Call of Duty may be one of the most well-known franchises in gaming history, with its first title being released in 2013 for the PC. Since then, the title has expanded to consoles and now on the mobile phone. Call of Duty Mobile may just be the most complete game I've ever experienced on mobile, and it is one of the few shooters that I may be playing long after writing about it.
In a Nutshell
Overall score: 4.5 out of 5
Pros:
- looks great for a mobile game
- lots of content
- surprisingly good controls
- encapsulates the Call of Duty franchise well
Cons:
- demanding on hardware: is a 1Gb initial download, freezes when there are too many textures on-screen for a lower mid-range device
- weird spawns in classic gametypes
- weapon imbalances lead to common gun types in classic gametypes
Overview
Call of Duty, for the uninitiated, is a first-person shooter known for its high intensity, run-and-gun combat. Throughout the years it has covered military theatres from World War II to high tech, modern combat. Call of Duty Mobile is the first edition in this franchise to go on mobile, and it retains the appeal despite the limitations of the device. The objectives of these games are simple. For the most part, it's point, shoot, kill, and sometimes capture an objective. There are many ways to skin this cat, from the classic kill streak bonuses to the various weapons available to be customized.
Graphics and Aesthetics
This game is really good-looking for a mobile game, and it looks like it was lifted directly from the consoles and packaged to fit in a mobile container. The models and textures are more or less copies of the games on the Playstation 4, so it is really safe to say that this game completely matches the franchise. The menus also look great; buttons are sleek and professional-looking. The rewards button textures and login reward layout looks suspiciously similar to Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (or PUBG) though.
The game seems to auto-detect what setting is best for your device, but even on the lowest setting, there are lots of detail for you to see. This is generally a good thing as the game performs surprisingly well unless there are too many textures on screen. On a lower mid-range device, deathmatch games run incredibly smooth, but a firefight in the middle of a grass field with class skills active in the battle royale mode has the potential to freeze the device completely. I've ended a game in second place thanks to my phone freezing due to blades of grass and healing perk textures taking up my device's memory.
Mechanics
In the very first few moments on installing the game, you are given a tutorial on the basic mechanics of the game. You move about by dragging your finger on the virtual joystick on the left side of the screen, and you look around using the one on the right side of the screen. Depending on how far you drag your finger on the movement side, you either sprint or walk. Call of Duty Mobile has taken a page out of other mobile shooting games and added a crouch/prone button and a jump/mantle button on the right side, next to the virtual joystick for aiming.
Shooting is the challenging part of mobile shooters, and Call of Duty Mobile used some interesting methods to make this experience smooth. There are three buttons that are related to shooting in this game. One button is to use your weapon sights to aim, and it is located on the right side of the screen. There are two buttons for firing, one located on the left, and the other located right below the aiming button. Depending on your settings, the right fire button automatically makes you aim down your sights, without needing to take your finger off to press the aim button. Holding on the button on the default setting will make you spray your automatic weapons, but on a sniper rifle, you will aim and only fire when you let go. The left fire button does not do this. This method of aiming makes playing the game so much smoother than others, and I think it should be the standard default setting for shooters from now on.
You also have a button for reload, and for your grenades. The game helpfully gives you a timer when you cook your grenades, as well as showing you the initial trajectory of your throw. Bounces from surfaces are not shown, so players have to think and mentally simulate those kinds of plays. Another button to know is your melee button. If you get close enough to an enemy, you can knife them, regardless of whether you have a knife equipped in your loadout or not. This button only appears when you are in range. The button is sizable and hard to miss, but on reaction it can still be difficult to use for a novice or the unprepared.
There is a minimap display on the upper right corner that shows you your and your teammates' positions as arrows. Enemies show up on the minimap as red dots if they fire or if a UAV has been deployed by your team. The minimap does not show you the levels of a building however, so if a sniper is on the second floor of a building, the minimap will only show them as being inside a building.
A staple mechanic in the Call of Duty franchise is the kill streak bonus. You have deployable weapons that are unlocked for use if you gain enough points without dying. These points are awarded by assists, kills, and plays toward the objective. You are able to call in missile strikes, send out explosive drones, or provide intelligence on enemy positions by deploying UAV's once you have enough points for them. You also have a special weapon available after a certain amount of kills. This weapon can be changed out in the loadout, same with your kill streak bonuses.
The battle royale mode is a bit different in terms of control. While all the buttons are generally the same, you can sprint automatically if you drag your movement finger far enough from the virtual joystick. Aiming down your sights works in almost the same way as the original game modes, as does throwing your grenades, but you have an additional skill. This mode has a total of seven classes available to choose from at the time of writing, one of which is unlocked once the account has levelled up sufficiently. Each class has an active skill that provides either an offensive or defensive boost to the player character and the team, such as a deployable shield, a healing field, or a tracking device. As there is a class skill available, kill streak abilities are not available in the battle royale mode.
Other buttons in the battle royale mode include following or proposing to be jump leader, loot menu buttons, and the type chat. In this mode, being the jump leader in a team means that the rest of your team will follow you where you land, but team members are not obligated to follow. They can choose to stop following at any time by tapping a button on the left side of the screen. Looting has two different buttons: one for chests and one for items in the open. You can choose to hide the drops from those on the ground and only show those from an opened chest, or vice versa.
All of these buttons and their layout on screen of the heads-up display are customizable. You can choose how big, how opaque, and how far apart they are from each other in the settings. Also available are sensitivity sliders for both the battle royale and main game mode. Aiming down sights, abbreviated to ADS in this game, can be customized as well to by limited to certain weapons, or to be activated in a certain manner. Instead of holding down the fire button to aim down the sights, you can choose to double-tap the button, for example. The battle royale mode lets you choose between third-person view or first-person as well.
Gameplay
There are two modes in Call of Duty Mobile: classic and battle royale. The classic mode features several game types: Team deathmatch, domination, hard point, search and destroy, and free-for-all. Team deathmatch is the classic, team-based "kill everyone that moves" mode, with the free-for-all mode taking that line seriously. First to get to a designated number of points wins. Hard point and domination are capture point game types, where teams fight over designated areas on the map. Domination has three designated points, while hard point is a singular area that rotates to different places on the map.
All of these game types keep you in on the action, but sometimes a little too well. The spawn points can be a bit weird in this game. I have not been playing Call of Duty for an extended time, but perhaps this is one of the things the franchise is known for. Specifically in free-for-all, I've spawned many times right next to another player. As the countdown to the start of the round went closer to zero, we both looked at each other, no doubt aiming for the immediate kill. Sometimes in deathmatch games, I would spawn right in behind an enemy if I'm lucky. I would spawn in front of an enemy if I'm unlucky, but thankfully there would be a five second invincibility period when you spawn. The invincibility, combined with changing spawn locations, helps prevent any real spawn traps.
Experienced players with the Call of Duty franchise will know the layout of these maps well. In the first week of release, many players already had their set routes and strategies laid out. This is because all of the maps featured in play are from the Modern Warfare and Black Ops titles. Newcomers to the franchise shouldn't be too far out of the loop, though, as the design is intuitive for most of the featured maps. Killhouse and Hijacked are the most straightforward maps, while the most complicated are probably Crash and Takeoff.
The battle royale mode is much like any other. Find a place to land, get some weapons, and try to be the last man or team standing. There is a lot of action in the beginning, depending on where you land, then a lot of nothing as you try to stay out of the dead zone, and ending on a huge spike in action as you become the remaining top ten players or so. There are some unique points with this game though, such as the Cerberus boss. This particular hell dog guards a chest in the middle of a field on the map, and the chest rewards you with some good items. Fighting him has the potential to attract other players, so the loot is definitely high risk. The class skills also provide a lot of strategy. There have been a few times where a scout drone saved my team, and a few times zombies have sealed my fate.
The different guns all naturally have different play strategies. It's more apparent in the classic game mods, but range is a big part of the game. SMG's are horrible from afar, while sniper rifles are fairly terrible short range. I felt that in the classic modes, the shotguns were difficult to use efficiently. Often I would find myself outgunned by SMG's and assault rifles, and out ranged by almost every other weapon. As a result, it looks as if Call of Duty Mobile suffers from a weapon imbalance that is common in shooting games.
Bullet penetration is also a thing to be considered with the weapons. There are attachments that increase this statistic, and I have made kills (and have been killed) many times thanks to bullet penetration. It seems that most surfaces can be penetrated, as I have been killed behind a concrete wall that looked to be a foot thick.
Content
Call of Duty Mobile may just have the most complete game I have experienced on mobile. There are a lot of gameplay and aesthetic aspects to unlock. Weapon attachments come with using the different weapons in the classic mode. These attachments modify the properties of the weapon by changing its range or damage, among other aspects. Simply playing the game modes earns you levels for your account, which unlocks alternate loadout slots, more weapons, and sometimes new modes.
The aesthetics are mostly unlocked through the battle pass system. This system seems to have been set as precedent by PUBG for all battle royale games. Essentially, there are in-game goals for you to fulfill, and completing those goals rewards you with points that go toward unlocking items. Of course, this is still a mobile game, so micro-transactions are a natural part of the game. The developers implemented additional rewards if you purchase the season pass, which is, again, a precedent set by PUBG.
During the first week of release, there were already a lot of events that handed out aesthetic and weapon rewards. From the current rate of events occurring, it's fairly reasonable to assume that events will be a consistent part of Call of Duty Mobile.
With all of the content, it makes a lot of sense that the initial download would take up just over 1Gb of memory. This is a fairly standard size, but it is all downloaded at the same time. Older games that I have played have downloaded the base game at a third of its size, then downloaded the rest of the game through the installed app. While this point is neither positive or negative, it may affect the decision to download the game or not.
Final Thoughts
Call of Duty Mobile comes in at a solid 4.5 out of 5 in my books.
The game is the most complete and replayable game I've played in a long time on mobile, and the rewards system that PUBG had inspired keeps the game fresh. The controls are surprisingly smooth and easy to use, even for a mobile game, and the high customizability of the controls makes the game more accessible to a wide range of players. The only real detractors to this game are its technology limitations, as lower mid-range phones will somewhat struggle in the more demanding scenarios in-game. Minor issues include the spawns being in occasionally unfortunate locations and the imbalance between weapons common in many shooters.
If you're in the mood for a new mobile game and you have enough space for it, do try out Call of Duty Mobile! As always, thanks for reading!