News - Warzone 2 Two Weeks Later - Does It Suck
Sorry about that, everyone. But in waiting to do this article, it has given me some extra time to really think about Warzone 2 and what it's trying to achieve here. So right out of the blocks here, in order to address this burning question, we need to acknowledge one key fact that will set the scene for the rest of this article.
War Zone 2 is clearly designed to be very different from War Zone 1. This isn't the War Zone experience that we've only recently known, just redubbed with a new coat of paint on it; it's something entirely different on purpose. And when I say different, and I kind of know I'll cop some flack for this, but it's kind of the truth.
War Zone 2 is a battle royale; it's not Rebirth Island 2.0, or in other words, a glorified Team Deathmatch or a free-for-all; it's a battle royale game in a much more traditional sense. I'm not saying that War Zone 2 is the perfect battle royale or the best at what it does in the genre; I'm just saying that it clearly is trying to achieve that one goal of being a more traditional battle royale game.
Dare I even say a bit of coordination and precision are a lot more important here than being able to slide into a room and mow down an entire squad while you dance circles around them with the movement? There's a lot of factors that influence this change of mind with War Zone 2 that are consistent with the design decisions that are made in Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer, that being stuff like slow aiming down sight speeds a blisteringly fast time to kill and, exclusive to Warzone, the three plate armor system that you've got to pick up mid-game.
All of this encourages a much slower play style that forces you to think a bit more before you go on to your next move rather than just screaming on into a room and making it up as you go along. And to be clear, when I say all this, I don't say it with the goal of being dismissive; I say it to make the most of the movement.
King strategy, out there, you know, being able to make the most of the movement mechanics of a game and murder entire squads with it is something that I actually consider to be incredibly skillful, but it's clear that while aggression can be rewarded in War Zone 2 if you're that good, there's a reason that movement kings are seething on Twitter about this game because it rewards positioning a hell of a lot more than it rewards blind aggression.
That kind of playstyle is where I would normally see myself fitting in more in games, for that matter. I'm such a hyper-aggressive player that it took me a long time to adjust to Warzone 2, and I didn't want my personal bias to affect my overall outlook on the experience that this game is trying to provide.
Sometimes I'm still getting this experience wrong, but I'm doing my level-headed best to minimize that frustration and approach those moments as constructively as possible. Trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is not the way to go, and I've come to understand that trying to be hyper-aggressive in this game is trying to fit that square peg into that round hole, so in an effort to be fair on the game and what it's actually trying to accomplish.
I'm going to be judging it on what it actually is trying to be as opposed to what Warzone maybe once was through the life cycle of War Zone 1. The changes to make it a more grounded Battle Royale experience do not automatically make it bad in my books; in fact, it almost feels like a callback to the original Verdask.
Days you know I returned to simpler times even, and with all of that in mind, for all intents and purposes. I actually don't think this is a bad Battle Royale mode in, or the Battle Royale genre for that matter, and I, honestly, don't think this game sucks really. As I said, it certainly grounds the player and slows the pace of the game right down, and man, it is punishing when you get things wrong here.
I call back to my first and early days in Pub G, when if you stepped out of line and there was a sniper sitting off in the distance or someone who had you beamed down with an m416 you were done, and I very much feel this way with an If you step out of line or get things wrong for just a millisecond, the game is going to punish you brutally, but that's kind of what battle royales have traditionally been all about, and whenever I fail to understand that and have stepped out of line in the game.
I always do my best to ensure that I understand what kind of game I'm playing, and when I do that. I'm generally having a lot of fun here with Warzone 2. I've had a couple of wins now in squads, and when the communications are flowing and the teams are just mashing well together, it really can feel quite sweet, and it's a game mode that I keep returning to as a result to keep chasing that dopamine hit of winning a war zone game.
I must say that, for one, the map on which this game mode is taking place, which is our Mars, is fantastic. But above the map, there is one big feature that has really made the war zone experience just that little bit better, where, you know, they've changed things and it's just been a net positive across the board.
We're, of course, talking about proximity chat. Now, I'm sure we've all had experience with it so far, but God damn guys, the content that is going to come from proximity chat is endless, and good God am I happy it's here to stay. I've had some hilarious ones. I've had interactions with the proximity chat so far, and I think it's just excellent.
Excellent. I did, and it definitely means that if you're relying on in-game communications with your squad mates, you've got to be extremely careful because, well, the enemy's going to hear you as you're talking about them, but quite frankly, it's well worth it, and at the end of the day. I've been really enjoying proximity chat's inclusion in Warzone 2.
The lack of loadouts really doesn't bother me here. You can still acquire your loadout weapons, which I very much feel was like the core of the loadout system from War Zone One that we all knew and loved quite frankly. And while the perks used to be nice to have, the perk packages in this war zone cannot be altered, and they cannot be reconfigured to craft that perfect loadout that you're really seeking, which I'm not exactly a fan of.
I must say that I do wish that we had more freedom over the loadout perk packages that we could have if we were to acquire our loadouts in-game, but given how rare and scarce loadouts are to acquire in the game as it stands, it doesn't really bother me that much that loadouts aren't really a thing here and the floor loot that is in the game is plentiful enough to backfill the gaps in the lethal and tactical slots of your loadouts as well overall.
