Screenshot: Call of Duty: Warzone
Call of Duty: Warzone is Infinity Ward’s take on the ever-popular battle royale genre. It’s free on all platforms, and for you PlayStation 4 users out there, it doesn’t even require you have a PS+ subscription in order to play (unfortunately for players on Xbox One, you will require an Xbox Live Gold subscription in order to play). Enough about that, here are seven things you should know about
Call of Duty: Warzone.
No Health Kits
Unlike many battle royale games, where damage is permanent until you use some form of healing item, there is automatic health regeneration in Warzone. There are a couple huge benefits to this: It speeds up the pace of the game tremendously. No need to spend ten-plus seconds healing yourself, no having to skulk around the edge of the map hoping to find a healing item. For those of you who prefer the slower, more measured gameplay of other battle royales this may be a turn off, but I definitely see this as a positive. In addition, this also means that you won’t be desperate for a gun only to find yourself stuck with five health kits, which also aids in speeding up the pace of the game.
Weapon Tiers
In
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Blackout battle royale mode, weapon attachments were found separately from weapons, requiring you to find and equip them. This has been replaced in
Warzone with weapon tiers, somewhat similarly to games like
Fortnite and
Apex: Legends. The lowest tier of weapons will have no attachments, and the higher a weapon’s tier, the greater number of attachments a weapon will be found with.
Screenshot: Call of Duty: Warzone
The Gulag
When you die for the first time in
Warzone, you’ll be sent to the Gulag as a POW. Here you’ll be pitted against another player in a fight to the death. Whoever wins gets to respawn. As you wait for your turn in the pit, you can watch from the sidelines and even throw rocks at the current participants which, while causing no damage, will momentarily shake their screen, giving their opponent a brief advantage. There is a catch: the Gulag is only available once. If you die, fight and win in the Gulag, you can respawn, but die again, and that’s it. Unless your teammates pay to respawn you, you’re permanently out for the rest of the round.
Cash
Cash can be collected around the game map, from dead players, as well as from Contracts, discussed next. So what do you do with your hard-earned cash? You can spend it at Buy Stations to buy kill streaks, Loadout Drops, a gas mask, armor plates, and even, for a large amount of cash, buy a respawn for teammate who has died.
Screenshot: Call of Duty: Warzone
Contracts
Contracts are objectives you can acquire by collecting tablets strewn about the map, which when completed will reward you with a large amount of cash. These objectives include capturing an area while an enemy squad is nearby, eliminating a particular enemy squad (who will be given a notification that they’re being hunted) or having you loot special supply drops.
Loadout Drops
Call of Duty is well known for the amount of customization given to players when creating their weapon and perk loadouts in multiplayer, and Loadout Drops allow you to bring your own into
Warzone. In the
Warzone pre-game lobby you can customize your loadouts just as you do in regular
Call of Duty multiplayer, however you can’t access these from the beginning of the match; you spawn into
Warzone with only a pistol. The only way to equip your loadouts is with Loadout Drops, and there are a couple of ways you can acquire these: first, two Loadout Drops will drop randomly during the duration of a match, one near the beginning and another near the end. Alternatively, you can purchase a Loadout Drop with cash from a Buy Station, which you can then have airdropped to your position by throwing a smoke grenade. However, this is a bit risky, as any nearby enemy squads will know your position.
Screenshot: Call of Duty: Warzone
Kill Streaks
Kill streaks are synonymous with Call of Duty, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been added to
Call of Duty: Warzone. Kill streaks can be acquired in two ways: you can find them in the game world, although they are probably one of rarest, if not the rarest loot drops in the game, to balance out their power. Your second option is to pay a hefty sum at a Buy Station. Some of the kill streaks available in Warzone include the Shield Turret, Precision Airstrike, and Cluster Strike, among others. In addition to their large price tag, each player can only carry one kill streaks in their inventory at one time, preventing you from hoarding several kill streaks until the final moments of the game and then letting them loose in quick succession.
If you've got any tips or tricks of your own to share, or just want to tell us what you think of
Call of Duty: Warzone, leave a note in the comments.
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