Three men huddle around a campfire, eager to hear the story of an elite force of highly-feared soldiers. Ghosts, theyâre called. Two of the men listeningâthe sons, Logan and Hesh Walkerâare skeptical. Surely the tale-spinning father doesnât expect them to believe such an outlandish story?
Theyâre skeptical, but we know the story is true, because games like these always feature an elite force of sorts. Youâre always in it. So before you hear the story, you already knowâreally, as soon as you look at the gameâs box, you know. Youâll become a ghost. But you canât think about this supposed âmythâ for very long before the explosions happen. And then the guns. And then the running, the running, the running. Toward the explosions? Away from them? I donât know.
If I sound fatigued and a little bewildered, itâs because I am.
Okay, this much I can concretely tell you: something goes horribly wrong at the start of the game, setting into motion the majority of events you get to play through. Mass weapons were used, somehow. These weapons wreck your home at the start of the game, much like the rest of North America. Then, um, war. AgainstâŠthe Federation. Following the disaster at the start of the game, the Federation becomes a superpower. Your job as a member of the ghosts is to fight against the Federation before whatever evil thing theyâre planning happens. Things escalate from there and you end up having to go to a lot of different places for some reason or another.
There are finer details here, Iâm sure, about these factions, their plans, the locations, the major players. There is exposition about that stuff, often delivered between levels or to contextualize whatever thing you need to do at a given moment. And yet, embarrassingly, in order to write that barebones explanation, I still had to refer to the fact sheet that comes with the game. A game Iâve spent seven hours in. Maybe itâs the sparse delivery that doesnât explain stuff very well. Maybe itâs just easy to get lost in the military jargon, in the same way it can be confusing to try to keep up with games dealing with technobabble. Whatever it isâŠI like to think Iâm a reasonably smart girl, but itâs amazing how stupid a game like Call of Duty can make one feel for being unable to fully understand whatâs going on.
But maybe that stuff doesnât matter. We are mostly here to shoot, and next year there will be another reason to shoot some more. Just get in the roller coaster! Okay, okay. Iâll get in the roller coaster.
If you are new to the franchise, hereâs what you need to know about how the game works, mechanically. Call of Duty titles are fast-paced games where you go between shooting sections, the occasional vehicle section as well as sections where you sprint forward as everything around you explodes. Traditionally, all these aspects make the games feel thrillingâlike youâre starring in a Michael Bay film is the common comparison people make. You feel powerful, or at least excited.
Traditionally thatâs the case. Not here though. Itâs funnyâplaying through the initial section of scripted events where you run through your under-attack town, all I could think was, wow. This isnât nearly as well-paced, or as deliberate as say, the start of The Last of Usâwhere everything seems so tight and considered that you forget the game is just mostly making you walk forward while stuff (like explosions, crashes, deaths) happen around you. So I know the problem isnât with the design itself, but rather execution: despite also heavily relying on scripted events that happen at precise moments, Ghosts doesnât feel exact in what it wants to evoke in the player. Everything happens in a big enough scale that it all ends up feeling overwhelming, even for a high-octane game, and that feeling doesnât feel intentional.
Itâs often hard to get a grasp on whatâs happening and when, which means that you stop paying attention to whatâs going on around you. Why should you? That stuff is distracting you from your actual targets. This, in turn, makes all the locations blur into each other. Itâs hard to feel grounded in Ghosts.Thatâs okay, really, because all you need to know is that stuff is perpetually falling apart, and that some people need to get shot. And before long, like a platformer taking you from the ice world to the desert world, the scenery changes.
Maybe youâre underwater now. Or in Las Vegas. Or in a baseball field. Heck, five minutes into the game you go from being on Earth to being in spaceâwhich is definitely a cool location, but the pacing is so out of whack in the transition there, it doesnât really feel right. Nevermind when everyone suddenly starts pulling guns out in space and shooting each other. I wish I didnât care about how ridiculous that is, I wish I could just get into it. Maybe youâll be able toâI mean, abstractly, as a concept, itâs cool! I know that. But for me, not only was âshootingâŠ.IN SPACE!!â boring post-Gravity, but that thanks to the floatiness, playing through it felt not much different than playing through an underwater level in the same game. If I only talk about the space level specifically, itâs because itâs the most noteworthy level in the game. Other locations suffer from being locales that previous games have allowed us to explore, or because thereâs nothing particularly memorable about playing through them. Go here. Flip this switch. Plant this charge. It doesnât feel exciting, especially when a lot of the different actions you take are done via the same context-sensitive buttons. Really, it just feels like, well. More Call of Duty.
Did I mention that the first achievement you get in the game is in space, and it is awarded for pulling the trigger once? You donât even have to aim, the game does it for you. Boom goes the head. Congratulations.
The first time you control Logan Walker as a soldier, you meet Riley the attack dog. Your brother Hesh is playing fetch with Riley. They look happy. This moment is the highest point in the gameâthe most joyful, the most peaceful. You notice there is a ball at your feet, but you canât pick it up. I tried. Instead I accidentally fired some bulletsâI didnât know I was even holding a gun at the time, but I ruined the moment. They both burst forward, running away from me, horrified. I donât blame them.
I am a man of few words. My gun is my only method of communication. I mostly follow my brother in the game, and he tends to speak for me. I take orders. Iâm good at that, even if I donât always understand what Iâm doing or why Iâm doing it.
If youâve been keeping up with Ghosts at all, then itâs possible you already knew about Riley, itâs possible that you are already embroiled in the drama over whether he lives or dies. His importance in the game was predetermined, sure, but that doesnât make it any less significant. Sections where you get to play as Riley are novelâthey are mainly sneak sections where Riley scouts an area out, and these provided an occasional slower-paced section that the game honestly needs more of. Plus, when Riley sneaks in the grass, he mushes his ears down. Itâs really cute.
Other sections are improved simply by having Riley present: thereâs one section where he sticks his head out on a moving vehicle, clearly overjoyed. Like dogs like to do when riding in cars, you know? I couldnât help but smileâRiley is the most human part of the game. But I felt kind of sad about his presence, too. Riley is cool, yesâhe takes down freakinâ helicopters by himself, for crying out loud! But having a dog in a video game is such a dilemma. Itâs annoying to play through a game while constantly worrying over whether or not itâs going to decide to axe one of your favorite parts of the game. I donât feel like I worry so much about this with media that isnât video games.
Because of course the game will go there. There is even a Tough Moral Choice in Ghosts, actually. It goes like this: the game asks you to press X to hold on to a person. So you press X. Then two seconds later it says let go, or else youâre going to crash. And youâve gotta let go, else itâs game over. You gotta let go because at that moment the video game wants you to feel bad for doing something itâs forcing you to do, and itâs your fault for doing it even though you literally have no choice but to do it. So two seconds later, after you save this man, you then press a button and let go. The clincher: you watch this man sink into the sea and all you can think is, boy. That man sure is ugly. Not that itâs his fault, of courseâthe game just looks kind of dated on the 360.
Part of the problem contributing to how eh the game feels is that it never really challenges you. Playing on normal is rather easy, most of the time the AI just kind of stands thereâsometimes literally. There are sections where you burst into a room in slow motion, before the enemies have time to react. Other times the AI clearly just spazzes out on its own accord, making it easy to dispose of those in your way. Sure, some levels seem wide and open, with the occasional verticality added inâlots of places to climbâbut there is scarcely reason to move around the map to gain a better position. So you wont.
Sometimes youâll be âpinned down,â but if it happens, itâs because the game wants it to happen. Those are the moments in which you stop controlling the guys on the ground and instead gain control of a vehicle, such as a tank or aircraft. These are some of the most rewarding parts of the game: you get to pack a punch and get rid of a ton of enemies at a time, and you often have a wide area that you do need to move around in to do it. You get a sense of scale while playing, that this war is bigger than just your small squad of soldiers. These vehicle sections were the only moments in which Ghosts felt thrilling, the only times when I truly felt powerful. This is true even though the normal infantry sections are more variedâyouâll go between blowing up oil rigs and rappelling down South American skyscrapers, sure, but it all feels forgettable. Iâd rather just be a tank and blow some stuff up, as mindless as that may sound. At least itâs enjoyable.
It doesnât all feel middling, of course. One of the stand-out moments would have to be a segment where you have to set up turrets, mines and traps while waves of enemies come at you, horde style. This section felt a tad out of place, sure, but it wasnât overly-bombastic, and it wasnât overstimulating. It was just fun to play, partially because it required you to be tacticalâunlike a lot of the game, which I kind of turned my brain off forâand partially because you got to deal with swarms of enemies at once without having to go into a vehicle. Aside from this, there is also a short section where you get to sneak through a band of sharks that sticks outâŠand, beyond this, I struggle to list any more particularly enjoyable sections.
As someone who has played Call of Duty before, Ghosts mostly felt rather meh. I concede that someone new to the series might have something to like hereâitâll all be new, and perhaps itâll be easier to slide into the thrills. But the degree and frequency in which said âthrillsâ happen make the game feel overwhelming at worst, and like a blur at best. This would have been slightly forgivable had Ghosts had curious politics that make you think, branching endings, or any of the exciting futuristic or retro weaponry of Black Ops II. But it doesnât, so I donât feel that youâd be missing out on much if you skipped out on the single player altogether.
The good news is that Call of Duty games arenât just the single-player portions. While I have to dedicate a lot more time than my measly five hours before giving a verdict, so far, some of the multiplayer looks promising. Itâs still that signature Call of Duty play: itâs still a twitch shooter. The maps are still small, and the pace is still fast, ensuring youâre constantly coming across other players. Playing still feels tense, and this tension is sometimes punctuated by the sudden high of kills. Youâll still live or die by your reflexes. The customization options are still robust (moreso than before, actually), and the number of things you can level and earn experience points for is dizzying. You could spend an endless number of hours playing the multiplayer if you wanted, grinding different things, and going for all the unlocks. And now you can play as a woman, too! A cool and much appreciated change.
So far, none of the maps feel particularly memorable, but I also havenât seen very many of the dynamic events (like earthquakes) that happen while you play. Will they match up to Battlefield levolutions though, now that is the question.
I will say that one of the new modes, Cranked, is an absolute blast to playâbasically, when you kill someone, a timer starts ticking down. Youâve got 30 seconds to kill someone else, or youâll explode. When the timer is ticking down, however, youâll be âcrankedââand this means you get bonuses like faster movement and reload. So killing someone rewards you, yes, but also potentially dooms you if you donât manage to keep it up. Youâd think that a faster-paced, high stakes team deathmatch mode would be maddening, but no, Cranked is wonderful. Ridiculous, sureâyou imagine that someone mustâve been on their fifth Red Bull of the day when they came up with the idea for the modeâbut wonderful. Itâs the main mode I want to spend time playing.
Beyond this, Extinctionâthe mode with aliens in itâalso feels promising. The goal is to kill alien hordes while defending somethingâmaybe a drill, or maybe a helicopter, as a couple of examples. Aliens, unlike humans, can jump great heights and climb up all sorts of stuff, on top of being able to spit acidâwhich immediately makes them more interesting than, say, zombies. That, and aliens look cooler than zombies tooâso I definitely like this mode more than zombies on Black Ops.
Anyway, the way it works is, you can pick classes and abilities, and as you go along, you can purchase different weapons and traps, as well as find attachments hidden about. Your loadout will be different depending on what type of role you want to play on the squad, and should you want to get particularly far in the mode, youâll want to coordinate between players. Compared to multiplayer, Extinction feels like a mode where you can go and unwind with your buddies. It also makes you wonder where the series could go should it suddenly decide to go sci-fi. Isnât that the next big trend now? Donât get left behind, Call of Duty⊠(more on this in our bigger write-up about multiplayer).
Weâll update you with more in-depth impressions on both multiplayer and Extinction in the coming weeks, after I rank up a bunch and spend more hours with it, so be on the lookout for that. For now, Ghosts isnât getting a âYesâ based on the merits of single-player alone.
