Call of Duty: Ghosts

 

 

Ghosts has you playing as some supersoldier of some sort, in the sense that youre a part of this highly special ops task force capible of extreme feats. Not many people can become a 'ghost' and it has you undergoing typical military escapades, betrayals, and the like

The first thing I notice is that the weapons look pretty cool and all have good and satisfying animations. All the models are nice and you have a good variety of weapons you can pick off the ground. Some of them sound pretty chunky and have a good weight and feel to them.

Quickly throughout the campaign a reoccuring trend happens over and over. Its what I call these sort of gimmick levels and mechanics. Like for example early on in the campaign you're forced to play as a dog and do these odd stealth sections for awhile, then other parts in the campaign youre flying a very boring lazily done helicoptor, then other segments in the campaign you're controlling a drone lazily clicking on big red squares to blow them up...this sort of gimmicky mechanic/feature crops up on almost every single level and it just takes away from the experience. I come to the cod games for viseral boots on ground shooting action, thats it. I dont need any of this other lazy half-assed attempts at doing something new, they all just feel like a shitty mobile game or something.

Entire levels can be based around these awkward gimmicks, like in the middle of the campaign you have an entire underwater swimming level where you engage in underwater combat with a single water gun and it doesnt really add to the experience it just takes away. Theres another level towards the end of the game in a similar fasion, except this time youre floating around in space. Another level where you're driving around in a tank and it feels so uninspired and shoe-horned in like I said it feels like a generic mobile game or something, whats the point? At least half of the campaign has these dull gimmick levels/features its not all that impressive. When the campaign does have you doing the standard boots on ground shooting combat, its decent, but honestly the lack of hitmarkers does make the combat a bit less satisfying and it never really feels like youre actually doing all that much, instead youre just following around NPC's waiting for them to trigger the next script. A level towards the end of the game you're on a train where the 'gimmick' is that the train is shaking so furiously that you can barely aim down your sights without flying all over the place. Sometimes I just want an entire campaign where I'm left by myself to do what I want to progress the objectives, to actually feel like I'm doing something, without constantly having to engage in all these worthless one-time event things. The pacing is pretty dull overall because of this. Its like they just ran out of ideas for interesting standard gameplay so they threw a bunch of 'innovative' things at the wall and see what sticks. I never liked much of that kind of stuff.

Another glaring flaw for me is the fact that the entire campaign it basically just feels on-rails. Theres not a single moment where you're left to your own devices to wander around by yourself and figure out what to do. In the first quarter of the game I was wondering "is there ever going to be a point where I'm not being bossed around to follow some NPC's script?" Unfortunately, that point never came. The entire campaign is hand-holding you following around an NPC. Being told what to do, what to shoot, where to move, the entire time! it barely feels like I'm even playing a video game, I'm just re-enacting a script. This has always been a crucial flaw for cod games but this one in particular is just egreiously hand-holding.

Besides that stuff what else is there to say? the story is not at all engaging, its generic military jargon campaign #9987, the characters and 'ghosts' stuff , the villian, as cookie cutter as it gets. Its not horrible or anything, its just not much to write about. Imagine any typical military plot and its this. I appreciate the fact that the game tried to do a bunch of different things, its not the first time cod does stuff like this, but in this campaign in particular so much of it is just following NPC's around, or doing these shitty gimmicky parts. The game is OK enough just for the shooting mechanics, short length, and tripple A budget action, but it's hard to call this one of the better cod games.
 

5/10