While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 takes the lead as one of the biggest commercial successes of 2022, its free-to-play Warzone 2.0 mode will soon be open to players. The opportunity for us to give you all the tips and tricks for a successful evening.
[Mis à jour le 15 novembre 2022 à 11h06] 800 million dollars in three short days, here is the extent of the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. A record launch which places it in pole position on the grid of the most profitable games of the franchise, and a hype which reaches back peaks on the public side. It is on this broth of success that Activision intends to rely to launch its new free-to-play Battle Royale, Warzone 2.0, a totally free standalone game which will also bring with it the long-awaited extraction shooter DMZ. We take stock of this event release just below.
If Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been available for several weeks, it will have to wait until Wednesday November 16 at 7 p.m. (French time) before playing Warzone 2.0. An outing not to be missed and which could be a nice challenge for Infinity Ward and the Battle.net application. Note that the game should weigh between 110 and 115 GB depending on your platform, a good reason to download it in advance given that it is already available for pre-download on PC, Xbox and Playstation.
Warzone 2.0 will for the first time be available on multiple platforms at the same time. If you will find it in free access on the Xbox Store and the Playstation Store, it is on PC that a great novelty comes to us, the game will be playable both on the traditional application of Activision Blizzard, Battle.net, but also on the immense inescapable Steam. A winning bet for Activision, which allows itself to distribute its free-to-play to as many people as possible, just like Apex Legends did a few years ago. You can find Warzone 2.0 on the app Battle. net at this addressand download Steam here.
With such substantial content, we suspected that Warzone 2.0 would be a very nice baby, but maybe not to this extent. The size of Warzone 2.0 was recently revealed by a small leak on social networks, the game is planned for 115 GB on Xbox Series, and more than 110 GB on PC and PS5. Enough to hurt the hard drive of your console, which must almost sacrifice a third of its total volume to accommodate the free-to-play of Infinity Ward and Activision. A good reason to consider buying an additional SSD for your next-gen console.
DMZ is the new experience included in Warzone 2.0 that just might change the face of Call of Duty. Very mysterious so far, this game mode comes in the form of an extraction shooter, transporting you to the heart of the city of Al Mazrah (Warzone 2.0) with the aim of completing objectives while keeping your squad in life. You can expect to come across ferocious AIs in your path or even a squad of enemy players. In short, a game mode a little more advanced than the traditional multiplayer of Call of Duty, and which we are impatiently waiting to see the November 16 at 7 p.m..
The Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 map is none other than Al Mazrah, a town in the Middle East destroyed by war and which will also host the DMZ mode. The addition of AI in the Battle Royale will create areas of interest with increased difficulty while its large size will provide the perfect playing field for vehicle and foot combat. According to our information, it could accommodate up to 200 players, although no official data has been published on the subject.
Warzone 2.0 will not be a graphic revolution compared to its predecessor, but it does intend to deepen certain elements of its gameplay. By bringing various innovations, particularly in terms of movement, weapon customization and gadgets, the game intends to stand out from its predecessor and offer players a complete Battle Royale experience, taking the best from its competitors and its previous iterations. . On top of that, Infinity Ward offers plenty of quality of life improvements, and still hasn’t mentioned the existence of an SBMM. To be continued.
New moves: the success of Apex Legends may have made Infinity Ward think about this, but the studio has chosen to integrate new movement possibilities into Warzone 2.0. Operators will be able to dive, hang on to a ledge, while pulling of course.
New Gadgets: a tactical camera, a wall-piercing charge, a decoy, an electromagnetic bomb… If you imagine it, Warzone 2.0 will have it. Infinity Ward did not hesitate to present us with some of the new gadgets that will punctuate the gameplay of its future Battle Royale, and we hope that there will be enough to compete with the eternal heart sensor.
New weapon customization: Modern Warfare 2 brings with it a new Gunsmith system, allowing more accessories to be added to their weapons.
Underwater combat: if a wet toe was fatal in Warzone, Warzone 2.0 intends to incorporate underwater combat into its formula. Operators will therefore be able to swim underwater at different depths, and even shoot. The ballistics of the bullets will of course be influenced by the resistance of the water.
Revamped vehicles: Vehicles are a huge part of Warzone, and Infinity Ward intends to capitalize on that. The studio claims to have improved the possibilities of interaction with vehicles, allowing the player to climb on the roof or shoot from a window. Tires can also be destroyed and repaired, and vehicle physics have been improved.
Proximity chat: the game will also integrate a proximity voice chat system, allowing you to happily spoof your enemies stashed on the first floor of a house before throwing them a bread of C4.
Multiple proximity circles: for the first time in the short history of Battle Royale, the circle of play will be able to be divided into several zones. Of course, these areas will come together at the very end of the game to determine a winning team.
Strongholds: some areas will be populated by aggressive AI, which will allow players who wish to risk their stealth or their lives to recover rarer loot.
Gulag: the Gulag, pillar of the Warzone experience, has been profoundly modified. It will now pit two teams of two players against each other in a fight to join their respective teams.
Of course, these different additions will allow Warzone 2.0 to offer us new “sandbox” moments. The new movement possibilities offer different options for approaching a fight, and give the player the feeling of freedom that made Warzone so successful in its early days. Between new gadgets, vehicle interactions, underwater combat, Warzone 2.0 could well find this little grain of madness and unexpectedness that served its predecessor so much. Failing to offer incredible graphic innovations (which is good news for older generation consoles and more modest PCs) Warzone 2.0 seems well on its way to reconquering the kingdom of Battle Royale.
Warzone is three years of success for as many different Call of Duty titles. Between Modern Warfare (2019), Cold War (2020) and Vanguard (2021) there is a huge technical difference, in particular due to the difference in the graphics engine. At the same time, Warzone had to adapt to the integration of the assets of these three games and their graphics engine, sometimes going through long periods of technical difficulties, and suffering from a discontinuity in terms of gameplay elements. It is true that combining modern warfare, the Cold War and Second World War, it can make the game confusing, technically and spiritually. However, the good news is that Warzone 2.0 and Modern Warfare 2 will share the same graphics engine, which will then be adapted to the next titles of the license.
New starting point
Who says new Warzone also says new starting point for all players. Infinity Ward has insisted that it wants to offer “innovative gameplay” to its players, an intention made possible by the new technical features of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Warzone 2.0 will therefore be strictly speaking a new Battle Royale, with a new progression system and more advanced gameplay than its predecessor. It will therefore not be able to integrate all the content of Warzone, which means a return to zero for everyone. Good news for neophytes, less good news for veterans who will no longer see the fruits of their relentless progress in the game over the past three years. From a Battle Royale perspective, a fresh start is pretty good. It’s hard not to consider the first months of a new title of this genre as the best of its existence, where skill-based matchmaking does not suffer too many balancing problems, and where the multitude of new players creates lobbies pleasant and balanced.
This is a question that remains legitimate, given the complexity of Call of Duty products, and their multiplicity. But like its predecessor, Warzone 2.0 will be entirely free. A free-to-play format that was particularly successful in Warzone first of the name, making for almost two years the most played Battle Royale of all time with 125 million active players per month. Since then, the game’s player base has shrunk by 60%, a fairly common phenomenon among Battle Royales after a few years of existence, due to sometimes very harsh matchmaking, and metas that are difficult to follow if you don’t. don’t have the right Call of Duty game to improve this or that weapon. And for Warzone 2.0, the format will remain the same, with standalone free-to-play tied to progression in the annual Call of Duty paid game, once again giving the advantage to players who own Modern Warfare 2 upon release.