My first Warzone victory was filled with highs and lows like I had never felt in any other battle royale game.

After winning several early battles at the TV station, we were all killed in an enemy ambush and sent to a camp. To our surprise, we all won one-on-one battles and were soon back in action. From there we hid in the shadows and gradually gathered funds to procure our favorite custom loadout. With a full set of attachments, my M4A1 killed 9 out of 20 total in the squad, and Call of Duty: Warzone quickly became my circle-shrinking murder fest, full of smart conveniences while referencing the best of the competition.

Much of the reason for this lies in Warzone's tolerance for looting. Nothing puts me off battle royale more than having to spend 20 minutes shuffling weapons, ammo, and attachments in and out of menus until I reach a meta-approved combat readiness level, and Warzone doesn't do that. There are no backpacks and hardly even an inventory screen.

Fully equipped in Warzone is as simple as finding a gun you like and an armor plate in case of an emergency. Weapons come preloaded with attachments. Common weapons have none, while rare guns have special attachments set up. This simplicity allows you to spend more time playing instead of staring at the ground and playing dress-up with optics and grips. The drastically reduced weight of looting has completely changed the way I think during play. In fact, Warzone's loot cap can be reached in minutes by dropping a custom loadout with all the bells and whistles. [Instead, you can focus on the showpiece of Modern Warfare: gunfights. I haven't played much of the 64-player ground combat mode, so it was fun to see how well Modern Warfare's ballistic model adapts to large areas. Up close, bullets fly fast enough that you can feel the immediate feedback of the hitscan. A few dozen meters or more away, you have to account for bullet drops and jolts; Warzone, a series that touts fragility and ultra-short time-to-kill, makes a nice distinction between CoD and Battlefield.

The gunfights feel closest to Apex Legends, but Call of Duty's high kill ratio suits my shooter tastes; in Apex, increasingly powerful body shields can consume entire magazines of ammunition, and Respawn's stepped armor system makes some situations feel one-sided.

Warzone is decidedly less complicated. Everyone has an armor plate that restores normal Call of Duty health and can absorb an additional health bar's worth of damage. There is no super rare super armor, so the time to kill is always constant. Most of the time, they can be taken down with one or two headshots. By ditching the spongy armor of bullets, weapon damage and health are in harmony, setting it apart from the Apex. You die faster, but you also heal faster.

Warzone's quick deaths are offset by the ease of getting squadmates back into the fight. Not only can you buy respawns for your teammates at buy stations scattered around the map, but you can also regain lives by winning 1vs1 duels in the camps. Perhaps the closest thing to purgatory we've seen in a competitive game, the idea of the camps seems gimmicky at first, but sets the pace in the "Call of Duty" tradition.

The camp fights follow the same rules as Modern Warfare's excellent firefight mode, with loadouts mirrored at random. The emotional payoff of getting a second chance at a one-on-one duel in a confined space and a ticket back into the fray is irresistible. Gragg eases the frustration of almost dying early in other battle royales and encourages you to take more risks. Frequent respawns have kept a ridiculous number of players alive at the end of the match. This makes the final rounds explosive, but it is a little disappointing to finish 18th after surviving one of the final circles.

Of course, a battle royale game is only as good as its maps, and Warzone's first and only map is Verdansk, a huge valley of dense urban and industrial areas, easily accessible to all 150 players. One would expect such a huge map to be a hive of bushwhacking snipers, but Verdansk is so densely packed with buildings that most of the play will be at close or medium range. Instead of random snipers from miles away, most of the firefights played out like a regular Call of Duty match. I love it.

Warzone's loot curve is essentially a straight line, so almost anywhere on the map is a good starting point. Sure, you can jump into the Atlas Supermarket and scramble for the plentiful supplies, but roaming the peaceful eastern farmlands is the same luck; in Apex Legends, the team that skydives into the most dangerous zone at the perfect time and comes out with the best equipment will have the advantage. I enjoy the sightseeing that Warzone provides to relieve the pressure of looting.

Modern Warfare's snappy aiming and movement work well with city maps with lots of walls and windows; COD's athleticism shines on a larger scale, though not as aerial as Apex Legends' wall climbing and ziplining. Sprints and leaps are so smooth that it feels as if you are gliding a few feet off the ground. Even skydiving at the start of the games is more fun. Since everyone starts with a pistol, they can cut their parachutes, rig their guns, and fire them in the air to pull off some outrageous feats.

In a genre where you get your progress through the luck of the loot, Warzone wisely branches out with its in-game economy. The fastest way to earn money and reach the ideal loadout is to complete contracts. Contracts are randomly generated sub-activities that are shared by the entire squad for a large cash reward. There are three types of contracts, and they can be as simple as occupying an objective. There is no pressure to undertake them, but they are always fun enough to be worth participating in. Most importantly, it encourages players to keep moving instead of "turtling" around in buildings waiting for the enemy to come to them.

Warzone borrows a lot from standard Call of Duty to improve battle royale, but unfortunately jumps on one of its worst signature features, killstreaks. For a fairly low price, players can purchase killstreaks. Among them, UAVs stand out as the most vicious offenders, as they regularly ping the exact location of enemies in the city block. The only countermeasure is to equip your class with the Ghost perk. As in regular CoD multiplayer, it is not fun to be forced to choose between forgoing the more interesting perks in order to prevent your location from being transmitted to the world.

There are also Cluster Strike and Precision Air Strike killstreaks, both of which can wipe out an enemy squad completely if they are out of the way; they're good for YouTube, and I like the idea of driving a squad out from a high position, but the map area gets smaller But it gets too silly as the map area gets smaller and smaller.

When a Warzone match comes down to the last 5 squads in a small circle with no cover, everyone starts bombing the opposite corner in hopes of a lucky kill. Unfortunately, it works. The sheer power of the kill streak is a completely uninteresting addition to Warzone, as it has been in every Call of Duty game since 2007. More interesting are Warzone's field upgrades, which are also carried over from the regular Modern Warfare. The reason is that it is less powerful and requires more critical thinking, like the trophy system that blocks grenades, maneuverable recon drones, and ammunition crates.

Battle Royale feels like the main mode of the Warzone package, but there is also a completely different genre of mode available; Plunder takes place on the same Verdansk map, but there are no circles or camps and infinite free spawns. The only goal is to kill players, complete contracts, and make a lot of money. It could be compared to the raids in "Escape from Tarkov," but in reality it is closer to the PvP Dark Zone mode in "The Division.

Plunder is undeniably more casual than Battle Royale. While the premise is to make money, it can be treated as an aimless playground where you can practice shooting, level up your weapons, and run your ATV down a sick ramp. It's perfect as a chaser for tense rounds of battle royale.

Warzone has much to offer. By limiting the randomness of loot and simplifying inventory, it addresses two of my biggest issues with the battle royale genre; Warzone wants you to decide who wins not by armor level, but by smart positioning and tactful shooting skills. The only downside to Warzone's uncomplicated loot situation is that the meta may be too shallow to keep it interesting; Infinity Ward has been actively updating Modern Warfare since its release last year, so I expect Warzone to grow as an independent game and I expect it to continue to grow as an independent game.