Great selection of multiplayer modes, new Squad mode multiplayer fun for newbies, single-player ridiculous but fun, there is a dog now
Single-player storyline is one of the most surreal of the series, more female soldiers please
With an all-new cast of characters, the introduction of a canine squad mate, all wrapped up in next-gen graphics, *[Call of Duty:
Ghosts](https://www.callofduty.com/ghosts)* offers up quite a fresh spread of meats on the first-person shooter dining table.
Lead character Logan and his brother are caught up in a conflict that sees the United States threatened (surprise, surprise) by a foreign attacker, only this time it's a little closer to home:
South America is attacking the US from space, and within minutes of switching on the game the player will find him or herself splattering blood in zero gravity.
On the one hand it's a sign that Call of Duty has given up on trying to hold onto any sense of realism and has instead opted for a fantasy guns-blazing romp through landscapes based on caricatures of the franchise's history -- crazy destructive set pieces, blowing up planes from a warship, blowing up ships from planes, killing people on Earth from space.
On the other paw, the inclusion of Riley the playable German shepherd squad mate is an indication that the game's developers still want to convey a modicum of faithfulness to aspects of modern war. The dog's character, and the technology it wears to aid its human companions, was designed with the help of the US Navy Seals, who use dogs in combat.
There are fun, if brief, moments of gameplay where you are tasked with playing from the dog's perspective, annihilating foes with the sharpest teeth on the battlefield.
It's a weird paradox: zero gravity shootouts with space lasers, then fight alongside a dog. Ludicrous and bizarre, then believable and, day I say it, sweet: on one occasion, and only one, I caught myself feeling genuine empathy as I carried my injured pooch through a vicious battlefield, little whimpers and barks rubbing in the sentimentality.
But outside of those moments, the game's short and relentlessly choreographed single-player campaign is as paranoid as ever: shoot anything that moves, pausing only if the thing you're aiming at speaks the same language as your character; traverse lush, beautiful environments splattering bullets in every direction; enjoy some unrealistic scenes of that-would-never-happen action, such as the aforementioned gunfights while literally falling through space, or abseiling down the side of a building just before it collapses underneath you, or shooting sharks while stealthily taking down a ocean-dwelling submarine -- from below.
It's a mixed bag, and if you've enjoyed previous Call of Duty single-player campaigns you'll definitely like this. It's more of the same, but with very occasional little twists. It's worth noting it's still a balls-out sausage fest, and if you count more than two women in the whole story you've done better than I did. I can actually only recall seeing one female character, and she dies (albeit slightly heroically) right at the beginning. At least you can now play female characters in the multiplayer.
Graphically it's certainly pretty, but it's not going to be a favourite to showcase the graphical qualities of either PS4 or Xbox One. The facial animations of Ryse on Xbox win hands-down for example, as there are times in Ghosts where a man at knifepoint displays about as much emotion as a chimp trying to decide which banana to peel next. I did notice that foliage up-close during stealth modes looked much more realistic that on current-gen.
I played the campaign through on PS4 (in one sitting, for seven hours), and then spent a weekend playing multiplayer on Xbox One.
Graphically both are similar in terms of textures, although the PS4's hardware can render the game at 1080p instead of the 720p preferred by the Xbox; there were occasional framerate issues on PS4 that could be caused by the console being too powerful (!) at launch, at which time it too ran at 720p. A patch released during my review period did go some length to fix this, and in doing so raised the output resolution to 1080p and 60 frames per second, which safe to say looks delightful.
The end of the storyline leaves the series wide open for a sequel, so expect many more Ghosts titles in the future. I personally enjoyed the family-centric storyline in Ghosts, and although the game is a poster child for how to hand-hold a player through every activity it offers, I didn't get bored and I did enjoy the dog segments.
On the multiplayer side there is a wealth of fun to be had, as will come as no surprise. We could spend 5,000 words explaining them all, but it would be an exercise in pointlessness. Safe to say the team death match options exist and the maps in which they take place are some of the most interactive of the series. There are some fun moments to be had when a map fills with smoke, obscuring vision so you have to get much closer to a player before you can identify whether they're on your kill list or not.
A new set of game types, called Squads, are more interesting.
Players can build a squad of soldiers, level them up, then take them into battle in "horde"-like modes, where you must survive waves of increasingly difficult foes. Your squad can be human in origin, or controlled by AI. It makes for a slightly more relaxed alternative to the hardcore death matches, which support up to 16 players concurrently. We were also very pleased to see that Riley the dog can be summoned to fight alongside you in multiplayer battles. We didn't know this before accidentally triggering his appearance. It was probably the most eyebrow-raising moment in our testing when you lower your sniper rifle to see a dog had suddenly appeared.
Conclusion
Call of Duty: Ghosts is what a lot of fans of the series will want: more of the same, but with slightly better graphics and some twists, such as playing as a dog within a moderately more interesting storyline (although only just) than past titles. In the single-player fight versus Battlefield 4, Ghosts takes the gold here. The multiplayer modes have never been this numerous and the maps look great, plus there are some fun new game modes for players less adept at split-second accuracy for timing head shots on a 16-player battlefield.
Just don't go into the store expecting to buy a game that has entirely departed from the convention by adding a dog to proceedings.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
