Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, grappling with the latest batch of DLC

Call of Duty is no longer the all-consuming online monster of its Modern Warfare heyday, but Advanced Warfare is still pulling in a decent crowd on Live. The Ascendance pack brings a new way of navigating its four extra maps.

Dropping into the grapple playlist replaces the regular exo abilities with a Just Cause-style grap gun, which is an even faster method of travel than the now-familiar double jump and dash. You can grapple and stick to pretty much anything, and a fast cooldown means it’s effectively the primary mode of transport.

Naturally the first thing many did was explore the limits of the level geometry, and in the first few days you’d find people ziplining across the underside of the playing area, untouchable. Such exploits were patched quickly, along with a glitch that made anyone in a goliath mech suit become an invincible death machine.

The grap gun is now effectively the primary mode of transport

The new maps are a mixed bag. Site 244 looks impressive a crashed spacecraft beneath Mount Rushmore but is quite linear and riddled with choke points. The circular playing area of climate gives it a nice flow for objective-based modes, while chop Shop is disappointingly generic. Perplex, though, is where it’s at. This bright, clean map provides excellent verticality, for optimal use of the grap gun as well as the regular exo abilities, and is one of the best levels in the entire game. Plus, for the truly dedicated, there’s the second part of the exo zombies story, with a boss battle against a zombie mech. This is not your grandad’s Call of Duty.