Finally, Activision has gathered enough resources to chase the Battle Royale trend, after two years of domination by PUBG and Fortnite. Call of Duty: Warzone launched yesterday, as both a standalone title and a connecting game mode for owners of Call of Duty games. The game would be connected to all future Call of Duty games, with resources unlocked from the single-player campaign usable in Warzone and vice versa.
To distinguish themselves from the other Battle Royale titles in the market, Activision has gathered various unique gameplay mechanics from competitors like PUBG, Apex Legends and Fortnite then put in some twists. Besides the bigger map and the 50% higher player count, the biggest change is probably how teammates are revived.
This concept originally was from Apex Legends – after its success, more and more battle royale games have been trying to do their own take on the format. Warzone doubled down on that – there is more than one way for players to revive their fallen comrades in this game. However, the Gulag is probably the most interesting one.
When a player is killed for the first time in a match, instead of sitting still to wait for teammates to revive, they would be thrown into the Gulag. This is a small confined map in which fallen players are paired up against another for a shootout. The player who won the fight would get instantly revived and teleport on top of their squad’s location. The loser would die for real unless their teammates are able to trigger some other revive method.
This is actually a pretty funny addition to the battle royale genre, as it gives dead players a way to revive by themselves instead of having to rely on the team. Reviving teammates is pretty troublesome in Apex or Fortnite, as the dead player would have to wait for their teammates to carry them to a respawn spot (which can take quite a while, depend on the location). The team can also encounter other squads in the process, which leads to an even longer respawn time. If the Gulag isn't there, due to the squad-based nature of the game, a player could get stuck inside it for a long time without anything to do.
With Gulag’s introduction, you can pretty much play with two lives as long as you can beat the other guy in a 1v1 battle. This is actually a brilliant move on the developers’ part, as with fast respawn, the high pace of the game would be retained while keeping the battle royale aspect intact. Eliminated players, instead of having to sit around and wait until the next round, could take the action into their own hands and revive themselves.
This only applies to the first death, however. You would be killed for real in the second time, as this mechanics is not to cover for players who are getting killed repeatedly. Interested in more of our articles related to Call of Duty Warzone? Please check out this post for information on how to download the game.
Warzone is a free game. It is currently available on PC, Xbox One and PS4.