The titular Ghosts are set up to be some great Spartan-like force, and over the course of the campaign prove themselves able to carry out all sorts of missions impossible as they storm bases and scale buildings. Ghosts' attempt to tell a story of familial destruction - in both a home and military sense - falls so completely flat as to beg the question of why such a story was even told when seemingly no attempt to humanize anyone involved was made at all. An awful lot of weight is put on Hesh and Logan's relationship with their cookie-cutter Tough Love Military Guy (TM) father as the story's emotional arc, yet no character has any sort of development whatsoever - Logan never once says a word, not even in situations where incredible screaming at people would be expected, and were dog companion Riley human he would simply waft out of memory. Their gaining a spot on the team isn't hard-fought, it's delivered (hooray nepotism!) without so much as a fart of care by anyone on screen. The story follows them as they go from members of the military to "uber-elite" Ghosts, but they seem to have the easiest transition in the world - their father, Elias, happens to be the leader of the squad. Silent-but-deadly player character Logan and brother Hesh are dull, uninteresting protagonists with zero charm and personalities intentionally left blank. Ghosts takes a page from Call of Duty: Black Ops by trying to create an emotional anchor among over-the-top scenarios, but fails on all fronts. A ten-year conflict ends in a standstill along the front of these ruins. The Federation pushes north with swift invasions of Central America and the Caribbean, and a hijacking of the United States' orbital superweapon called ODIN - capable of raining down a really bad case of the Monday's - takes out several major cities in the southwestern U.S. The Middle East has suffered nuclear destruction, leading oil-rich South America to unite and form the Federation, which quickly rises as a global superpower. The new sub-series brings a new world, and the world of Ghosts is one changed. With Call of Duty: Ghosts, the franchise is eating itself. Efforts to recapture the spirit of the franchise seem to merely mimic its better moments. It's a new game where everything feels expected, and its attempts at diversity go so far and wide as to break through the ceiling into the realm of the absurd. But something strange is happening this year. There is nary a military shooter since then that isn't informed in some fashion by the campaign's shoot-bang spectacle, the persistent multiplayer, or that callous, detached mission piloting an AC-130 gunship.Ĭall of Duty has been outnumbered but never outgunned in its particular military-shooter niche since then, and year after year manages to pull off consistent escalation and just enough evolution to stand out from the crowd of me-too shooters. Genres evolve and iterate over time with mechanics intermingling along the way, but Modern Warfare, for better or worse, changed the game overnight. With all of the noise made in the wake of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's success - everything from sky-high sales figures to unfortunate ad campaigns, or the rise, fall and subsequent embalming of developer Infinity Ward - it's easy to lose sight of just how phenomenal and innovative that game really was.
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