Call an exorcist
Due to the new consoles, Call of Duty: Ghosts is the first game of the series since 2007 to receive a major graphical update. Sadly, though, while the visuals are spectacular, the rest of the game is trapped in the past.
The campaign is a near-future, location-hopping rollercoaster that sees the eponymous Special Forces team, the Ghosts, attempting to save a destitute USA from the evil South American Federation. This gap-year of death involves the Ghosts fighting in gloriously rendered locales, from the depths of a crystalline ocean to a gleaming space-station orbiting Earth, with trips to the jungle, the snowy Andes and post-apocalypse Los Angeles along the way.
It’s delightful to observe, which is just as well, since there’s an awful lot of observation involved: explosions, buildings falling over and characters you’re supposed to care about for some reason dying. It’s certainly spectacular, but despite all the flair and bombast, the game itself is desperately boring.
Ghosts lies somewhere between stern teacher and Gulag commandant in terms of bossing you about, either failing you or killing you for stepping even slightly out of line from its scripted sequences.
When it finally gives you something to shoot, it’s a case of standing behind cover, popping your enemies’ heads as quickly as possible, then moving on to the next glorified cut-scene. It’s more overprescribed than a hypochondriac pharmacist.
This would be less of a problem if the story was interesting, but it’s the weakest Call of Duty story yet, with jingoistic factions that are indistinguishable in terms of both militaries and politics, and protagonists that are about as compelling as a smiley face painted on a wall. Put it this way – Ghosts features a dog called Riley, and he’s the game’s most interesting character.
Multiplayer fares better, with a wide array of game modes, including two new options. Squads enables you to take characters that have levelled up in standard multiplayer games, and lead them in
competitive matches against other players’ squads. Extinction, meanwhile, takes the Zombie-survival
mode of Black Ops and swaps out the zombies for insectoid aliens. It’s all solidly built, but compared
with the epic scope of multiplayer games such as Battlefield and Planetside, Ghosts’ cramped maps
and small player numbers feel behind the times.
In fact, that’s the problem with Call of Duty: Ghosts. The formula has hardly evolved in seven years, and with brilliant single-player FPS games such as Far Cry 3 already available, and the wonderful-looking Titanfall on the horizon, for all its graphical punch and dazzling scripted sequences, Ghosts feels decidedly lacklustre.
