It seems like you’d want to build up hype for a brand new Call of Duty game instead of having it just show up on the App Store, but that surprise is exactly what Activision went for. Seemingly out of the blue, Call of Duty: Strike Team is a console-quality title that fluidly combines first-person and third-person tactical shooting. It’s been designed for mobile devices from the ground up, and it shows — everything looks and feels surprisingly good.

Strike Team expands on the Strike Force missions from Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Players are responsible for guiding a squad of four soldiers through a series of missions that span the globe. The squad can be outfitted with armor, grenades, claymores, health kits, perks, and guns. While most of the equipment is shared across the squad, each member can use a different gun. In-game, players can freely switch between first-person control of any squadmate or a drone that provides a bird’s-eye view of the action.

From the drone’s view, players can pan, zoom, and rotate around the map to get a better view of everything, including building layouts, enemy patrols, and the vision cones of security cameras. Even cooler, you can fully direct your soldiers from the drone view. Soldiers can be commanded to walk, run, take cover, shoot hostiles, take hostiles down silently (melee), hide bodies, hack computers, disable alarms, open doors, and so much more. It ends up feeling very much like XCOM in real-time. Players can command any number of soldiers at a time, so advancing all four at once isn’t a hassle at all — they will smartly spread out and take as much cover as possible in the locations you send them to.

One of my favorite features is that every mission can be completed entirely in first-person view or entirely in the drone view. You really do have that much control of the action. It can be a fun challenge to complete a mission one way or the other, but the real magic comes from swapping between the different views on the fly. Let’s say you’re in control of one of your soldiers who has a machine gun and you take out a couple of nearby enemies. You want to hide the bodies to avoid alerting other guards, but you have to make sure the coast is clear first. You pop into the drone view, verify there aren’t any other nearby enemies, and then direct two soldiers to stuff the enemy bodies into a nearby dumpster. You then pan the camera to your objective and take note of any enemies along the way. You notice a sniper guarding your objective from a distance, so you pop back into first-person mode, this time as your sniper, and take out the enemy sniper. All kinds of situations like this pop up. It should also be noted that you can instantly swap between two soldiers without having to enter drone view in-between.

The level of polish on this game is top-notch. I guess it’s not so surprising coming from Activision, but it’s still worth calling out. The level design, character design, graphics, sound effects, voice acting, and cutscenes are all fantastic and deserving of the overused “console quality” description. There’s an entertaining story about the US finding themselves at war with an unknown enemy in the year 2020 after a surprise attack. It is the task of your Joint Special Operations Team to take out the people behind the attack. It’s not really anything you haven’t experienced in another Call of Duty game, but the cinematics and voice acting make it engaging and provide some context for each mission.

Like all first-person shooters, the game has its trouble with touch controls. The controls themselves aren’t terrible, with virtual joysticks controlling movement and aiming and virtual buttons for firing and other various tasks like crouching, reloading, and changing to drone view. It seems the team behind the game was fully aware of the woes of first-person shooting with a touchscreen, as there are several features that alleviate any major frustration. First of all, little buttons on either side of the screen instantly snap your crosshairs to the nearest enemy body in that direction. Moving enemies will quickly clear your crosshairs and it won’t reliably set up headshots, but the instant snap avoids spinning in frantic circles to find the guy who’s firing at you and gives you a great starting point to manually adjust your aim from. Optional gesture and gyro controls can be enabled independently and don’t interfere with each other or the default controls. The gesture controls are all two-finger combinations that let you instantly crouch, stand, switch between soldiers, and switch between first-person view and drone view. The gyro controls let you aim with tap-and-drag as well as tilting. They take a little while to adjust to (and most players should adjust the sensitivity), but the gyro controls are great for making small adjustments (such as aiming from a torso to a head) or for allowing you to run, aim, and fire at the same time without awkwardly touching your screen with three fingers. Finally, the controls in the drone view are absolutely delightful with a touch interface. Performing any action (including kills) and running around is as easy as tapping, double-tapping, and tapping-and-dragging.

The game is quite expansive, with a lot of levels spread all over the globe. Each level has a slew of medals to earn for various achievements such as beating the level in a certain time, with a certain accuracy, or with a certain number of headshots. Headshots and accuracy are only counted while in first-person view. While you could get any medal in first-person view, many of them are made much easier with extensive use of drone view. For instance, being able to control all four squad members simultaneously and having a clear view of the whole map makes drone view ideal for fast completion times. I suspect that replaying levels for medals and experience will provide many tens of hours of gameplay. Beyond the campaign, Survival maps pit players against increasingly difficult waves of enemies for experience, medals, and leaderboard rankings. Soldiers go it alone in Survival: you get no squadmates nor drone for an aerial view.

The game uses an experience system that’s very similar to the other modern Call of Duty games. Leveling up awards some in-game currency (Tokens) and unlocks various perks and guns. Once a player has reached level 10, missions can be attempted in the much more difficult Veteran Mode to gain access to Veteran Medals. Players also have the ability to “Prestige” once they hit the max level. Doing so will reset their level to 1 (unlocked maps, perks, and guns remain unlocked), but Prestiged players get a special icon next to their name to signify their accomplishment. If players take to Strike Team at all like they do other Call of Duty games, there are certain to be some players that Prestige over and over again.

The IAP system is fairly innocuous. Players can purchase bundles of Tokens (the same currency that is earned by leveling up, completing the campaign, signing into your Call of Duty account, completing every third wave in Survival, and playing the game on consecutive days). Tokens can be used to purchase permanent upgrades such as armor improvements or increased storages for consumable items (grenades, claymores, and health kits). Tokens can also be used to buy more consumables and unlock perks and guns early. The game is very generous with both experience and Tokens though, and players who enjoy playing should easily be able to get by without any additional purchases if they so choose. There are four “Care Package” bundles that can be purchased with Tokens that each contain a perk, some consumables, and a gun. These perks and guns are exclusive to the Care Packages, but every other perk and gun can be earned through leveling up only.

My problems with Strike Team are few and far between, but I’m sure they will cause major hold-ups for some players. The most obvious problem some players might have is the lack of multiplayer. Competition between players is limited to high scores on the leaderboards, which I can see posing a problem to the players who loyally buy each annual Call of Duty title for more of the series’ multiplayer goodness. I personally don’t have a huge problem with the lack of multiplayer, as a lack of connection issues means the game can be trusted to run smoothly despite its excellent graphics. The only other problem is that there is no way to save your progress in the middle of the mission. Players using the oldest of the supported devices (iPhone 4S and iPad 2) might encounter occasional crashes which will mean starting a mission over from the beginning. It’s also a problem for mobile gaming. If you need to put your device to sleep for a 10 minute break or even answer a phone call, there’s no guarantee that Strike Team is going to remain running in the background.

Let me say it straight up as somebody who generally doesn’t like dealing with first-person shooters and touch controls at the same time: this is an awesome game. The strategy isn’t quite as deep as an XCOM or Breach & Clear, but its real-time nature makes it unique enough to justify the purchase. There’s nothing else on the App Store quite like Strike Team. There’s a lot of high quality content and strategy in this package. Playing Strike Team in either the first-person view or drone view is a lot fun and the first-person experience is fairly true to modern Call of Duty games. The skillful switching between various soldiers and the overhead drone is just such a blast — I’m really surprised at how much I’m enjoying my experience with a real-time tactics game. If you’re a fan of Call of Duty, first-person shooters on iOS, or tactical games, I can’t recommend this game highly enough. Sure, it doesn’t have the enormous replay value that multiplayer would add, but the high production values and length of the single-player campaign are more than enough to justify the premium price.

Download from iTunes App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/call-of-duty-strike-team/id655619282?mt=8