How to Play Call of Duty

Call of Duty Academy: 103

Call of Duty Basics

It’s easy to play any Call of Duty game you want. Most of the games are still available for sale digitally or on a disk version for older games. Warzone, Call of Duty’s newest battle royale game mode, is completely free to play and is available for download on all consoles and PC.

The game is relatively simple to play in essence. The goal of the game in any mode is to kill the enemy and try to remain alive as long as possible. In Multiplayer, they have respawn game modes such as Team Deathmatch and Domination where you are placed on a team with others and compete against an enemy team to reach a certain amount of points based on the objective of the game mode. All the while, you try to kill the opposing players while staying alive.

Battle Royale

In the Battle Royale, you deploy into a massive map that is highly detailed with 150 other players. The goal of the Battle Royale game mode is to be the last person standing, outlasting everyone else in the game. You deploy into the mode with a pistol in your hands and must upgrade your weapons and armor with what you find around the map.

The zone closes and you must move as the safe area gets smaller and smaller, forcing people to fight. If you die, you have a chance to respawn after going into a 1v1 duel with another player who perished. The player who wins the duel gets a second chance to win the game, while the other person is eliminated. This continues until a certain point until there are only a few standing, and the fight to the last one standing ensues.

Warzone is one of the most popular games in the entire world at the moment with an active player base of over 50 million players worldwide, and someone you know is most likely addicted to playing the game. To get the game, you can either purchase Modern Warfare or download Warzone separately on a digital game store.

The mechanics of the game are relatively simple. When controlling your player, you can walk, run, or sprint, and you can fire your weapon while walking or sprinting. You are more accurate when you are not moving so quickly moving to a spot then stopping to shoot is a recommended method. Another mechanic of the game is sliding. You can slide with your player by holding the crouch button while sprinting. This will allow your player to move quickly and reach cover quickly. Sliding is faster than running, and most pros slide most of the time as their form of travel within the game.

Multiplayer

Now that you know how the mechanics of the game work, we can hop into an actual game. Each Call of Duty title’s Multiplayer game mode works in the same way. It pairs players from around the world to play in various game modes so that they compete against one another. They have traditional game modes, modes for competitive players, and even casual modes that are meant to be fun and nonchalant. Most lobbies in Multiplayer host 8 to 16 people, and most lobbies hold 12 players.

The 12 players compete on teams or individually against one another in whatever game mode they are playing. They attempt to kill each other with the weapons in the game, as well as complete the objective of the game mode if the objective Is not to get kills. Guns are the main component of every Call of Duty. Aiming straight and having awareness of where the enemy is coming from are the two most important parts of Call of Duty. If you know where the enemy is going to be and you can aim well, you will win most of your gun battles, and ultimately succeed in the game.

Game Modes

For people that are new to Call of Duty, Team Deathmatch is the easiest game mode to learn the game. There are preset classes for players with guns that you cannot customize until you reach level 5 online. Once you reach level 5, you are able to make a custom class for multiplayer and play with any weapon you want if you have it unlocked. You unlock more weapons as you level up, giving you more options for weapons and utility as you play. The goal of Team Deathmatch is to kill the players on the other team while staying alive and avoiding being killed by the other team. Team Deathmatch is an easy game mode to learn the game because you simply race the other team to a certain amount of kills, usually 75 or 100, and the first team to reach that mark wins. Every kill that your team gets during the game counts as a point, and a death counts for the other team.

Domination and Hardpoint are two other respawn game modes in Multiplayer that are very popular and are featured in competitive Call of Duty. Domination is a game mode where there three points that can be captured by either team, A, B, and C. One team spawns at A and the other at C, and compete to capture B as well as control the other teams base. Each team gets a point for the number of spots they hold every 10 seconds until you reach 200 total. While competing for the objective, you must maintain control of the map to have an advantage over the other team and kill them so they retreat away from the middle of the map.

Hardpoint is a game mode where the spawns of each team change rapidly. The goal of Hardpoint is to control a certain area of the map for a minute at a time and keep the enemy off of that area. For every second you control the area and keep the other team off, you get a point. The first team to 250 points wins. All the while, you need to try to move around to keep control of spawns near the hardpoint and kill the other team so they are away from the Hardpoint.

Another popular game mode in Call of Duty is Search & Destroy. This is unlike the other game modes mentioned because there are no respawns in the round. It is 5v5 like the other game modes, and one team tries to plant a bomb on one of two bomb sites, and the opposing team tries to prevent the bomb plant, by killing the members of the attacking team. It alternates every round between attacking and defending for each team. The game is the best of 11 rounds, and the first team to win 6 rounds wins the entire game.

Tips and Tricks

Every Call of Duty game has different movement mechanics, weapons, and maps that make that game special. However, there are certain parts of Call of Duty games that remain consistent across titles. For example, the minimap. The minimap is a small picture of the map and the different places where you can and cannot go on the map. It sits in the upper left-hand corner of the screen and is a guide to the player on where they are on the map. The minimap shows where your teammates are on the map as well as where enemy gunfire is at. It gives you information about the match at hand and having a constant awareness of the minimap is crucial to success.

Another feature of Multiplayer in Call of Duty is Killstreaks. No matter what game mode you play, you can earn certain rewards for killing a certain number of enemies in a row. There are low-level killstreaks that can be used once that assist you and your team to kill the enemy. For example, in Call of Duty’s latest game, Modern Warfare, a person can earn a UAV after killing 4 enemies. A UAV is an aircraft that reveals the location of the enemy every 3 seconds on the minimap, making it easier to find your opponent. A UAV lasts for 45 seconds and gives your team an advantage for that time.

There are stronger rewards for longer killstreaks, such as the VTOL Jet in Modern Warfare. To get the VTOL Jet, you must kill 8 enemies without dying, which can be a tall task. However if you can get 8 kills and get the VTOL, you are guaranteed to get lots of kills. The VTOL bombards the enemy from the sky with missiles and machine-gun fire, making it practically impossible for the other team to survive. The killstreak lasts for a minute, but it feels like an eternity when it happens against you. Killstreaks have been a part of every Call of Duty game, and continue to change from game to game.

Most people say that aim is the most important skill in Call of Duty. But I would argue that positioning and map awareness are equally as important. Having any advantage possible in every gunfight is crucial, and if you can put yourself in an advantageous position of the map, you can kill your opponent 9 times out of 10. Power positions are important and Call of Duty as well as knowing how to counter them if the enemy posts up as well.

Reacting to how the other team is playing is crucial as well. If the other team is aggressive, then a passive approach playing in a power position can work. If the other team is playing slowly and passively, then flanking and playing deceptively can work. You have to know where you are at on the map at all times and how the other team can kill you, so you can try to counter it to the best of your ability.

Now that you know how the game works, I encourage you to buy the game or download Warzone and see for yourself why Call of Duty is one of the most popular games in the world. Chances are, one of your friends who you play with has the game as well. So you do not have to play alone.