I have spent a lot of time playing the Call of Duty franchise in the past 7 years. During that time, with each installment and announcement of an upcoming title made me cringe. I always expected the next game to be terrible and worse than what came out previously. Now that the franchise is on a three year cycle the developer will have more time to make the game the best it can be.
When I saw the news and gameplay footage for Call of Duty: Ghosts, I was indifferent. I didn’t know if I was going to be impressed. I didn’t see anything exciting to look forward to. Not even Riley the dog. That changed quickly once I heard there was a playable female character. Something that simple addition to the game made me give it a second look and got my pumped to check it out.
Call of Duty: Ghosts has many different game modes to play. There is the Campaign, Squads, Multiplayer and Extinction mode. Extinction and Squad mode are new additions to the franchise. Squads is a new game type that you can play with up to 5 friends, or with AIs and compete against other squads. Extinction is the new “zombie” / “horde” game mode for this title. It’s fun. Hectic and like every other “zombie” / “horde” mode in a first person shooter.
I’m not going to lie. I have not finished the campaign. Being a new mother, my time is limited, and when I say limited, I mean I have time for frustrating public matchmaking lobbies in multiplayer mode. That being said and to not be confused with “I have never played the campaign”. I enjoyed what I played (playing), and eventually will finish it.
I really enjoyed starting the campaign off in space. I thought this was a cool way to begin the game and utilize the focus of ODIN— which is a recurring system used in multiplayer mode, as well as the fact it destroys multiple cities when it falls from space. We see the damage and effects of ODIN crashing into the U.S.A. when the game scene changes from space to San Diego.
Not sure about the rest of the world, but when I play campaigns, I go straight to the hardest setting possible. In this game, it was veteran difficulty. With my skills in first person shooters titles I always felt that the hardest difficulty is more annoying than hard. I thought it was going to be something like that. Something I have played in the past. It wasn’t. I was actually surprised. I died A LOT. My face was crinkled with wrinkles when I played the campaign. I was stressed. It was HARD.
Now, my favorite part of Ghosts is multiplayer mode. As you can see above, things get weird in online play. I have always enjoyed playing against and with others online. Always have and always will. Call of Duty: Ghosts has an exceptional mulitplayer menu. There are many options, MANY customization options and hilarious tag avatars and backgrounds for completing game objectives. Not to forget about the option to play as a male or female and customize the gear they are wearing. I can even change my hair color!
After you tinker around with your character, your gear, weapons, killstreaks, etc., it is time to get set up and join a lobby. Choose a game type and go! Call of Duty: Ghosts has the usual classic game types such as Free For All, Kill Confirmed, Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, Domination… Added in this game are the game types Blitz, Cranked, Search and Rescue.
Blitz is a game of shenanigans. Straight shenanigans. If you don’t want to play against “campers” don’t play this game type. Since the objective is to protect your portal from the opposing team rushing into it with a 10 second count down, you will lose your mind with the snipers hiding out and overseeing the portal.
Cranked is a fast paced kill em’ or die mode. Actually, you don’t really have a choice as you will die no matter what. Objective of the game is to kill other players, get better perks, don’t die, but… if you don’t kill another player within the countdown you will die anyways.
Search and Rescue is the same thing as Search and Destroy other than the fact that your teammate can retrieve your tag and you spawn again.
The competitive side of Call of Duty: Ghosts get sectioned off into the Clan Wars option of the multiplayer menu. I mean, everyone is always wearing their try hard panties in public lobbies. If you are even more serious about gaming and competitively want to play against other clans, Clan Wars is for you. Plus you get to unlock cool customization options if you win.
You can also download the Call of Duty: Ghosts App to help manage your Clan Wars and Call of Duty: Ghosts experience.
Overall, there are very few things that I want to mention that cause me grief while playing online. First and always is online player collision. It absolutely sucks. It is absolutely annoying and absolutely frustrating. I hate waiting a few seconds later to move from spawn so I don’t run into my team. I wish there was like a 5 second player invisibility mask on other player characters. Especially when your whole team is running into the same area. It’s like a herd of cows going through a small door.
The mulitiplayer spawn points are another issue. Apparently the developers are fixing the spawn issues. Dying and spawning 5 times in a row because I spawned in enemy territory sucks. At times I know it is affected by where my team is… but come on, we all know this is ridiculous.
Since I am playing Call of Duty: Ghosts on the Xbox One, I have not had the pleasure of crappy lobby connections. Granted, there is always the host quitting that causes the game to drop and random issues but not like there was in Black Ops II. I feel that it is because there aren’t as many people on the Xbox One as there is the 360 or PS3.
I would recommend this game to anyone who love first person shooters and anyone looking to play with some competitive gamers. The Clan Wars option really helped define this game for competitive, professional, and hardcore gamers. The addition of female gamers and new customization options in Call of Duty: Ghosts really showed that this game is changing with the times. I know it is on my top favorite game list because of these options. Not everyone might understand that, but it is definitely a step forward for women in the gaming industry– especially since there hasn’t been a female playable character in the Call of Duty franchise previously.
I also would like to thank Activision for sending me this review copy of them game. Myself and The Game Fanatics are always humbled by their support.
