News - They Completely Changed The New Warzone
I'm back from Call of Duty next over in LA after playing the brand new version of War Zone, which will be releasing in season 1 later this year. After the release of Modern Warfare 3, there'll be a short break before War Zone fully integrates all of the systems of Modern Warfare 3 into War Zone and transfers the game into a much better place.
Today. I wanted to go over all of the changes that are coming to War Zone, every single major and minor change that is going to be presented as part of the integration, and talk about how much of a difference it actually made. It's all well and good to hear about these changes on paper, but whether or not they actually make a gameplay difference is something else.
Thankfully, after about 5 hours of War Zone gameplay. I could finally talk about the differences that I felt and how I think all of these changes have created a war zone environment with a far greater emphasis on fun and dynamic gameplay, which kind of made most of us fall in love with it during the Vidan era.
There were just moments in this version of War Zone that I don't remember having in Modern Warfare 2 and moments of action fun and chaos that I can only really ever recall occurring back in the day for the original fans, so the first major change is obviously the New Movement system, which I would call a middle ground between Modern Warfare 2019 and Modern Warfare 2.
2022 and the reason I call it a middle ground is that it's got the speed and responsiveness that you would expect out of Modern Warfare 2019. Without broken elements of it, for example, character hit boxes are working properly, which was a huge issue back in the day in vians, and it also doesn't reset things like tack sprint, allowing for a cheesily fast movement, so I feel like they've really hit a sweet spot here.
The biggest noticeable change was just the general fluidity. I was no longer fumbling around with weapon animations, reloads, or cocking back my gun. I was no longer fumbling around with, after mantling over a wall, how long it would take me to aim down sight, and all of those delays and things that slow you down in Modern Warfare 2 and the current iteration of War Zone were effectively removed.
You know you could jump over a wall and very quickly aim down sight you could use different flanking routes and go from zipline to zipline and very quickly be back in the game ready to fight again, there was a period of time during the gameplay Loop where I went from like a horizontal zip line to a vertical zip line to crouch sliding to aiming down site and it was just one fluid motion there was none of these delays and none of these issues and none of these problems, that really put bricks on your feet in the current iteration of War Zone there are still a few places where the delay is a little too long and I think that will get changed effectively sledgehammer and Raven software at the start of the entire presentation.
They said that movement was a big focus for them, and I feel as though if there's something that people don't appreciate, it probably will find its way smoothed out by the time the game releases. Speaking of movement, we have the new horizontal zip lines alongside the vertical zip lines. These work really well.
I wish they were a little bit faster in place, but they offer more routes onto buildings, so now you have elevators, vertical zips, horizontal zips, and of course stairwells and ladders, meaning that most buildings are super accessible, and defending and attacking those buildings is going to be more of a fight and less of a campfest.
I really disliked in the original war zone that if you camped on a rooftop on a highrise or an apartment block, you'd basically win the game because there were no ways to attack it. That's completely changed here; even the tallest high-rise in the game has two cranes that you can use to flank onto it, multiple vertical zip lines up the side of the building, and two elevators, meaning that these buildings are all super approachable and nobody is permanently safe.
Finally, on the topic of movement, stems are back in the game; if you use a stem in the game, you get faster movement, and there are also New Park systems that will allow for faster movement in certain scenarios. So for those of you out there who really appreciate fluid movement, quick movement, and the ability to challenge opponents from around corners with jump shots and drop shots, this game is really ticking a lot of boxes.
With the next set of changes, I felt focused on fun, and there was a lot here that just made the game play more dynamic. I've already spoken about horizontal zip lines, but those are a good example of how they've injected something that's a little bit different but adds more layers of meaningful gameplay to the game that creates more fun and chaotic moments.
Another great example of this is the introduction of a movable train. Now we've had trains on every single map for war zones so far, but this is the first time the train is controllable. Not only can you speed it up and slow it down, but you can also Chuck it in reverse to make it accelerate or just pull the brakes entirely, meaning that you can effectively have a moving point of interest, and you can do some really cool things with this because it does, of course, come with a buy station, and you can effectively have a mobile kill squad where you could just run around the map using the train and then eventually park up the train in one of the final circles if the circle aligns.
We did this in one of our games, where we actually parked the train on a bridge, turning it into an effectively fortified position. This is just a new layer of dynamic that you don't really see in COD these days, and it was something that I felt just really added a bit of spice and variety, which I really appreciated.
On the topic of fun, there is a brand new goolag that felt very well laid out and felt a little bit like the original goolag showers, which I think most people will appreciate, given how poor the Al Mazra Goolag has been currently. It was a really good goag that allowed for aggressive gameplay corner to corner, and again, it really felt like the OG showers that we came to appreciate and actually felt a lot like the last goolag from Caldera.
