A review of the just released Call of Duty WarzoneMobile
Published Date – 24 March 2024, 03:04 PM
Warzone on mobile? It’s a question I’ve long asked every time I’ve heard of the game’s development in the last two years, while scratching my head and wondering, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to just offer Verdansk as a new map drop in a new season of the battle royale mode in CoD Mobile?’
Three days on since the game’s launch, I don’t think I have an answer to that question. Why would a game maker develop a new game that would compete with its existing game and draw away the players? Or if Warzone Mobile was to be used to attract players who have stopped playing COD Mobile, why not just release the unique Verdansk map as part of a new season where the game resets to zero and use the money for a major marketing push? Fortnite has done it quite a few times, why shouldn’t CoD?
Warzone Mobile is good looking, recreating Verdansk in all its glory, and offers three unique battle royale modes, one of which allows you to play with 120 players. It offers players several ways to customize their approach to the game, with options to realign the location of the on-screen buttons and the choice between point and shoot auto-fire or a precise manual trigger.
I had little to no trouble getting my preferred screen arrangement from CoD Mobile as I was parachuted into Verdansk looking for my preferred drop point – the railway station.
However, that is where the game’s simplicity came to an end. I guess the game’s makers assume that most players have played Warzone and survived the Gulag because it doesn’t introduce any of these or the game’s unique mechanics to players.
There is neither atraining mode present nor a place to fine-tune your loadout which is baffling considering CoD Mobile shipped with these features on day 1 in 2019. The game’s introductory phase is limited to playing three to four battle royale games before it offers you its various modes and decides to aggressively push in-game purchases.
Warzone Mobile offers five other modes, of which 3 are smaller versions of battle royale called “mobile royale.” In some, you can play solo against 78 other players. There are also three modes called Rebirth Resurgence, Mosh Pit, and Shoot the Ship – modes where I actually ended up playing classic CoD modes like Team Deathmatch and Domination. While everything worked as it was supposed to, the experience felt like a new visual skin for COD Mobile.
In terms of gameplay, Verdansk looks quite good, and the gunplay is consistent. However, I decided to review the game not on my iPad but as most people would play it – on mobile and connected to mobile data. I found the experience lacked polish and optimization. My phone was too hot to hold after five minutes, the game continuously dropped frames, and the connection was erratic, to say the least. Even on 4G+ or 5G, my game would freeze, and the dreaded “connecting to server” screen would pop up.
Matchmaking was sub-par, delayed, and inaccurate, as the celebrated 120-player mode had more bots than humans. At times, I was playing with either really good players or absolute novices/bots, and I couldn’t help but feel that CoD Mobile was simply a much better offering.
There are several problems with Warzone Mobile and some of them seem to be the reason of neglect as most of the issues I have pointed out were also observed by others during the beta testing phase. I really don’t know if the makers want to address them, and I am not convinced this needed to be a standalone game.
Personally, I believe it might be best to leave this one be. After all, does your phone really need more reasons to overheat this summer?”
