Call of Duty Mobile Review

After the success of games like Player Unknowns Battlegrounds Mobile and Fortnite Mobile, it seems that mobile ports of popular FPS franchises is the flavor of the month. And what a better franchise to port than Call of Duty. Here is my review of the recently launched Call of Duty Mobile.

Initial impressions

For those who have played PUBG Mobile, they should feel right at home with Call of Duty Mobile. As with PUBG, Call of Duty Mobile was developed by Tencent and TiMi, and you can clearly see Tencent’s fingerprint on the game. The menu, though visually spectacular, is crowded with a plethora of buttons. It is, quite frankly, somewhat confusing and slightly bewildering.

Call of Duty Mobile unfortunately has no single player content, but pushes the envelope in terms of multiplayer options. There is a full battle royale mode, multiplayer with a selection of different game modes and then a “Coming Soon” zombie survival mode.

The multiplayer modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Domination, Frontline and Hardpoint. Most of these can be played either casually or ranked. So there really is a lot of options to choose from, which is rather impressive.

The game also has a fully fledged leaderboard, tracking stats such as K/D ratio, win rate and kills per match. This is a great feature and will definitely fuel competitive play.

Game play

I haven’t been playing the game for long, but I have played quite a few team death match games. They are enjoyable and short, easily passing the poop test.

What is the poop test you ask? It is the test of whether or not you can play a game during a toilet break without your colleagues becoming suspicious or concerned. For us working folk, these short moments of freedom is some of the only gaming time we might have during the day, so being able to squeeze (see what I did there?) a game in during this time is a big positive.

The queues are short, and you don’t have to wait long for a match to start. The aiming options make the game-play fluent and easy, although I have seen some shots hit targets quite far away from the cross-hairs.

The actual game interface has 18 buttons on screen, making the interface clunky. Moving whilst changing weapons, throwing a grenade or crouching is quite difficult, and doing this on a display smaller than 5″ must be quite painful.

But, once you have embraced the fact that you are playing a fully fledged FPS on a phone, and accept the limitations associated with this, the game really does shine.

On my S10 the game runs smooth as silk. Now and again I experience a bit of lag on my WiFi at home (thank you Telkom), but these are few and far between. The graphics are amazing, and the maps are beautifully rendered. Again, very impressive considering you’re playing this on a cell phone.

Battle Royale

The Battle Royale borrows heavily from other games. As the player you can select a class. Each class has a specific ability much like Apex Legends. And, as with Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode, there are random zombies on the map. I’m not really sure how zombies fit into the Battle Royale, but they do make things interesting. One of the other big differentiators are the boss fights. Across the map there are flares that signal an airdrop with high-level kit. The only problem is that these drops are guarded by bosses such as a zombie Cerberus. These bosses are nasty and quite hard to kill, so I would suggest not attempting it on your own.

I haven’t played much of the Battle Royale, but so far I found it very enjoyable. More enjoyable than the other mobile competitors. The class selection is a great addition, and the zombies, though a bit weird, does add some extra flavor to the experience.

I can’t however shake the feeling that many of my opponents are bots…

Customization

In Call of Duty Mobile you can customize almost everything. From what your character wears, to the color of your guns. Why you would need a bright green “Zombie Gene” rifle and matching backpack in a war-like environment is beyond me, but I suppose some people would be into it.

Though I do not particularly like the heavy emphasis on cosmetics, I do enjoy the upgradeable weapons. As you use a certain weapon, you gain experience with that weapon that unlocks upgrades. These include extended mags, better scopes, silencers etc. This, along with other bits of your “Loadout” allows you to tailor make a “Loadout” that is suited to your specific style of play. It also makes me play with all the weapons, even if it is just to unlock its upgrades.

Free to play?

The biggest issue with the game is the curse of our time. Micro transactions. The game is riddled with them. You get bombarded with advertisements for special offers from the moment you open the game. You can buy skins for your weapons, for your avatar, you can buy weapons and upgrades for them and so on and so forth. I for one do not care for brightly colored weapons or amusing victory dances. I prefer a clean game with minimal cosmetics. So for me all of this is more of a irritation than a reason to spend money.

It also worries me that you can buy some of the weapons if you do not want to grind levels to get them. This could cause the game to become somewhat “pay-to-win” where you can be matched with players of the same level, but who have much better kit than you. But admittedly, it seems that you should be able to get everything you need without spending a dime. And let’s be honest, even the most lethal weapon is useless in the hands of a player that can’t use it, so skill will definitely contribute more than great weapons.

Final Verdict

The game really is fun. It is in my opinion the best multiplayer FPS/Battle Royale game out there at the moment, and well worth a play. It has more to offer than its competitors, and I believe it will keep me intrigued for quite some time. The fact that you can play a quick game during a break is great. The game, despite of the clunky interfaces, looks great, and is well polished.

My only big gripe with the game is the micro transactions. But let’s be honest, in today’s day and age we are not going to get away from loot boxes and micro transactions, so I might as well make peace with it. When all is said and done, Call of Duty Mobile has made the list of games that I auto install on all my devices, easily knocking PUBG from the list.

You can download the game here for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.activision.callofduty.shooter

And here for iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/call-of-duty-mobile/id1287282214