Call of Duty: Ghosts Digital Hardened Edition

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01 January 2015

Review by Lordsharaf (read 3 reviews)

Meaningless campaign, entertaining multiplayer and few innovations.
Call of Duty: Ghosts is here and is really in the ordinary Call of Duty-fashion.

"So we can't change too many of the core rules, and the core rules are really simple. You're a player, it's in first-person, you have a weapon in your hand and you run around shooting other people."

The words above come from Infinity Wards executive producer Mark Rubin and is about the Call of Duty series. He draws a parallel between the incredibly popular game series and football, and says that if one of the sport's suddenly decided to only have seven players on the pitch and that you also get to use your hands, the people would loose interest and stop attending matches.
This conservative philosophy exist for the huge crowd of fans of the series who will recognize it and not get lost in strange novelties.
And it has left a distinct mark on the new addition to Call of Duty: Ghosts, as in every way, this is exactly what one would expect of a new game in the series.

The campaign begins in an idyllic American place where you sit and talk with your father and brother.
In ordinary Call of Duty-fashion, there are not many minutes before the first explosion color the sky red and the everything falls into chaos.
Bombs are slamming into the right and left, buildings destroyed before your eyes and you have to survive at any cost.
It starts out pretty good with a premise that arouses interest.
The South American Federation takes control of the weapon Odin and kills millions of American citizens with bombs. When they have the upper hand they invade the injured shot nation that relies on it feared special dressing Ghosts to turn things around and win the war against all odds.

The campaign is just as exciting and intense as one would expect, with so many explosions that you almost get a nice tan in front of the screen. In a never-ending stream of scenes, we take us through runaway trains, drive a snowmobile across frozen lakes, deep dive among sharks and visit the vacuum of space while we are shooting thousands of opponents to death.
But unfortunately, while the campaign is very full of action, it's completely brain dead.
Some scenes are so stupid that I just laugh out straight. Clichés succeed each other and to say the least incredible sequence of events is explained with intrigue that could have been written by monkeys at the zoo.
Or how about a good guy transformed into a vicious sadist who's fed with crops from the South American

And we have it here with the Call of Duty dog. Infinity Ward assured that we would care about this mutt that comes with along the way, but that is not the case, and the question is rather if they tried to achieve that goal at all. My dog is acting in a fairly useless in a Supporting Role as quickly wasted and then fall in total oblivion. Infinity Ward know their explosions and "follow the leader with Weapons" torques, but to tell a believable and interesting story, they really can't.
Fortunately, the multiplayer is still the series' strengths and savior. For the most part, I'm having a lot of fun with the various play modes. My favourite mode is "hunted" - a situation where one armed with a pistol at the beginning of the round and then must collect crates to get access to better firepower. Free for all on the game's smallest maps are wonderfully chaotic with the perfect balance between chance and skill.

For me, standing just outside the core group who love the series for what it is, it becomes problematic with few functioning news. Should not a giant company, Activision, with all the money resounding success of Call of Duty draws in, deliver something bigger? Something that makes me lose my breath as nails sticking controller in my hands and pushing me to defy feelings of fatigue and hunger?
There are probably things you don't have time for when a new game is to be replaced every year - then it might just be more of the same.
Which in the case of Call of Duty: Ghosts works very well because its heart-racing action as the series' hallmark still stands up so well in the competition and delivers an entertaining multiplayer experience.

The question is: How long does it?