Call of Duty: Ghosts Is A $60 Game Of Follow The Leader

[Robert Rath]

Call of Duty: Ghosts Is A $60 Game Of Follow The Leader

Critical Intel explores how Call of Duty: Ghosts contradicts one of the most basic principles of military behavior: Displaying leadership.

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[RJ 17]

Eh, all I can really say is "What did you expect from a CoD campaign?" And if you ask me that's really what it comes down to. At this point I'm pretty sure the CoD campaigns are only attached out of a sense of tradition and for them to slap a new subtitle onto the game. CoD: Ghosts. CoD: Modern Warfare. CoD: World at War. It's all the same narrow hallways, following the leader, etc etc as the last game, only this time you're being told "We're fighting the Japanese!" or "We're fighting the secret terrorist organization!"

I'm fairly certain that if they axed the campaign all together and just pumped out multi-player only CoD games that very few people would be bothered about it at all. At least at first. Maybe the fact that they no longer have a campaign that necessarily justifies an all new title, people will start to see how repetitive each new CoD game is...that as far as the multiplayer is concerned each new CoD is basically just a glorified map-pack with even more ways for you to die without having any idea what the hell just hit you.

 

[deathmothon]

CoD 1 and 4 are the only ones worth mentioning. 1-3 followed a formula and started getting stale and losing sales. They switched up the story AND multiplayer with 4 and it was awesome. They figured dialing it to 11 in MW2 would make it better. It didn't. But for some reason sales kept spiking. All the way up until Ghosts where it looks like it thankfully jumped the shark. The formula is stale, hopefully they understand that before the next one.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

It's true. All of it.

I am one of those rare people who buys Call of Duty solely for the single player, and I have enjoyed all of them, from 2 all the way up to Black Ops II, and every one in between.
And then I played Ghosts. What a letdown. This article puts into words everything I felt about that game--especially how Logan always just felt like the odd man out, and Hesh was supposed to be the main character. And that really bothered me. Hesh made all the decisions, but he kept saying, "We" and I kept going, "Um...no?" I ended up hating him because I felt so left out of the story. I ended up hating all the characters save for Keegan, and I think it's because Keegan doesn't talk all that much. Normally, when the 'tragic death' happens in Call of Duty (4, MW2, Black Ops, Black Ops II, World at War), even if I see it coming a mile away, I still care about it. I still feel sad about the death, and there have been a few where I actually got choked up a bit.
When it happened in Ghosts, I literally just shrugged and went, "Bye." This is the worst Call of Duty game by far, and I'm glad that this article points out so much of what was wrong with it.

 

[senordesol]

I watched 'CoD: Ghosts the Movie' on Youtube. Just the major plot elements condensed into a 2 hour video.

It felt like 80's action pr0n...BAD 80's action pr0n. There was really no reason for the fighting, no reason for the villain, and no respect for the audience's intelligence. Honestly the 'CoD Campaign' now baffles me. CoD4's campaign was actually smart, even earning rare praise from Yahtzee. Why was the decision 'more of that, but dumber'? Don't tell me it's a choice between a good campaign and good multiplayer, because CoD's formula has changed so little from MW1 that I'm honestly not sure why it takes a year between installments. It's not like a smart story would hurt the game, would it?

Call of Duty doesn't need the 'magic antagonist', motivated by some vague vendetta it's time to stop it with all the Makarovs, Shepherds, Dragoviches, Menendezes, and Rourkes. The war doesn't stop just because one asshole dies. There's no need for all these cheap conspiracies and double-crosses. If you crack open a history book or watch a documentary; you'll find that combat has enough twist, turns, and surprises without all that crap.

The series just feels so...joyless now. Not even in a 'bitingly cynical' way...just completely not-self-aware.

 

[SecondPrize]

Sure, there'd be no excuse to continue with the follow-the-leader gameplay down narrow corridors, but there was no excuse for releasing a reskin on an increasingly ancient engine every year and charging full price for it either, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

 

[MoltenSilver]

We don't know what went wrong?

We all know exactly what went wrong: There is zero, absolutely zero impetus for them to give a damn about quality when the game will sell millions of copies even if every single disk was replaced by a spoonful of dirt. Basically, nothing's going to improve until we find a way to extract the entire concept of 'brand loyalty' from our culture, take it behind the barn, and shoot it.

 

[Rad Party God]

I heartily recommend everyone to try a little 1993 shooter called Doom with the Brutal Doom [http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/features/brutal-doom-faq-and-troubleshooting] mod.

Now I do appreciate the occasional cinematic shooter (COD4 was great and Blops was pretty okay), but boy, does Doom ever show us how much we lost in the last 20 years.

Brutal Doom is the awesomest thing ever.

But last year, there was this little gem that was my personal GOTY and was pretty awesome, it was Shadow [http://store.steampowered.com/app/233130/] Warrior [http://www.gog.com/game/shadow_warrior]. Now THIS is how you do a reboot (unlike a certain thief...), it has some really nice graphics, tight gameplay, a nice story with funny characters (Hoji is a highlight for me), huge and epic boss battles, all the good stuff FPS'es did back in the day, but with good modern sensibilities.

I'm still baffled Yahtzee didn't reviewed it.

 

[UNHchabo]

I am one of those rare people who buys Call of Duty solely for the single player, and I have enjoyed all of them, from 2 all the way up to Black Ops II, and every one in between.

Do you mean that you haven't played CoD 1, or that you didn't enjoy it? Cause if you haven't played it, I can heartily recommend it.

creating a messy collage made up from better games and movies

I haven't actually played any single-player CoD since the first, but some of my favorite moments from CoD 1 were the ones that made me feel like I was playing through a movie. In particular, the Russian campaign, and its obvious callbacks to Enemy at the Gates. There were also plenty of great moments in GTA San Andreas that were directly taken from movies, with the Terminator 2 truck/bike chase being one of the more memorable.

It's very possible to have a great game out of a collage of other properties, but you have to do it right. I haven't played CoD:Ghosts, but I believe you when you say that this specific implementation is messy.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I am one of those rare people who buys Call of Duty solely for the single player, and I have enjoyed all of them, from 2 all the way up to Black Ops II, and every one in between.

Do you mean that you haven't played CoD 1, or that you didn't enjoy it? Cause if you haven't played it, I can heartily recommend it.

creating a messy collage made up from better games and movies

I haven't actually played any single-player CoD since the first, but some of my favorite moments from CoD 1 were the ones that made me feel like I was playing through a movie. In particular, the Russian campaign, and its obvious callbacks to Enemy at the Gates. There were also plenty of great moments in GTA San Andreas that were directly taken from movies, with the Terminator 2 truck/bike chase being one of the more memorable.

It's very possible to have a great game out of a collage of other properties, but you have to do it right. I haven't played CoD:Ghosts, but I believe you when you say that this specific implementation is messy.

I think I played the first Call of Duty. I believe it was on the PlayStation store, correct? It's the one where Price dies on the sub, right? If that is the case, I'm afraid it just didn't grip me the way the other games did. It wasn't a bad game, but by the time it became available on consoles, I'm afraid it had aged too much when I compared it with the other CoD games, which I had all played already. If I had started out with that game, I probably would have loved it just as much, but for me it was just kind of a "Oh, this is a nice little journey into the past, but that's it."

And yes, CoD Ghosts is nothing but a mix-up of other games and stuff, but it is poorly implemented. That Batman scene he's talking about? It is literally just a scene. You don't do anything in it. You just stand there like a good cameraman and watch the whole thing play out...while you have a loaded pistol and could have solved the whole thing the second it started simply by firing a few rounds. But no...can't ruin the Batman scene.

 

[UNHchabo]

I think I played the first Call of Duty. I believe it was on the PlayStation store, correct? It's the one where Price dies on the sub, right? If that is the case, I'm afraid it just didn't grip me the way the other games did. It wasn't a bad game, but by the time it became available on consoles, I'm afraid it had aged too much when I compared it with the other CoD games, which I had all played already. If I had started out with that game, I probably would have loved it just as much, but for me it was just kind of a "Oh, this is a nice little journey into the past, but that's it."

And yes, CoD Ghosts is nothing but a mix-up of other games and stuff, but it is poorly implemented. That Batman scene he's talking about? It is literally just a scene. You don't do anything in it. You just stand there like a good cameraman and watch the whole thing play out...while you have a loaded pistol and could have solved the whole thing the second it started simply by firing a few rounds. But no...can't ruin the Batman scene.

I haven't actually played it in several years, so I had to look it up -- yes, apparently the British campaign has that mission onboard a sub. I remember that I didn't like the British campaign as much as the other two.

Sorry to hear it didn't hold up well for you; hopefully it does for me when I finally get back to it. I lent my disc a long time ago to a friend and never got it back, so to replay it I'll need to buy it on Steam, which I plan on doing at some point.

 

[major_chaos]

But last year, there was this little gem that was my personal GOTY and was pretty awesome, it was Shadow [http://store.steampowered.com/app/233130/] Warrior [http://www.gog.com/game/shadow_warrior].

wait people actually liked that game? It was the single biggest letdown of an already shitty year to me, but to each their own I guess.

OT: I really don't known why people bother criticizing the single player in CoD. Having played most of them its obvious that most of the effort went into the multi player.

 

[Jacco]

We don't know what went wrong?

We all know exactly what went wrong: There is zero, absolutely zero impetus for them to give a damn about quality when the game will sell millions of copies even if every single disk was replaced by a spoonful of dirt. Basically, nothing's going to improve until we find a way to extract the entire concept of 'brand loyalty' from our culture, take it behind the barn, and shoot it.

Just make sure you use your handy dandy Colt® M1911? with Colt® .45 ACP rounds when you do it!

 

[Darth_Payn]

OMG, so much of this sounds like when I played Homefront, then quit because I got bored and detached from the story. I felt like I didn't have any affect on events around me. Hell, my character didn't even have a voice (maybe even not a name, since I forgot it). The fact that this so-called "realistic" game is not even that should be the nail in the coffin.

 

[CelestDaer]

What the heck kind of name is Hesh? Yes, that's really what I took from the article.

 

[Zip Loc]

What the heck kind of name is Hesh? Yes, that's really what I took from the article.

Thing is, that isn't his real name. His real name is David. He just insisted on being called "Hesh" since 9 or something. They never explain it during the campaign, you only find out through the Rorke files (for those who are familiar with CoD but not Ghosts, think Intel) that you can grab. Even then, I'm fairly certain it's the one you get for beating the game that tells you. Here it is: http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Rorke_Files#Elias_Walker

 

[CelestDaer]

What the heck kind of name is Hesh? Yes, that's really what I took from the article.

Thing is, that isn't his real name. His real name is David. He just insisted on being called "Hesh" since 9 or something. They never explain it during the campaign, you only find out through the Rorke files (for those who are familiar with CoD but not Ghosts, think Intel) that you can grab. Even then, I'm fairly certain it's the one you get for beating the game that tells you. Here it is: http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Rorke_Files#Elias_Walker

Eh... I've never been much for shooters, haven't played a single Call of Duty, it was just an observation.

 

[TheMadJack]

To sum up, Infinity Ward has no idea how to make story-driven SP games.