Call of Duty Zombies has been a huge hit ever since it's arrival in World at War. From that point, Zombies was revived in every Treyarch game since, even earning it's role as a major part of the game. Following in the giant's footsteps, Advanced Warfare added their own take on the much-loved zombies mode. While it is fun to play with friends, and is takes an interesting spin on the Zombie theme, I have a few problems with it. Here's a few:
Maps - While obviously the graphical capabilities of the newest generation of consoles are better than the last, there is something missing. First off, what's with the person-to-map ratio? While playing, it feels like cars are huge, buildings are huge, walls are huge (and I'll elborate more on why I hate those walls) everything is just BIG. This is obviously because everything in the game needs to be raised in order to compensate for the exo-suits jump abilities. While the exo-jump can be fun, Sledgehammer didn't make maps have more places to go, or more content to find, they just made everything higher. They gave us the ability to span great distances quickly, and less space than even some of the smallest Treyarch maps. And to add insult to injury, the zombies themselves seem to small compared to the character you play as. Buildings too big, with the zombies being smaller and in greater numbers. In Black Ops, zombies just feel bigger, scarier, and when just ONE got up in your face and trapped you in a corner you couldn't help let out a girly little scream and hope you didn't have to reload before you could shoot.
Now, about those walls. Since the Exo-Suit jump capabilities gave us room to jump up high, if there would just be a short fence in out way, say, like the bridge from Shangri-La, you would kind of have to call bullcrap. You'd be like "I can jump 20 feet in the air but I can't clear this?" And obviously you can't go over there because that area isn't part of the game, it's just the background with and invisible wall. With Advanced Warfare, there is no background. That's one of my main issues. The whole map is enclosed in one texture of grey, steely metal that goes up 200 feet around EVERYWHERE. In Moon you could look out across the vast lunar landscape. In Call of the Dead there was a mountain shooting high into the sky, with the ocean spanning along it. Origins even took up a good portion of my game time because I'd stare off into the distance, wondering what lie ahead. Shangri-La, in my opinion, had the most gorgeous scenery of any map with rain forest, bridges and waterfalls. Is Sledgehammer just afraid to give the players a more enriched, better looking, maybe even dynamic environment?
Weapons - I've felt this way about all of the Infinity Ward games, and now again with Sledgehammer's. The guns are just too washed out, and too similar. There is no major defining characteristic of any guns to be found. In Black Ops, each gun is wildly different looking, and each has extremely different capabilities in terms of power and ability. Each person you meet online has their own combination of weapons they preferred to use, and even playing now 2 years later it's hard to get bored.
Another aspect lacking in Exo-Zombies is the upgrade station. The upgrade station was in effect supposed to be like Pack-A-Punch, if PAP was extremely dull. Sure, it's cheaper, but you definitely get what you pay for. Each upgrade just swaps the camo, and increases the damage marginally, and NONE have any special abilities, such as the Crossbow or Ballistic Knives after a well spent 5000 at Pack-A-Punch. The upgrade station lets you upgrade 20 times, which in total points costs 50,000 after you've upgraded all the way. Nobody ever has this money early on, so you have to slowly upgrade your weapons as the rounds go on. (Or never buy anything else, ever.) What ends up happening is the weapon ends up getting a power boost, at around the same intervals as the zombies are getting strength boosts, resulting in what looks like little to no change in damage output.
In simpler terms, Sledgehammer got a little lazy with some of the aspects that I believe Treyarch happens to be good at creating. If you have a different opinion, feel free to leave a comment or post on my Facebook page.
If you are someone who works for Treyarch: NO EXO SUITS IN ZOMBIES.
