This year, Infinity Ward took great risks to try and improve their game from Modern Warfare 3 and to release for the current gen and next gen consoles. Within the 2013 holiday season, Activision blamed the next generation of consoles on its low sales. Ghosts has a mixed opinion within the Call of Duty community, many hate it while others love it. Others say it is a refined version of Modern Warfare 3, while some say it is the closest Call of Duty game to Call of Duty 4.
Multiplayer:
Animations have drastically improved in Ghosts, such as the knife, lethal planting, and running over obstacles animations. The knife in this game was much copied off of battlefield where once you knife someone, a little animation of you stabbing someone in the chest and slowly pushing them away occurs. This new knife animation is a nice, sleek looking one and a major improvement over the pathetic banana arm animation in previous Call of Duties. Fluid movement and jumping over obstacles was another major improvement over mantling objects within the past Call of Duties, this added more action within the game. Throwing grenades and tactical in this game is more realistic and nice to see as you can see your character’s arm throwing a grenade as you would in real life instead of seeing an arm flinging down a grenade like in previous games.
The maps in this game are entirely too large for any Call of Duty and do promote a lot of “camping”. In addition to the abnormally large maps for the game, multiple back alley and passage ways have been introduced, thus causing more random deaths and to be shot in the back more frequently. This is a major setback as Call of Duty has been famous for being a fast action paced shooter with small maps and these new ones are a major setback to the small 3×3 main passage way old ones that were in previous games and considered “fun” by the community. Many of the maps in this game are similar to one another all either in half-destroyed urban areas or in an extreme environment such as jungles or taigas that are tightly packed with buildings and trees. This causes the game to become increasingly dull and old after a few plays.
Camp. That is mostly what every player does in Ghosts; take in the new maps and new low health setting and you get a recipe for campers. Many of the Assault rifles in Ghosts are 2-3 shot kills and a lot of the guns have faster kill times than in any Call of Duty. So now this game has been converted from a fun run and gun shooter to a battlefield style tactical shooter. Killstreaks have always been a main part within the series, although Infinity Ward have tried to lower their significance by nerfing them and making the game more about you and your weapon.
The new “pick 10 system” has been improved from Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Primary weapons to Perks all of different point values, even the perks themselves have different point values . This new system is a major improvement over the last game and more balanced, however the new perk system is way too complex for any Call of Duty. There are more than 15 perks thus adds more confusion on which ones to pick. This is another major setback for the franchise as it adds more complexity and confusion among the user.
On the current gen, the graphics on Ghosts look atrocious. The environment looks all dark and run down, every map looks like the same color and the textures are worse than the predecessor Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Although on the next gen, the graphics have better lighting and everything is more detailed; however these graphics are considered low quality for a next gen console as Infinity Ward did not take advantage of the new system hardware and instead improved some lighting and the anti-aliasing of the game.
Infinity Ward claims that Call of Duty: Ghosts has a next gen engine, although this claim looks false. Other than the dual rendering that allows the dual render scope, this game does not look next gen at all. Infinity Ward has been shady about this engine and has not given it a name i.e. (Frostbite 3, Snowdrop Engine, Cry engine) so it is obviously a copy and paste code from the last engine with some improvements that fixed hit detection and host connections.
Unlocking any weapon at anytime also discourages playing the game, it used to be having to attain a high level and spending hours upon hours in order to unlock the best guns and perks in the game, although now you can just spend 4 squad points in unlocking it as early as level 5. The new prestige system in hand with this other system discourages even more people from playing the game as you can raise enough squad points in order to buy a new prestige and just buy all the new weapons again, causing the game to become even more boring. The customization of characters in this game is quite pointless as it is hard to see customization of other characters in game as they all look the same.
Campaign:
The Campaign has the same plot like all the other Call of Duties. A big villian attacks the United States , a huge endless war breaks out and eventually the United States prevails and kills the villain. I had no connections to the characters at all while playing this game.
Extinction:
Is a replacement game mode for Treyarch’s zombies (with aliens) and is very dull after a couple of plays. There is no central campaign to it like Treyarch’s zombie mode and it is mindlessly shooting aliens for money and then upgrading for another assault rifle you do not need and later proceeding onto the next stage (level).
Squads:
It’s just you and your prestige soldiers as AI in one squad that go up against another squad, this game mode later gets old.
This game can be said as an “Old dog, new tricks” because of its new animations and gameplay style. Although the same repetitive re-skinned weapons, map designs, campaign, and other game modes have brought this game down to an all new low.