Let me start this review by saying I don’t hate Call of Duty, I’ve played every game in the series since its inception on the PC, it was a LAN party staple among my group of friends for years and although my interest in the multiplayer has tapered off over time I still find myself putting in a bit of time when a new one comes out every year. I guess the fact that I felt like I needed to write that clarifying statement probably tells you where we’re going here.
I think most people would agree that Call of Duty 4 was the apex of the series. Infinity Ward was in tip-top shape and they made a game that blended a really exciting campaign with some of the most addictive multiplayer imaginable. Meanwhile off-year developer, Treyarch hadn’t quite figured out how to replicate Infinity Ward’s success. Over time Infinity Ward has almost completely changed staff and now the two almost have a complete reversal where the Treyarch games are the winners and the IW titles are the disappointments barely pushed out with the aid of two other studios that are just shadows of their former glorious selves (Raven and Neversoft for the curious).
Ghosts puts you in the shoes of young Logan Walker, who, along with his brother Hesh, is enjoying a nice long story from their papa Elias in the middle of a San Diego forest when they’re suddenly interrupted by a mysterious blast from space that almost completely levels the city. The culprit? A collection of South American countries that have formed a coalition known as The Federation. As Logan and his family quickly learn, the Federation has overtaken a weaponized satellite known as ODIN and is using it to aid their USA-destroying aspirations. But good news, that story about a hyper elite para military organization of secret soldiers that daddy Elias was rambling on about moments before the blast? Turns out he’s one of them, and the Walker brothers get to be ones too! Pop a Mountain Dew open kids, it’s time to save the world.
The storyline to Ghosts is maybe just a touch more over the top than Modern Warfare 2/3. The Black Ops series has probably gone further off the rails but they always seem to do it with a little wink and a smile. Here Ghosts is playing it totally straight faced and it’s pretty tough to take it seriously. Logan and Hesh have next to no introduction and so it feels extra weird when, out of nowhere, they become ninja-like super soldiers.
The best story beats are attached to the primary villain, an ex-Ghost named Rorke who, after being left behind on a mission, was tortured and eventually turned to the Federation’s side. Rorke has history with the team and that implied history is as close to character development as most of your compatriots will get. There’s probably an interesting “Homeland-esque” revenge tale in here somewhere but for the most part its too busy being wrapped up in nonsense. For every good thing attached to Rorke there’s a counter-intuitive super villain-esque element like a floating island fortress or a particularly cheesy exploding plane sequence nearly lifted play by play from The Dark Knight Rises.
Here’s a picture of me “uploading the virus”.
Visually Call of Duty: Ghosts looks on par with the previous entries in the series. Textures may have been upgraded but there’s nothing mind blowing to see here. I played the game on Playstation 4 and despite waiting through a number of patches I still experienced a surprising amount of performance problems. This is probably symptomatic of the game being developed for so many different platforms simultaneously but it’s still disappointing to see a game that doesn’t even look that good struggle to run on your new hardware.
The gameplay is passable but at the end of the day it’s just Call of Duty. The nature of the Ghosts team means there’s a lot more stealth and recon based missions but for the most part it just feels like you’re playing “All Ghillied Up” from Modern Warfare over and over again. There’s even a sequence where you sneak past enemies walking inches from you in tall grass. The entire game feels derivative of its predecessors, and when they do have something new to show you its clear that they didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.
When Ghosts was originally announced there was a lot of emphasis on your canine companion, Riley. Despite all the hype Call of Duty: Ghosts is actually fairly dog-free. Riley appears in a couple missions early on and then isn’t seen again until near the end of the game where he shows up for no particular reason. For the most part you play the game as Logan but occasionally you’ll zip out of his body either to float around in space or to pilot a helicopter. When I was feeling particularly dog-deprived I liked to imagine that it was Riley raining hellfire down from on high in his Apache.
But Riley is just another in a long list of features Ghosts likes to show you but never really utilize. In one mission you’re given a strobe light on the tip of your gun, have fun dispatching the two enemies you use it on before its never seen again. In a later (and my favorite) mission of the game you’re cut off from your team and given a heartbeat monitor to stealth your way through an enemy littered jungle. Enjoy it while it lasts because you’ll never see that monitor again.
Don’t worry though, Riley isn’t the only terribly underutilized / underdeveloped character in the game. The actual members of the Ghost squad blend together so nicely I’ll bet you’d have a hard time naming them after you complete the game. For the most part they’re all just forgettable burly white guys with varying degrees of facial hair. I suppose one of them is black but he also only appears in a single mission in the game. Oh and one of them is old, can’t forget that…
As the horror genre has proved time and time again there’s only so many places that sequel entropy can take us. Call of Duty: Ghosts blows its location load completely by letting us shoot bad guys in both space and under the sea. It’s a shame the game is so clearly set up to be the entry point in a new trilogy because now we literally have nowhere else to go. A volcano perhaps?
Pictured here are your squadmates, Merrick, Hesh, and Keegan. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
“But Jared,” you say, “Call of Duty isn’t about the campaign, some people never even play it. Everyone knows that it’s all about the multiplayer.” Well multiplayer fans are probably going to be a little bummed out too. Nothing presented in Ghosts is an improvement over the formula laid out in Black Ops II. The beloved Pick 10 perks system has been mutated into a less intuitive version and the new Squads system feels needlessly complex for very little reward feature wise.
If it wasn’t for games like Black Ops Declassified, Ghosts could be a top contender for the worst game in the franchise. The story is laughable, the multiplayer is a definite step back from Black Ops II, and every time something new or interesting is introduced it gets ripped from your hands just as quickly as it arrives. If you’re a fan you’re probably going to be able to stomach everything presented to you here, but the seams are really starting to show on this series and I think for a lot of people this will be a good time to jump ship.
