Currently, a Halloween event is underway in Call of Duty: Warzone and MeinMMO author Maik Schneider has faced the horror. He claims he has never played such a cool event that ruins his matches.
What happens during the Halloween event? With “The Haunting of Verdansk” (“The Haunting of Verdansk”), the first really big live event went online in Call of Duty: Warzone. Whether in the multiplayer of Modern Warfare or in the battle royale – many elements of the shooter are currently fully geared towards horror and score points with Halloween flair.
I didn’t want to miss this with my squad, so we put our nerves to the test for many hours last week. And I find the event really fantastic. It offers:
- Cosmetics as rewards for a candy search
- Zombie-Royale, where the Gulag is swapped for zombification
- Different normal modes to play at night
- Jump scares that can hit you at any time
- Minor map adjustments
- Lobby & menu in Halloween style
All of this transforms the battle royale into a bad horror movie and can lead to a rather poor match. However, the experience is indeed something entirely different and offers the chance to play your own little horror film in first-person perspective.
Halloween Event: Haunting in Verdansk gets your pulse racing
There are quite a few things that Warzone currently has in common with a B-movie of the horror genre:
- Most participants don’t survive until the end
- Cheap jump scares lurk around every corner
- You split up completely unnecessarily
- Murderers can strike at any time and appear through licensed skins
Especially the nasty jump scares bring a variable into the matches that has caught me off guard a few times. If you open one of the loot crates in Warzone right now, you have the chance to get not only the loot but also a loud scream and an eerie image flicker. Each crate is thus a potential “scare” and turns the loot boxes into a small adventure.
Especially when you’re involved in a fight and want to quickly grab a crate while passing by. At that moment, I am so focused on my surroundings and my path that my brain memory discards the sneaky jump scare, allowing me to fully enjoy the shock. You don’t even have time to properly process the experience. A quick scream and off you go – a truly scary experience that has so far always led to laughter after a brief curse.
If you want to check out some wonderful scenes from streamers, take a look at the English YouTube video by “Battle Royale Guides”. Almost 20 minutes full of suffering, despair, and joy:
Why is the event ruining matches? The screams don’t ruin the matches. The rewards do. To obtain the cosmetics, you need to open crates in specific areas. With a bit of luck, you will then receive the regional item, and if you collect all 16, you will also get a Halloween skin of the strong assault rifle Grau 5.56.
This unfortunately leads to staying longer in one area than actually necessary. But also to the typical horror movie reflex, which causes the large and strong group to split into several small victim herds. If a team member wants to grab the cleaver in the “Prison,” it is hardly possible to grab the clock from the “Dam” that the teammate still needs. So you split up to quickly handle it – which of course never works so quickly and makes you easy victims like in horror films.
This disrupts the “flow” a bit and has caused us to ruin several matches. After a few rounds, we then said: “Enough collecting!” and refocused on victory. But you can’t completely get rid of it once you’re in the right area.
Warzone Event with a good balance of pressure and voluntariness
So what’s so great about it? Exactly how I wish for a successful live event:
- Crazy modes that loosen up the gameplay
- You don’t have to participate, but it affects players a bit (shocks from the crates)
- You can relatively easily grab many rewards
- The event also visually fits into the game (e.g., lobby adjustments, skins)
Not too intrusive, but with some adjustments, I want to be offered something different from the game in a rather short phase. And once the novel mechanics become annoying, they disappear again, and you hold a cool weapon skin in your hand that you have proudly earned.
A small drop of bitterness remains: Why only now? Warzone has been on the market for 7 months and is bringing such an event for the very first time. Otherwise, modes change regularly, and the summer games were briefly interesting, but real variety rarely comes. I would love to see more such actions.
It doesn’t have to be at the same rate as Fortnite, which brings surprises almost every week. But a little more often would be nice. Since you can already see the first Christmas assortments in supermarkets, the next event probably won’t take too long to arrive.
Whether MeinMMO colleague Eilyn Rapp will get anything for Christmas this year is still uncertain. Recently, she confessed that she constantly lies to her husband in Fortnite because she is a noob.
What do you think about the event in Warzone? Nice change or are the horror crates already getting on your nerves?
