Call of Duty dropped everything it was doing in an attempt to reinvent the wheel (albeit a bit late) and it seems like people are concluding Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone share some similarities with playground shouting on the internet of who is doing what better. So, who is?
The recently released Call of Duty: Warzone aims to match Fortnite in its Battle Royale mode that came out this Tuesday for public beta. A full catchup from our Call of Duty article here will bring you up to speed, but today, we're looking at the similarities and differences both these giants have. The thesis here should then be what similarities do both Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone share while discussing what new things (If any) the latest game brings to the metaphorical table we're going to be eating at (not before using hand sanitizer thank you) and could it overtake Fortnite in the future.
A battle of Royale games
Now that I've titillated your taste-buds in wanting to compare these two rather gigantic game titles, let's discuss what Call of Duty is not. The game isn't the freshest thing to hit the block, it isn't attempting anything incredible and is not attempting to rival Fortnite in any capacity, but it is offering an alternative Battle Royale experience for Call of Duty players. The base game, as you'd expect, is a reinvention of the Battle Royale classic but with more Call of Duty. The game even has cross-play experience sharing for owners of previous CoD titles to go alongside this additional mode.
CoD "Late to the party" Warzone has everything we've seen from a Battle Royale game. One huge map, large player pools with 150 players and a squad of 3, a circle that gets smaller with a wall of death slowly closing in on you. The game even has a last-person-standing contest to see who can survive and get that epic victory royal- wrong game. You begin to see the similarities and differences it shares with Fortnite, right?
Fortnite is a game published by Epic Games that centers it's entire being around the Battle Royale mode and not having a long-standing history of a single-player mode at its core like CoD has (or doesn't I'm looking at you previous Call of Duty titles) and prides itself on rather intense building strategies, traps, and fortifications that can potentially give you the edge within your game which significantly has a better pace than Warzone and seems clear it cannot match this pace Fortnite ultimately has set.
What are the similarities?
Both naturally follow the same formulaic primary game-play loop. You drop out of a plane or bus (depending on your drug of choice) in both games presented here, even down to various places having names on the map. Where Call of Duty deviates from Fortnite is its squad of 3 you team up with as you drop much like in Apex Legends before the game starts. From the descent to your way to the ground, things are pretty much the same. You can do the same callouts as you can in Fortnite if voice chat isn't your cup of tea. Both games contain battle passes and seasonal passes with different amounts of offerings, unlockables and more, in-line with many games of today, not just Battle Royales.
How you gear up and what you find around the map is the same as Fortnite even down to its different rarities that are indicated with the corresponding colors. Call of Duty has a body armor feature that gives you extra armor, making you less likely to die within thirty seconds of play-time. This shares a somewhat like Fortnite's Chug Jug (which restores health and your shield) but Call of Duty still opted for this natural health regeneration over time which does feel like you have more of a fighting chance.
What's new with Call of Duty: Warzone?
Call of Duty's features a rather unique approach to dying in a Battle Royale mode. Within Fortnite, once you're down, you're out. However, what CoD has done here is introduce a way to reenter the game so not all is lost which can be incredibly stressful, especially when playing a game like Fortnite. This new feature dubbed "Gulag" and is the biggest change the game introduces.
Once you die in Warzone, you're taken to a literal gulag where you enter a queuing system to fight someone else who has died 1v1 style. Once ready, you enter with a strict loadout with one life. If you win and kill your opponent, you're brought back into the game. Die and you're dead for good, being taken into the well-known spectator mode we've all seen during our many games of playing Fortnite placing 85th.
But I digress, this exciting addition is something that is going to shake up the Battle Royale genre entirely. After play-testing this extensively it does make you want to try harder, play more and feel like you've been gifted another chance from the gods above to redeem yourself. The aforementioned Gulag addition creates more second chances than you get in Fortnite and with Fortnite in contention for being quite stale at the moment, it would not surprise me to see Epic Games make an addition like this somewhere in the future.
Will Call of Duty: Warzone beat Fortnite?
The answer to this asked question is no it will not. Will Warzone attract a new audience from a wide range of Battle Royale games? of course, it will. This addition certainly shakes things up with its Gulag feature, but what Warzone lacks is the pace of a Battle Royale which Fortnite has a lot of. This new market exposure that Call of Duty has will be a test to see how well things go later on down the line but really this is just another Battle Royale... With more Call of Duty. And Fortnite is, you know, that one video game you've heard about from the TV.
And thus concludes this little mini-thesis and, much like a mini-thesis, the question is rather open to interpretation. Head on over to our EarlyGame Facebook and let us know what you think of this new addition to the Battle Royale mode.
Call of Duty: Warzone is free to download and we suggest you old-timer Call of Duty players give it a go!
