Call of Duty: Ghosts PC Review! Does it Suck?

What’s up Techfans! Year after year one of the biggest selling multiplatform games has been the Call of Duty Franchise, and as has become customary there is of course a new entry this year: Call of Duty Ghosts. Now while all sharing one namesake, the COD franchise really consists of two different strains of games, those made by Treyarch (World at War, Black Ops 1/2), and those made by Infinity Ward (Modern Warfare 1-3). Ghosts comes from the latter camp, and while it promises to bring new changes to the series, it shows that it comes from this same line of games.

To begin with, Let’s talk about visuals for a moment. Call of Duty as a series has shown favoritism for the console market over PC, and during the development for this particular one it was stated that one of the lead goals was to try and make the game run at 60 fps on all systems, rather than focus on improving texture quality or details. This shows, as the game features graphics that look little to no better than its past iterations. Running on our system which includes a GTX 780 and an i7 4770k processor, running on the highest settings we saw and average FPS of 56.9 on 2560×1440, and 75.1 on 1920×1080, which is smooth but not very impressive considering the graphics quality.

Gameplay wise this title has made a few changes, though at times it feels as though it’s also taken numerous steps back due to the fact that it holds so much in common with MW3, and doesn’t feature some of the core changes made by Treyarch in BO2. New features include having peripheral vision while using scopes, and more destructible, interactable environments than in any other Call of Duty.  Outside of this, much of the core game itself is unchanged from MW3, outside of the usual balance/perk/killstreak tweaks. While the competitive multiplayer does feature some new modes for a bit of freshness, playing any of the more popular traditional modes does lead to an unshakeable feeling of deja vu, as the biggest real change is simply what maps you can play on.

The game’s campaign suffers from a similar fate, feeling like a patched together sequence of super popular action movie moments and cliches. While most Call of Duty games have walked this line before, they’ve at least normally achieved feeling as though they had somewhat original stories or enjoyable characters, whereas this one has so little in the form of originality that it simply does nothing to stand out. It’s still a fun mindless romp, and the first few missions outshine the later due to having a loyal super powered mutant killing machine in the form of a dog as a pet. It’s not exactly a terrible experience, just not anything interesting or new for the series.

Now where the game has seen some expansion is in it’s game modes, which now not only feature traditional multiplayer, but also the new Squads and Extinction modes. Squads plays out like an expanded version of MW3’s survival mode, featuring a few different game types where players participate in matches that are a mixture of AI and human players. Some are purely human vs AI, whereas others feature the option for players to customize their own full squad of characters, and then compete with other players teams 1 on 1. It’s almost like a more hashed out tutorial mode that acts as a half step between playing the campaign and true multiplayer. It’s a more forgiving environment for new players to learn the basics of online matches, without having to die every 5 seconds because they have no clue what they’re doing.

Extinction on the other hand is Infinity Ward’s answer to the Zombies mode that is normally a signature of the Treyarch COD games. In it, Players group up in teams of 3-4 and complete objectives while killing hordes of alien monsters. Like in Treyarch’s Zombies mode, players start off with bare bones equipment and expand their options by earning cash from killing enemies. Money can also be used to activate special abilities like summoning a turret or ammo crate, and the mode even features a pseudo class system that allows teammates to specialize in different play styles, such as increasing their toughness or speeding up reload times. In and of itself it’s nothing particularly special to the Co-op survival genre, and isn’t really one of the selling points for Ghosts. However, if you end up getting Ghosts for traditional multiplayer and just want a break from it every now and then, it’s worth the occasional time sink.

Overall Ghosts falls into the same pitfall the rest of the series has been straying towards, in that while it does make an effort to add some new content, little of it has to do with changing the core experience which is still very much the same. Squads and Extinction may offer alternate ways to play, but in the end the majority of game time is going towards the traditional competitive multiplayer which still feels very much the same experience overall. If you’re a fan of COD then this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you get another solid iteration of a successful formula with new maps and modes to play in. Otherwise, if you’re indifferent to the series or even outright hate it, there’s nothing here really to change your opinion. As it stands Ghosts is simply the newest perpetuation of the COD formula, and is by no means the strongest. Dedicated fans will probably still enjoy it thanks to full servers and new content, but everyone else can just happily steer clear.