Call of Duty: Warzone

Call of Duty: Warzone arrived in March 2020 as a separately downloadable free-to-play battle royale built on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare technology. Up to 150 players competed on the sprawling map Verdansk, with the possibility of returning to the match thanks to the Gulag system, where defeated players fought for a second chance in one-on-one duels before being permanently eliminated from the match. Besides the classic battle royale, Warzone also offered the Plunder mode focused on collecting in-game currency across the map without permanent elimination of the player upon death. The game was available for free even to players who didn't own the full Modern Warfare, thanks to which it quickly became one of the most-played online titles of its time and brought to the Call of Duty series an audience that previously hadn't bought the main entries.

The game system was built around an elaborate weapon loadout system, which players could have delivered to the battlefield by parachute after unlocking them with in-game currency earned during the match, which set the game apart from other battle royale titles based purely on random loot finds.

On PlayStation 4, the game launched together with the Xbox One and PC versions as one shared launch, without platform exclusives in terms of content. The differences were mainly technical: on the base PS4 the game ran at a lower resolution and with a more limited frame rate than on the more powerful PS4 Pro, which offered a sharper image on large maps full of players. Warzone supported crossplay between PlayStation, Xbox, and PC from the start, so players across platforms could compete in the same matches. Later updates gradually expanded the game with new maps and mechanics, but the PS4 version remained a fully-fledged part of the unified Warzone ecosystem throughout, not a different or trimmed-down variant. Players on PS4 thus had access to the same content and the same game seasons as everyone else, just with the technical limits of that hardware.

Why play it: Thanks to crossplay support from the start, the PS4 version of Warzone works as an equal part of a unified battle royale ecosystem, even if on the base console at the cost of lower resolution compared to PS4 Pro.