Two years after it came out, I decided to pick up Ghosts. Having played COD since Modern Warfare, I stopped around Black Ops – partly due to other demands on my time, but mostly because the games had moved so far from the sheer fun I had on COD4, that I really no longer enjoyed it. With MW3, I enjoyed the spectacle of the single player, and the fun of survival, but barely put 24 hours into the multiple player before getting bored – a big contrast compared to the days when COD4 was the only game I owned, and clocked a shameful 40+ days into it (over several years it must be said
but it is still shameful).
With Ghosts I was one of the rare breed buying it for the campaign. I was never one to jump into multiplayer on day one, I always enjoyed the Michael Bay style action and OTT spectacle of the campaigns. Ghosts tries to open on this, but just comes over silly and immediately making the player feel like they are on rails (which we are for the whole game – but the game doesn't need to always be reminding us of this). As a narrative the tight focus on a family in the midst of such a conflict might have worked, but really it doesn't. Instead we get a tired and surprisingly bored story rolled out over missions which rarely excite or thrill. With the other games there are several levels that I can always return to for how much fun they are to play, but with Ghosts I do not think there is one that I felt this way. Indeed at one point I Googled to see how many missions the game had, just so I knew if I could face pushing on through them – seeing I only had 2 left, I preserved.
This is not down to a fan-boy complaint (my days of buying this game on even year 1, far less day 1, are long gone) but just a simple observation: in terms of gameplay and narrative, it really feels nobody had the energy for this. Technically it looks good, but the music doesn't add as much, and the gameplay choices (and lack of choices) are poor – even for those who love the campaigns in the other games, this just comes over like going through the motions. On the other game modes, the aliens one didn't inspire me. More annoying though is survival; it was so great in MW3 but here I just couldn't get into it despite my efforts. Squads seems like a massive waste of time (if you want to play against 5 bots and a human, why not just play against 6 bots offline?).
Multiplayer I had limited exposure to, but I found it perfectly okay for a quick game here and there – but noticeably never felt the passion or addiction I once did. The maps are more and more complex and the vast majority are too big for the type of intense conflict I used to love in COD4. This in turn means that the fun and sheer sense of contest is very much gone from the game. In COD4 the killstreaks were simple and not such an obsession – okay we are far from the "nuke chasing" days of MW2, and I appreciate that the killstreaks and scoring methods is trying to force people to play the games, not play for personal kills – but it is too little too late, they shaped the community too well years before. I still pick it up occasionally because I liked the "offline" version of online with bots and the silliness of "levelling up" removed, but even still it is not really a game with heart.
When I bought this game, I did worry a little that maybe it would trigger COD addiction, and Xbox Gold, and days lost to prestiging again; no such risk with Ghost. It is a game that really lacks enthusiasm in itself, and therefore has none to share with the player. Characters are weak, narrative is hollow, and gameplay never gets the heart pumping. Multiplayer continues the overblown, kill- obsessed path, and, despite some chances to address this, ultimately it never feels like anyone is trying to win the game so much as just pad their k/d ratio, get their killstreaks, and not really care so much as grind – accordingly, the game does takes the same approach.
