To open the twentieth door of the RPS Advent Calendar, you will need to equip yourself with some of your best friends, tie yourself to a parachute and don’t forget to check your corners.
It’s Call Of Duty: Warzone!
James: I don’t have to tell you how it was this year. Scary, alone; we’ve all been through this. Isolation hit me pretty hard. Stress from all corners of life melts into a giant ball of terror when you are alone in a two-meter square bedroom on the top floor of a 19th-century Kemptown mansion. In the long spring months, all I wanted was to explore the beautiful city I had moved to, find new experiences, and meet new friends. However, this is not always the case.
2020 has become more about coping than anything else. Mourning for the loss of opportunity, financial security, family members and relationships, without end. For a long time I needed a constant.
Looking back, Warzone suited me perfectly. It made me go through a huge amount of the year and gave me that constant source of Literal Anything my brain couldn’t get from the outside world. I had fallen off the Call Of Duty train some time ago and hadn’t gotten into any of the games properly since I got rid of ridiculous time on Modern Warfare 2 that day, but the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot brought me right back . Warzone, the Battle Royale mode of the game, was the perfect combination of familiarity and new and interesting things.
The list of Warzone achievements is one kilometer long. The weapon game feels satisfying, the best weapons being strong and heavy in your virtual hands, and the excitement of landing a sniper shot in the head to finish off the last member of an enemy team is as intact as any AAA shooter polished in first person. The map is varied, and the constant extra content and range of weapons and characters means you can customize your experience to bring out the best for both you and your team.
To me, though, all the good things Warzone had were secondary. After all, I would play him for work. No, Warzone was my game of the year, because other people liked it. It’s the first Battle Royale game, damn it, the first game in general, that resonated with both me and a group of friends, to the point where we can enjoy together as if they jumped online after school as soon as we finished the theme.
Through all the unpleasant backs and difficult days, Warzone and the team I join, I went through a really tough year. Thinking of Warzone for what it is, it almost seems silly to attach such emotional weight to this ridiculous shooty bang bang game that allows you to buy weed weapons and anime trucks. Honestly, though, Call of Duty: Warzone is a banger, with all its brilliant time-limited modes (Armored Royale, I look at you) and is one of those games that you’ll be happy to guide. Any excuse to jump into Verdansk with the team is a delight to me.
Ed: James and I were in Verdansk together for most of the blockade and pretty much summed up my thoughts on Warzone. For me, just as much for him, getting into Discord with the Boys after work and getting into Royale Call Of Duty mode was an important way to connect with real forms of human life.
We were all practically a commercial for crossplay. Despite the fact that we played on a lot of different platforms, Warzone was an arena that let us hit indifferently. As I write this article, I remember how brilliant this is. The fact that we were – and still are – able to catch a ticket to Verdansk without even thinking about compatibility remains a magic for me.
Warzone is free to play as well. It’s free. This experience costs nothing (apart from SSD storage) and is easy to forget. Again, it was perfect for those lock sessions, because there was no monetary barrier, we could all get involved just by clicking on install.
I can’t get over the idea that it doesn’t cost money to play this game, probably because it’s so polished. It’s pretty much a live service mode that feels straight removed from the £ 50 Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. There’s no price reduction for graphics or weapon game here, it’s a triple A experience, just channeled into a great multiplayer mode.
That being said, as the blockade continued, I’m not sure we even cared to take the lead and ensure the victory of the war zone. Eventually, Verdansk became more of a chat room to show us our frustrations, to have a lace and to exist only in a space that was not our rooms. Essentially, a mental health tool that involved falling on a map, surviving poison gas, and shooting criminals.