It hasn't been the most well kept secret, but it looks like all the rumors of a new Call of Duty Battle Royale game have come true. Infinity Ward released their take on the genre today with Warzone. The game is largely intertwined with this year's annual Call of Duty title, Modern Warfare. Despite the fact that it's an extension of Modern Warfare, the battle royale component is standalone and completely free-to-play. Players who have Modern Warfare will have access through the game, but those without it can download the battle royale launcher separately.
So far, Warzone seems to carved out its own style of the genre. The lobby size is 150 players, and the game modes are currently restricted exclusively to 3 man squads. The game also has an economy system which allows players to collect cash and buy items, such as armor, killstreaks, or even respawning teammates. One of the games most interesting mechanics is the gulag system. If you die for the first time during a match, you're taken to a Gulag prison where you are pitted against another eliminated player in the lobby in a one vs one matchup. If you win, you get to respawn alongside your teammates. Lose, and you'll be forced to spectate unless your teammates can scrounge up the cash to bring you back.
Overall, it's hard to say whether Warzone will be able to get a foothold in an already exhausted genre. It seems to borrow pretty heavily from other iterations of battle royale, which isn't unusual. In fact, it's often not a bad idea to take some of the better implementations and bring them together to make something that feels good. For instance, I'd say that Warzone's armor system is most similar to Battlefield's Firestorm mode, while it seems to absorb some of the respawning and pinging systems that Apex Legends introduced on its release. Reusing these mechanics isn't inherently bad, and Warzone does a good job of pairing it with some really unique systems that make it feel like it has its own soul.
