Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’

With Infinity Ward back in the driver seat for this year’s Call of Duty title, hopes are high that innovation and changes were abound for the better with Call of Duty: Ghosts. After Treyarch’s success with Black Ops 2, with its branching story path, new gameplay mechanic and complete overhaul of how we play multiplayer in this series, Infinity Ward decides to ignore those refreshing changes does an overhaul of their own. These changes, however, might be too drastic for most.

What we expect from an Infinity Ward single-player campaign is a lot of explosions, grandeur set pieces with extravagant action that keeps the dopamine drip going all the way to the end. Call of Duty: Ghosts tries to step out of this expected role but falls back on some of these traits from the past.

The story starts off strong with how fast things escalate from a campfire story about super soldiers called ‘Ghosts’ spun by a father with his two sons listening intently, to all hell breaking loose within the first ten minutes. A weaponized satellite has been hijacked by The Federation and its payload of destructive missiles are released upon North America before soldiers can destroy the satellite in space. The story jumps to ten years later, when you see the two sons acclimated to the soldier life, protecting the wall surrounding what is left of North America from The Federation. The further you get into the story, the more things become less clear as to what, or why things are happening, making it hard to care about the characters involved.

Not enough was done to build an environment past the family hook to really make the story stand out. Everything felt slower with progression in each chapter of the campaign in Call of Duty: Ghosts. The core feeling of a Call of Duty title was here, though being so acclimated to the non-stop action in previous titles was a big change for me. You’re supposed to be these mythical Ghost soldiers that put fear into all that oppose you. Instead, the firefights that break out at every encounter have that distinct action from the Modern Warfare and Black Ops series. If I am to be this feared entity, stalking the shadows and defeating all in my wake, why doesn’t the gameplay match this?

Another thing that was off in the campaign of Call of Duty: Ghosts was Riley, the faithful dog to the two brothers. All the marketing done to get people hyped up to have a dog companion was for naught. After a brief stint having Riley by your side as well as playing as him, Riley is nowhere at your side until near the end of the story. So much for man’s best friend. With how enjoyable it was to be in the paws of Riley, running down enemy soldiers as they scream for their lives, it would have been nice to see more of this throughout the campaign.

Having played both the Xbox 360 and PC version, I can say that whatever system you decide to play Call of Duty Ghosts on, you’ll be happy with how great the game looks. Although you can see the game engine showing its age, it has at least aged well. I don’t think Infinity Ward or Treyarch can squeeze any more from this engine, so I hope in the future a new engine is utilized. Of course on PC you will see sharper images, better shadows and lighting, as well as more particle effects than the current-gen consoles.

Sadly, what you will also get on PC is a buggy experience. Cutscene audio dropping in and out, screen tearing with vsync on or off and frame rate drops are some of the issues that plague me as I played in single-player and multiplayer. Although there is a list of things found by the community that will fix these issues, some are reporting that they’re still having trouble with Call of Duty: Ghosts. Since Infinity Ward is usually quick with the patches, we can only hope that a fix is released quickly.

Multiplayer has some drastic changes that seem to go backwards from the direction Call of Duty was headed. Gone are COD TV, CODcasting, theater mode, party games mode and league play. That is a lot of features stripped out for Call of Duty: Ghosts. Also missing are Hardpoint and HQ modes in the public playlists. League play is replaced with Clan vs Clan mode in which you can create or join a clan and take them to battle against others to climb the leaderboards. Whereas league play let individuals play in a more competitive environment with certain rulesets, Clan vs Clan is team only. I loved jumping into league play to see just how good I was against other competitive players. With that now gone from Ghosts, I am not sure how to recreate that sense of accomplishment when getting to the top of your division.

The Pick 10 create-a-class system that let players create their class however they wanted within a ten point limit was really satisfying in Black Ops 2. In Call of Duty: Ghosts, that system is used with perks only. Everything is unlocked by using Squad points, which are earned by leveling up as well as completing objectives like ‘run five miles with the marathon perk’ equipped. Having all the weapons and equipment unlocked are ready to go as long as you have enough squad points to purchase them makes getting your favorite loadouts easier and earlier. It’s odd for Infinity Ward to not included perks into this, though. You can spend squad points on every perk but you also have to meet the level requirement to equip them. Just seems like an odd thing to gate behind level progression.

The rotation of maps in Call of Duty: Ghosts seem larger than any other Call of Duty game to date. Most of the time, I would run aimlessly around the maps looking for someone to shoot. At times, it took a good two minutes before I would see an opposing player. I can see this being ok with higher team sizes but 6 vs 6 is too small of a player count to make for enjoyable play at times. Spawn points are also a pain with recently killed players spawning right behind you and gunning you down in the back almost every time. One could easily exploit this to their advantage and camp in one spot as the same people run right into your gunfire.

If you would rather play against bots, Squads mode is for you. I can’t see too many people taking advantage of this mode since you have to spend points that could be used for weapon loadouts to unlock new squad members. Each squad member levels up individually, yet the squad points are universal so a lot of valuable points will be used if you want level up a whole squad and equip them. Others will play against your squad when you’re away, but I can’t see the point in any of this. Besides leveling up your squad when you’re not playing, this seems like a wasted opportunity that hopefully can become something more in future Call of Duty games.

Extinction is Infinity Ward’s answer to Treyarch’s zombies mode but never really feels different enough to be fun enough to play more than once. Replacing zombies with aliens feels just out of place enough that I wonder why even have this at all. Both Treyarch and Infinity Ward could break these modes off into a separate, downloadable game and it would be much better off.

Call of Duty: Ghosts feels like a franchise trying to reboot but by stripping away everything that over the years made Call of Duty better might be too drastic of a move for most. Taking away the things people love about the franchise instead of innovating on them is a bold and risky move. Although the core of what Call of Duty remains intact and fun can still be had, the expectations for the future are going to be extremely high. Let’s hope the pressure is not too much for them.

Score: 3/5