M1 Irons = Nightmare Fuel

It’s been a long time coming, but with the release of the M1 Irons on the PS4, my long time love affair with Call of Duty Advanced Warfare has come to an end. Just yesterday Sledgehammer Games released the M1 Irons to the public as free DLC available from random supply drops. That sounds all great except that the M1 Irons is the most powerful weapon I’ve ever seen in any Call of Duty game.

I love playing competitive anything, especially when it comes to first person shooters, and you arguably don’t get any more competitive than Call of Duty, so when the word “balancing” of weapons get’s thrown around, I tend to cringe a little inside. I like a little discrepancy between weapons, and I think Call of Duty Advance Warfare had that down pretty well. Besides the obvious powerful weapons like the HBR3 Insanity, Bal-27 Obsidian, ASM1 Speakeasy, and the Tack-19 Sledgehammer, you could essentially throw in most weapon types into a loadout and be fairly successful. Well not anymore, in just the short amount of time after the release of the M1 Irons it became unbearably clear what the new god of Advance Warfare was, and its name is M1 Irons.

For those of you that remember the incredibly annoying Marathon Pro/Lightweight Pro with tactical knife class of Modern Warfare 2, imagine that now 10 fold with a quick and nimble, stupid accurate, and devastatingly deadly revolver. A fucking revolver more powerful than a shotgun waiting for you to rip the souls of those so unwilling to give them away.

If you don’t believe me there’s popping up showing the M1 Irons unrelenting power. My wife could feel my frustration, or more truthfully hear my frustration stemming from the weapons use. She calmly asked why I didn’t just join the M1 Iron Army and try to get and use the weapon, which I quickly and angrily sputtered out some nonsense about playing and winning with honor or some bullshit like that.

Honestly though, Sledgehammer games has created a long and slippery slope that in my opinion has killed Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. I’ve retired the game for now, which was met by a cake and streamers from my wife who had been impatiently waiting for me to utter those words. But seriously, Advanced Warfare was fun and competitive when it wasn’t entire teams running around with different loadout variations of one weapon, the M1 Irons. I played over a dozen matches and was appalled by its blatant power abuse.

Sledgehammer Games needs to wake up, and maybe rethink the M1 Irons. Something needs to be done, maybe lose some damage, maybe less accuracy, because what’s happening right now, not only is it not working, it’s just not fun as a player or maybe even more importantly, a spectator.