By Chase Wilson ‘17

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was released at midnight on November 4 with more than 300,000 pre-orders. Available for the Xbox 360, Xbox one, PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4, this is the eleventh installment in the Call of Duty (CoD) franchise. The developing studio, Sledgehammer, stated that one of the most difficult things they had to consider in the months leading up to the release was trying to keep the fans interested with new and fresh content from the game. Sledgehammer succeeded, releasing snippets of content every couple of months along with pre-order incentives for the game that gave fans a taste of what could be in the game, such as the gold exo-suit with a per-order edition of the game.

The storyline follows a soldier, Jack Mitchell, who begins as a private for the United States military but joins up with Atlas, a private military corporation, after he loses his arm and his childhood best friend in an explosion while fighting in Seoul, Korea against the KVA, an unidentified terrorist organization. The president of the corporation, Jonathan Irons, slowly turns into the antagonist of the game through a few unexpected twists. The big, new enhancement to the game is the introduction of the “exo-suit,” a specially designed suit which gives the wearer more maneuverability than ever before. The exo-suit is a huge improvement to the game and enhances the player’s strength and adds a boost ability which makes the player able to jump higher and dash away from threats in battle. New maps are always a big factor in a game, and Advanced Warfare has a perfect blend of smaller to medium sized maps with one or two long ranged maps. Overall, the game blends the older installments ingenuity with new graphics, engines and technology.

The release of Far Cry 4 surpassed its expectations with what I believe is enough potential to win the Shooter of the Year award of 2014, just as Far Cry 3 did in 2013. The game is out on PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. The game has many of the same mechanics as its predecessor, but the graphics surpass those of any of the other games I have seen on the next-gen consoles. Also, there is a new feature called “auto drive” which makes the vehicle the player is driving follow the road by itself, giving the player the ability to accurately aim out of the side of the car.

The campaign starts off with Ajay Ghale, our main character, trying to fulfill his mother’s dying wish: for her ashes to be spread across Lakshwana, a mysterious temple in the northern part of Kyrat. Upon entering Kyrat, the bus Ajay is riding in is promptly attacked by Pagan Min, the psychotic ruler of Kyrat, and his troops, and then saved by a resistance force called “The Golden Path.” Ajay’s deceased parents started the resistance force.

Throughout the game, the player finds him/herself in the middle of the Kyrati civil war, which is based on Nepal’s Revolution, torn between focusing on helping the rebels in their revolution or on spreading Ajay’s mother’s ashes. The variety of decisions a player must make throughout the game contributes to the depth of immersion one feels when playing the game, which rockets the game past all other competitors.