Oh, and we’re off into the hot zone, and with a hot phone. There’s snow on the ground in Verdansk, but after five minutes of playing the mobile version of Call of Duty Warzone this morning, my aging iPhone 11 was getting pleasantly warm. Warzone’s a beast on phones, actually: even before the game began, there was a battle royale of sorts as I deleted apps to free up space. Then the download. Then the various EULAs and all that jazz.
But it’s a beast where it counts, too. This is Warzone on phones, and I think it’s probably a pretty decent version of that concept. You can automate plenty of actions and resize elements of the HUD, and within a few seconds after loading up, I was into my tutorial missions, settling into ‘left thumb to move and right to aim’ and choosing between auto-fire, which kicks in politely once you’re hovering over a target, and manual fire. (I chose auto because I’m old, and it’s fine if a bit leisurely when it comes to starting to shoot. I suspect the pros will all opt for manual.) Mess around with the buttons for aim-down-sight, jumping, and crouching, and then I was off into the AO.
Graphically it’s pretty good! I don’t really see COD as a game where the finer details of the environment truly matter; it’s more important that things move at a clip, as Warzone on mobiles does. The draw distance is generous and, while I had worried about visibility issues with spotting enemies on the horizon on such a small screen, I’ve been fine so far, even with my 45-year-old eyes. The whole thing’s as battery hungry as you’d expect, but it also does a good job of feeling like proper Warzone. The launch pages are a muddle of Battle Passes (the Pass costs 1100 CP, incidentally, which, with a current 10 percent bonus in the shop, translates to £8.39), event notices and flash sales, and the main mode offers 120 players – although given the number of people I’ve actually been able to kill so far, I suspect there are quite a few bots knocking about.
