Summary

• Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offers familiar gameplay but struggles to feel fresh.
• Gameplay on mobile works well despite some awkward controls.
• Warzone Mobile has technical issues like battery drain and greedy monetization.

Call of Duty ruined the FPS genre for other games. Call of Duty: Warzone took the franchise into the battle royal subgenre, and now Activision has revamped it for mobile devices with Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile tweaks the formula for Warzone as a whole, but some things remain the same. The player is dropped into a map and tasked with being the last person left alive, the safe area gradually dropping due to "poison gas". It's a gameplay structure that's served the subgenre well, but Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile has some other struggles that leave it feeling stale.

Battle Royale Once More

Not Pulling Up Trees

From a gameplay perspective, while Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile may not be the perfect way to play the game, it still works relatively well for a mobile title. The default mobile controls can feel a little awkward and imprecise, but given the limitations of mobile devices, it's surprisingly effective. After a little bit of time, the player will get used to the quirks of control and it will feel more natural.

Thankfully, players won't solely have to stick to one mode of control, either. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile provides Bluetooth controller , which is still by far the best way to play, and those who have a mobile compatible controller will be best served to choose this mode of play. However, there are options within touch screen control too, such as choosing between auto-shoot or manual shooting, giving players a little bit of control over how they play.

Those playing without a Bluetooth controller should spend a bit of time with both autoshoot and manual shooting, to get a feel for which one works more effectively for the player.

In of the moment-to-moment gameplay, there's not much more to say other than it's a Call of Duty battle royale. It's a solid enough gameplay loop and it suits Call of Duty's physics and more ponderous speed well, but there's only so far it can go. There are various gameplay modes, with the smaller lobby Resurgence model probably the most successful due to the breezy nature of play, but they generally stick to the same template.

Technical Challenges

Overcoming Some Launch Issues, But Others Remain

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile was notorious at launch for some problems with its matchmaking and other technical aspects, but thankfully a few days on, much of this has improved. It is still not perfect, and players may still face slow loads and waits for matchmaking here and there that runs against what would be ideal from a mobile game.

Aside from this, technically, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile works rather well. The graphics are a long way from the quality of a home console or PC version - in spite of some waxing lyrical about the visuals, it's understandably a downgrade from that, so manage expectations - it's good enough for a mobile release. Most importantly, things are fluid, avoiding the stuttering and ragged framerate that reportedly plagued the game at launch.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a decent enough mobile battle royale game for those looking to whittle away some time.

That said, players should be aware of a couple of major issues that remain with the title. Firstly, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a major drain on battery, so be mindful of this if looking to play something on the go and still have a device useful and charged for other things. It also can cause a bit of heating from the device, so players should be aware of this too. Both of these issues were noted on a standard Galaxy S23, so even a relatively recent device struggles with these issues.

War(zone) Is Hell

Greedy Monetization Ruins The Experience

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a decent enough mobile game, making pragmatic choices for its platform when required, but as can be the case with mobile titles, greed gets the better of gameplay. The title shoves microtransactions down the player's throat from the off, pointing the player towards the game store as often as it can for new skins and more, or to buy the title's in-game currency. These ploys to extract money from the player feel extremely seedy, and it's disappointing to see how this kind of monetization has been accepted.

In part, this model feels particularly insidious because of the way it taps into Call of Duty as a whole. The franchise has a surface veneer of being accessible to newcomers, but once players start getting into the depth of Call of Duty there has long been a level of inscrutability to it, in of game modes, structures, loadouts and more. Adding a predatory monetization model into this obfuscation just compounds this wider problem.

Some of the game's framework is very much focused on interconnectivity between different Warzone modes, so players can theoretically sync their Warzone experiences across different platforms. It would be interesting to see how popular this is, as it seems as though mobile players and home console or PC players would be separate demographics. This could be especially true given how much of a battery drain Warzone Mobile is, meaning it's not really a game to play out on the go and more something to play when lounging in bed or on the sofa.

Our Review Score & Final Thoughts

2/5

Overall, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is a decent enough mobile battle royale game for those looking to whittle away some time. Mildly clunky controls and matchmaking that falls a little on the slow side mean it's not the ideal FPS for mobile players, but it does its job well enough. However, a greedy monetization model once again remains a sour note, and players should be mindful of just what is being pushed at them.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile was played on Android for this review.