, including our multiplayer weapons, more action and contact with enemies from the first moment and the concept of second chance through the Gulag . It can be considered the "arcade" of Battle Royale, but with all the machinery and potential that Call of Duty and Infinity Ward (developers along with Raven Software) have behind them at all levels. There are things to adjust, but the will of what you want to offer seems clear when you consider that the goal is to open up to 200 players. More action, more immediacy. And this is what, for the moment, is working as a tremendous success.
