APRIL 2020 PCWorld 31the entire game without
seeing another player.
In Call of Duty:
Warzone, loot is
abundant from the
get-go. A single two-
story building might
have three or four guns
inside, which facilitates
those early-game
skirmishes. It felt like I
was always in the
action, no matter where I landed. Warzone
also lets players buy their custom loadouts
instead of relying on random loot, which is a
neat addition, and looting is just as intuitive as
it was in Blackout. No digging through menus
to drop a single bandage. Grab what you
want and leave the rest. It’s easy.
And since, at its heart, this is Call of Duty,
the guns are a joy to use in close- to mid-
range shootouts, the beating heart of
Warzone. The (enormous) map is basically
cobbled together from a dozen existing Call
of Duty levels with some filler areas.
“Terminal” is here, as are “Scrapyard” and
“Broadcast.” On the one hand it makes the
map feel less like a real Russian city and more
like a cartoon as you stumble from setpiece to
setpiece. On the other, these are legendary
levels with excellent competitive flow. Every
individual section feels like a miniature Call of
Duty match, with a handful of people trying to
get an angle on each other as the circle
shrinks and the killstreaks get more intense.
You can play long-range sniper battles if
you’d like, but that’s not really what Warzone
is geared around.
It takes some getting used to, moving
from zone to zone without getting picked off.
I’ve come to love it though. The environments
have a lot more character than your average
battle royale, and if you’re already good at
Call of Duty’s traditional multiplayer then
many of those skills map onto Warzone as well.
And when you do die, Warzone throws
you into probably my favorite battle royale
respawn mechanic so far: The Gulag.
You go to prison. You die, and then you
awake in a dimly lit cell, looking down on the
Gulag Showers map—itself a recreation of a
scene from the original Modern Warfare 2
campaign (which itself is an homage to The
Rock). When it’s your turn, you’re teleported
into the showers with a random gun, then
forced to fight the other player one-on-one in