Multiplayer: Fast-paced and satisfying sci-fi chaos

A good shooter empowers its players with the tools they need to shine. Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer does this much more completely than the campaign–if anything the campaign feels like something tacked on, like an afterthought to the competitive online experience.

It’s worth noting that Raven Software built the multiplayer portion of AW, whereas Sledgehammer crafted the in-game engine as well as the campaign.

Multiplayer builds off of Call of Duty‘s already huge assortment of perks, weapons, scorestreak specials and a host of other customizables that bring a true sense of thrilling chaos to the game itself. Matchmaking is the reason you should buy Advanced Warfare: it’s exhilarating and really makes you feel like a badass supersoldier.

Players can customize their loadouts to a tee, allowing up to three different perks to be assigned along with two exo abilities and full scorestreak assignments. Essentially you can become the warrior you want to be, while unlocking a huge assortment of goodies as you progress.

With the new Pick 13 system (built off of the previous Pick 10) players have 13 points to spend across the board on weapon attachments, perks, exo abilities, killstreaks and more, making it sort of like an RPG system.

Pick 13 lets you do things you previously couldn’t. Want to have two exo-suit abilities instead of one? Check the Tactician wildcard, and you can add awesome activated abilities like Cloak and Overclock (speed boost) to your loadout. Want to pimp out a single weapon with a host of mods and attachments? Have at it. But the kicker is that all of these abilities have to balance out at 13, so you have to make some tough decisions along the way.

You can customize five loadouts in this way, complete with wildcards, scorestreaks, perk assignments and of course weapon assignment loadouts that can be buffed out with mods.

This system revolutionizes the customization for every player, ensuring that they can create their very own unique soldier. As you level up the more abilities, wildcards and attachments become available, deepening the feeling of your very own online warrior.

You can even customize how your operator looks, changing cosmetics like exo color, character type–male or female, you can make a badass Illona for example–as well as adding extras like sunglasses.

The best thing about the game’s multiplayer is that it expands upon the already mighty FPS formula. Everything is fast-paced and as it should be. The HUD is perfectly designed, and the minimap is as dynamic as ever. If you die you can jump right back in the action with instant respawns–something that keeps everything fresh and invigorating for all players.

And the exo abilities make you feel something close to a FPS juggernaut.

Being able to juke in all directions with the exo’s boost is extremely satisfying; double-jump then boosting across gaps can be the difference between life and death, and exo-smashing enemies below is incredibly fun. You feel like a high-tech Spider-man of sorts, flinging around the map and leaving total havoc in your wake.

That being said, it’s still Call of Duty multiplayer, which is primarily based on catching your opponents off-guard. Sometimes it’s not about skill but about luck and opportunism, as well as what items you’ve unlocked. Level 40’s will be at an advantage considering they have more powerful weaponry, making it semi-unbalanced for new players.

Supply drops can accompany certain matches, rewarding players with in-game loot almost like an RPG. A lot of the time these drops will be basic cosmetics that don’t really affect gameplay, but sometimes you can get lucky and snag a Goliath weapon or two.

The weapons are pretty well-balanced, but of course there’s one that gets my goat every time I get killed by it: the Tac-19 shotgun. This thing is a beast, and every game you’ll have that one guy that just runs around the map like The Flash and guns people down.

Multiplayer also rewards people who do well with Killstreaks; something I find to be kind of ridiculous at times.

For example, if a guy who opts to be a cheap player and runs around with the Tac-19, blasting players in the back, can unlock a devastating team-wiping ability, I find that to be unfair. But you can avoid many killstreak abilities simply by paying attention…but often this leaves you open for assaults by even more shotgun-toting baddies.

Apart from the shotgun, the rest of Advanced Warfare‘s multiplayer arsenal are fantastic. I myself perfect assault rifles (and it appears everyone else does too) that are perfect for the job. But if you find you keep getting killed by a specific player, the game will actually tell you how you died and what you died by, giving you new tactical tips.

There are also ten different gametypes to choose from–from Hardpoint, Uplink, Kill Confirmed and Domination to the all-time favorite Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. You can also try your hand at online co-op action against bots as well as a sort of multiplayer training exercise against other players to boost your skills.