While I’m impatiently waiting for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to come out later this month, I decided to fire up the recently released Call of Duty Mobile. I’m not usually one to dabble in mobile gaming, but I was waiting for my brother to wrap up a doctor’s appointment.
I’m not the only one to give Call of Duty Mobile a try on the go. Activision touted first week numbers for the free-to-play, mobile take on its most popular franchise. 35 million downloads across iOS and Android and it sits at the top #1 app ranking on iOS in more than 100 countries. So yeah, it’s pretty popular.
Rob Kostich, Activision’s president, was understandably thrilled. “This is an incredibly fun experience, and we’re only getting started. Congratulations to the teams at Activision and at our partner Tencent’s TiMi Studios for making such a great game for players. And special thanks to our fans for their continued support. There is a ton more to look forward to as we release more content and updates.”
When I loaded it up this morning, I was hit with instant nostalgia as the Crash map loaded up. I’m pretty sure I was matched up against bots, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t have fun calling in an airstrike on my phone. Mobile developers definitely know how to get you having fun right off the bat.
Controls are the standard fare if you’ve played PUBG or Fortnite on your phone. It’s about as good as you can get with touch controls.
Be prepared to be inundated with prompts about the store and battle pass in your first 20 minutes. Yep, it’s a mobile game. But the microtransactions didn’t seem too crazy. Just the usual cosmetics and a Battle Pass with more cosmetics. It could always be worse on this platform.
I ended up playing it for 30 minutes and would have played it longer, but my brother’s doctor appointment wrapped up. It’ll never replace regular Call of Duty, but I could see myself blowing 10-20 minutes here and there.
I was surprised by how good Call of Duty Mobile looked. Crash took me right back to the Xbox 360 days with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It’s missing some graphical bell and whistles, but it looked good enough for me to lean over and show it to my brother.
35 million downloads might seem like a big number, and it is. But take PUBG Mobile. Back in June, it was revealed the mobile version of the popular BR game reached over 400 million downloads with 50 million active daily players. 35 million is nowhere near the ceiling for Call of Duty mobile. We’ll see how it stacks up against PUBG Mobile and Fortnite in the coming months.