'Call of Duty: Warzone' is a serious contender to Fortnite's throne by

‘Call of Duty: Warzone’ is a serious contender to Fortnite’s throne –

Despite being pretty late to the party, Epic Games’ Fortnite has become the battle royale title to beat. The cartoon-like survival shooter helped the company earn a reported $1.8 billion in 2019, thanks to a mix of slick gameplay, unique building mechanics and tons of big-budget crossovers to get players from every age group to part with their (or their parents’) cash.

But with popularity comes competition. Fortnite may have dispatched early incumbents like DayZ, H1Z1, Rust and PUBG, but big name publishers have since joined the battle royale arena. Respawn, with the backing of its owner EA, surprise-launched Apex Legends just over year ago and quickly amassed more than 70 million players. But before that came Blackout, a last-player-standing mode that was released as part of Treyarch’s multiplayer-focused Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. While it had some initial buzz, the mode never took off quite like Fortnite and Apex Legends. There were a few reasons for this, but the most notable was that it wasn’t free-to-play.

Then, almost out of nowhere, developer Infinity Ward released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play battle royale. Unlike Blackout, Warzone is meant to stand alone from the main game and doesn’t require you to own Modern Warfare, the game it’s built on top of. It delivers the multiplayer experience Call of Duty players know and love, but plays out on an enormous map and with as many as 149 other people. It’s a lot, but somehow, it works.

This story was originally featured at https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/11/call-of-duty-warzone-impressions/