Call of Duty’s new Battle Royale mode, Warzone, launches today!

Call of Duty’s new game will function as a standalone release for Modern Warfare, will be free-to-play for everyone who doesn’t already own the latest shoot ’em title, and does not require the base game to access. Basically, if you want to try out Modern Warfare but don’t have the cash lying around, Warzone is for you.

We all knew it was coming, right? Living in the year 2020 it’s honestly baffling that a battle royale mode wasn’t added to Modern Warfare sooner. But given how much effort has clearly gone into Warzone it makes sense why Warzone is only launching months after the original game released. Beyond the more obvious tweaks to the Call of Duty formula, the developers are clearly doing their best to place Warzone above and beyond their competitors.

While a lot of information had already been leaked, Activision has now gone ahead and confirmed all the details regarding this latest release. Warzone will feature two different game modes, ‘battle royale’ and ‘plunder’. Battle royale is exactly what you think it is, loads of players fighting in an arena which gradually grows smaller and smaller. Plunder is a little more interesting, with players having to fight one another and complete objectives to earn money with the highest earner winning the match.

Warzone will also feature vehicles, both land and air-based, and introduces a new system known as the Gulag. If you’re killed during a match, you’ll have an opportunity to fight for your return to the game with a 1v1 deathmatch in a dank-looking gulag. If you win against your opponent, you’ll be thrown back into Warzone except this time you won’t have any second chances. You’ll have to wait your turn to get back to the action, but you can kill time by throwing rocks at the players busy fighting it out in the showers. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon?

Warzone is also compatible with cross-play, meaning that you can play with friends on any platform, something that is becoming somewhat of an industry standard. The same is true for Modern Warfare‘s base game multiplayer but it’s still good to see that Activision is continuing the trend of establishing an interlinked community.

Call of Duty: Warzone launches today at 18:00 CAT and will be a 20GB download for people who already have Modern Warfare installed. If you don’t have the base game on your hard drive, you’re looking at around a 100GB download. Yikes. Have fun playing the game whenever you finish clearing out space on your device.