Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Advanced Warfare is faster and more focused than any Call of Duty before it.

Sledgehammer Games lays the groundwork for more futuristic Call of Duty games with a comprehensive multiplayer experience and a faulty but stimulating campaign.

Advanced Warfare isn't the game to answer those questions. Much like the soldiers that populate its fiction, what strengths it has come from the technology bolted to the surface while what's inside looks more fragile and vulnerable than ever.

The campaign is predictable, dumb fun, and the multiplayer is some of Call of Duty's best—but still subject to every existing criticism of CoD.

Advanced Warfare shows what the series needed most was risk

Multiplayer feels wonderfully fresh, thanks to the added agility of Exo Suit boosting. Sadly, though, co-op is unimaginative, and the story fails to satisfy when compared to previous installments.

A traditional, well-executed string of bombastic set pieces in single-player give way to excellent and varied multiplayer modes that capitalize on the tried-and-true franchise gameplay while adding significant changes in the form of mobility and enhanced customization

Activision would have us believe that the latest title in the series is a bold re-imagining. It's not, but it's still blistering entertainment

As sensory entertainment, "Advanced Warfare" is about as pleasant as licking a battery for eight hours while a crowd of angry men surround you and chant your name. As a parable about the dangers of corporatizing the military in the 21st Century, it feels like a massive failure.

Witnessing Advanced Warfare in its gamesuit made from chopped-up pieces of better games, it's easy to picture the series as a Pinocchio aching to be a real boy, but the sympathy you feel in light of its efforts does little to quell your instinct to escape.