So my friend and I have finished Ghosts today. Boy, was that dumb. In an entertaining way for the most part and a lot more enjoyable in pure gameplay terms than BF4's campaign, but still: Dumb. Here's some thoughts that I managed to take away from it:
- I officially demand a three year moratorium on setpieces that revolve around an aircraft carrier being attacked. Blimey, we've had this in Crysis, Black Ops 2, Battlefield 4 -and- Ghosts and there's only so many times you can play through a mission in which a frickin' carrier gets boarded by enemy marines like it's the bloody 18th century before you can no longer take it seriously. Hell, the Federation was dropping infantry from their Eurocopters while the Phalanx turrets were still operational for fuck's sake!
- The mission where the Ghosts have to destroy the oil rig struck me as really odd. Not only did it feel like a boring filler sideshow to provide a 'distraction', but it also felt weird in the same way as that old Steven Seagal movie On Deadly Ground, i.e. we're gonna blow up this giant oil rig without even a cursory acknowledgement of the massive environmental damage and the fact that we're gonna kill hundreds of civilian workers. Ghosts even went the extra mile by having some of the workers go up against you with guns for some reason while your good guy team mates also mowed down several men that were only trying to escape, put out the fires or help their injured comrades. Sure, it's supposed to be a war and all, but they didn't even -acknowledge- the dilemma in this.
- It's a little sad to realise that it took -this- long to have a controllable tank level in a proper instalment since what, CoD2?

The most creepiest part of the plot that even by CoD standards it had racist elements (I mean mind-controlling torture techniques used by amazonian tribes, I mean fucking really?) and felt like in general it was written by Tom Kratman rather than Stephen Gaghan.

You could control a T-34 in a mission in World at War but you didn't play that one so...

How does the multiplayer feel? For some reason, I find this version of the multiplayer to actually include some teamwork, when we get an argument out of it. I overheard a conversation on a mic between two dudes that (I think) didn't know each other. One said he's gonna distract an enemy juggernaut by hiding behind a wall, while another guy shot him from the back. Another time me and some other player suppressed two enemies while two of my teammates flanked around and took them out... Seriously, the guys I were shooting at really did take cover because we had a limited amount of lives so.
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Of course then there is always the douchebags running around with knives, corner campers, noob-tubers (proud noob-tuber, right here) and spawn killers. But what are you gonna do?

You know what would have been brilliant in a demented kind of way? It there had been some big twist at the end where it turns out that the original aggressor of the US/Fed war was actually America itself, which somehow fell under the control of an extreme right wing government that ruined the country through its own jingo-militarism, crashed the economy and drove all of its allies away while South America federalised as a somewhat unpolished, but overall progressive social democratic/socialist superstate that was antagonised and eventually attacked by the US themselves, whereupon the Federation took it upon itself to topple the American regime with the political backing of the international community (thus explaining how their massive motor pool is largely made up of foreign vehicles, including Eurocopters, Russian tanks and a Chinese Y-8 modded into a gunship). The only thing that notably tarnishes the Federation's image is the fact that they used the ODIN satellite against population centres and flooded Caracas to flush out the American invasion, but beyond that, most of their evil reputation hinges solely on the credibility of the US characters rather than tangible actions and statements. So they shot a bunch of civilians in the first mission, says Hesh? How does he know that those weren't looters or hell, American irregulars? But then again, all the fighting Americans we see in this game are military regulars, because it's always easier to reduce war to a simple duality if everyone's wearing a uniform.

Another thing I found odd was the total absence of black or hispanic characters among the US ranks. We had plenty of those as extras and talking NPCs in previous games, which makes their absence in this particular scenario all that more irritating with the above in mind. And hell, having a hispanic character on your team would have been legitimately interesting from a story point of view; he could have provided some personal insight/connection to the Federation, explain their motivations or why he rather chose to fight for the US. Even BO2 had that with Salazar who, naturally, had to turn out as a mole but at least they acknowledged it.

... I'm at a loss for words, that is one epic story right there.

That is an epic story there.

Too bad the common perception* is that most of the consumer base will be too butthurt over the implications.

It would be nice if people (CEOs of gaming companies) can accept the fact that great stories is compatible with bestselling FPS games...

... but that's not a safe bet, and they have reasons to play it safe instead of betting the house on a game that people will gush about... decades after the fact.

This kind of mentality is why we (the consumers) can't have decent games these days

"Work cited": http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-rea...t-to-crash.html

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*Note I never said about actual reactions, just the perception of potential reactions.

Not true there was Ajax who was a Ghost, unfortunately he gets killed off rather quickly.

Dude, you really think it's the EA published this game? Or I'm just misunderstood something?

You are right it is Activision not EA publishes Call of Duty Games though both publishers do have a history of screwing up games under their care, though EA seems to do that more often than Activision they just keep releasing CoD games every year that are restively similar, though it is up to debate if that is a good or bad thing.

Seriously? Well, blimey, I didn't even notice from his total of what, two appearances before he was the first 'important' character to bite the dust? I guess that's the problem when you build the visual theme of your badass tacticool operators around the fact that they wear creepy face-concealing masks all the time while failing to equip them with any sort of personality. Hell, I firmly maintain that the single most likeable character in the game was the bloody dog and even he was sort of reduced to a mere gimmick after a few missions.

the end left a spot for a sequel. seriously how the bloody hell do you survive being shot in the face? (Yeah I shot him in the face at the last level)

The credits song was eh so-so. im not much into rap.

^I think Infinity Ward is ensuring that they can do two more crappy sequels before they're put down by Activision. In two or three years, people will say "Ghosts I" was much better than "Ghosts II/III". And the song Survival, they used it too much in m yopinion. In the multiplayer trailer it was cool, but then in another trailer, no, not so much and when I heard it was the official credits song I was just like "no... no way, Infinity Ward, no I am NOT listening through this crap."

I dunno, I think Tom Kratman would do well as a writer for a futuristic FPS game, at least far better than Stephen Gaghan. The guy knows his shit and is far more nuanced than his detractors (who often never read his books) claim he is.



Interesting twist, though an "extreme right wing government" in the US would be extremely militarily isolationist (see the foreign policy stance of far right wing US politicians/pundits such as Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, & Chuck Baldwin or the rantings of Alex Jones) and would leave NATO, the UN, or any other sort of alliance or anything that could be interpreted as ceding national sovereignty.

I assumed most of the Federation weapons were license produced/purchased from other countries, in the backstory there was a major economic crisis and those other countries had to make money somehow. It's safe to assume that China and Russia were backing the Federation financially and politically to some extent.

I haven't played the game yet but I do hear that the Federation invaded Mexico and Central America before moving on the the US so it's very likely anyone from that region wouldn't have much love for the Federation. There could have been American characters with Hispanic background in game but they might not have been specifically acknowledged as such. If the majority of the parts in the US in CoD Ghosts take place in the Southwestern US, then there likely wouldn't be many black Americans simply because not many black Americans live in that part of the country. Americans of Asian descent would be a strong possibility however.

Ok, congratulation for their high knowledge about the game companies, you added something interesting in this discussion, thank you...
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Does not matter one who wrote the game's script or the company that published, is more a game made by a giant company that does not care about the final quality of your product, if indeed they were concerned about it would work to make a storyline a bit more universally agreeable and less Americanized. In my opinion this game does not add anything else except a handful of well-designed graphics and fits with the policy exercised by the RL "exceptional country".

I reached my first prestige today... And I gotta say I do quite like this new system. Your soldiers each level up individually, meaning if you have one soldier at level 60, you can unlock another one and he/she is only at level 1. So, if you get bored playing with level 10 perks and killstreaks you can switch back to your old soldier any day. Also, I noticed the other day that the bot AI is greatly improved from BO2. Bots behave nearly identically to human players, like literally. Bots in BO2 would randomly detect you if you were three miles behind them, but now... they're just perfect. Who needs online?

Apparently, no one.

Playing ghosts MP on PC got pretty much pointless. The playercount is so low that most gamemodes aren't really playable unless you wait quite some time.
BO2 didn't have a huge numbers of player either, but it's a lot worse with ghosts. It's kinda obvious why people are leaving though: This game isn't any fun.

The maps are bad, the gamemodes are bad, the weapons are balanced, but shitty to use; the perk system is too restrictive; the spawns are horrible; the netcode is bad; the PC optimization is bad; and people play like total a**holes.

All of these points apply to Battlefield 4 as well, but it's still way more fun than Ghosts. I have about 8-10 friends who bought this game and ALL of them quit already (most of them not even a month after release).

I'll give Treyarch another chance this year since BO2 was decent, but I really hope IW stops developing any CoD for PC, as that would finally give other developers a chance.

I think this year it'll be Sledgehammer, IIRC it is rumored that Activision are going to put three teams in a three year development cycle meaning we'll probably won't see Treyarch's CoD until 2015.

Sledgehammer? The team that basically fucked up MW3? Oh that is going to be a disaster.

Eh, I actually enjoyed MW3. Infact I find it's more fun than Ghosts. What's so bad about MW3 exactly? I didn't play MW1/2 so maybe that's why.

I wouldn't mind a WaW remake or even a new WW2 themed CoD which may be possible considering Treyarch wasn't even meant to do 'modern' and 'futuristic' themes.

I think the maps were not good, excessive lag compensation, dulled down colors (feels depressing too much, MW2's color palette was just right) and personally for me the slow sprint distance is what mad MW3 felt eugh.

The things I disliked about MW3 were mostly related to its lacklustre singleplayer campaign. There was this huge pre-release build-up on how this was gonna be a massive third world war but once you got to it, it all felt like a very meaningless, week long exchange because the whole thing started due to a dumb misunderstanding and the marginal depiction of NATO forces came off as more insulting than inclusive because at the end of the day, the war was decided by the usual bunch of special ops cutouts. Plus, some of the setpieces where just plain dumb even by CoD standards: The image of Russian and American fleets duking it out at point blank range 'Master and Commander' style in the Upper Bay was preposterous, the yanks knocking down the Eiffel Tower to smash a horde of Russians came off as a plain FU to France and the final mission where you get to hunt down Makarov in that fancy Arabian hotel just felt extremely tacked on for the mere sake of checking off another 'exotic locale'; the fuck is he, a Bond villain? Who knows, maybe I might dedicate some time to another thought experiment for a more serious MW reboot in the other thread some time...

As for MP, I didn't enjoy most of the maps because they were largely built around short sightlines which not only felt artificial and cramped, but also frustrating since I personally favour long range combat and sniping. But in this game, you always got blindsided by some arsehole rushing around a corner; it always felt like most of the deaths came from flanking ambushes rather than direct confrontations. And let's not even talk about the utter bullshit that is the dual-wielded FMG-9 whilst at the same time shotguns were nerfed to shit and became primaries again. Overall, I also disliked the bland, washed out colour palette of this game. Make no mistake: If there's one thing I'll give MW2 credit for, it's that the game was quite colourful and every location had its own distinct feel to it whereas MW3 was largely reduced to ugly, washed out browns, greys and greens for most of the time.

I actually enjoyed MW3's singleplayer, mostly because it had a relatively engaging storyline, and I really wanted to shoot that bastard and murder him in the last mission, which is probably good if the game evokes that in me.

Also, @ above, Makarov indeed comes extremely close to a bond villain. I mean, knowing there's an infiltrator in your ranks, taking him with you on a very bloody terrorist act and then using him to put the blame on the US. Ian Fleming could have come up with it, but the real world certainly couldn't. The games' plots and setpieces are also as fantastical as a bond movie would ever be.

The colour palette indeed is not that great. I recently did another game with some friends, and hell it looks so bad compared to say, Battlefield Bad Company 2, its competitor at that time.

Personally, I found the end fight against Makarov quite lacklustre as well, since it mostly amounted to QTE fisticuffs. It would have been kinda cool (if difficult to implement) to take him on in an open area sniper duel or a running battle of cat and mouse through an area full of traps and occasional henchmen. Generally, I think that CoD's SP would actually benefit quite well from having a degree of randomisation in the paths you take through a level and the enemy types that go up against you, but that would require them actually being more than walking targets that die in two hits.

Pretty much the same as ghosts:
-Bad maps - mostly short sightlines; overall mediocre map design
-Bad gun balance - MP7,FMG > all
-Bad perk balance - a few perks were pretty much used by everyone
-Bad unlock system/order - You needed to play ages with a shitty weapon to unlock a mandatory attachment/profiency (Range/Damage for shotgun, Focus for Rifles, etc.). Also way too much stuff to unlock. Which makes it especially stupid that there are 20(?) Prestige levels.
And, most important:
-no (ranked) dedicated servers, shitty latency at most times, host migrations, disconnects etc.
-terrible netcode/lagcomp
-terrible anti-cheat. Play against at least 1 aimbotter (or worse) in 5 games.

The 3 last points alone made it pretty unplayable for me. I've heard MW3 is still pretty popular on consoles, but it was pretty shitty on PC.

But like I said, I could write a list of similar length about Battlefield 4. It's a mystery to me how experienced game developers with incredibly high budgets manage to screw up games that didn't even add anything new. I don't say Ghosts, or BF4 is unplayable, but there is so much that makes you facepalm. How can there be so many bugs/issues with features that have been in there for a decade? (spawn system, lag compensation)

Now hold on here, bad maps? Short sightranges, for maps in Ghosts? If anything, these maps are much bigger, open and vertical than other maps. Have you even played on Stonehaven? All right, let me get a perfect example of a well-made map: Warhawk. It offers both long sightlines for snipers and short, quick corners for CQB-specialists. It has quite a balanced gheography and paths meaning both spawns have equal opportunities in the beginning of the game. The map that I would call worst would be Prison Break because there, one team has the advantage of the watchtower right next to their spawn. Then of course there are many other maps that offer a big variety in paths to take, sniper spots and even though some people hate it, camper spots. These are some of the best maps I have ever played on and they are sure as hell much more varied and open than the god-awful BO2 maps. Ugh...

^ Nuketown and Hijacked were pretty much spawncamping fests with people just aiming for high streaks to rain hell on the enemy team

If there is one thing that I wanted more out of MW3's Single-player is that there could have been more levels set in Britain rather than just the one, whether it's against Russian forces or Makarov's personal army, I just wanted more Levels in london.



As for ghosts story, like most of you guys, I wish that the story was more of a Gray vs. Gray rather than what we got.


As for extinction, I bloody love it, although it does get a bit difficult at the last few rounds it's still quite enjoyable, I wonder what the DLC will be like for Extinction


And on that note, a few pages ago some of you guys said something along the lines of "The zombies story ending was disappointing" what do you mean by that because for 2013, I didn't have xbox live gold activated for an entire year and so I couldn't be bothered with getting the DLC for Blops 2 and I was wondering what you mean by that?

^Basically it turned out the Nazi zombies story line was just to kids playing.

WHAT!!!!


I have no words to describe how stupid that is



At least extinction diverges from the main story-line

An alternate history in an alternate history...

ALTERNATEHISTORYCEPT- no wait that's stupid.

Speaking of Extinction, I wonder what happened to the rest of the world?

in my opinion the two main problems of Cod is the conservative desing of most of their games, that appear that the devs fear changes and the unbalances in multiplayer .how it is possible that in every game there is always a set of weapons that are almost a non brainer choice .a game with such a fame should be fair to all styles from sniping to knife rushing , and not make overpower submachine guns or sigths that detect yours enemies .

Oh right I see, I agree with that the weapon balance was a bit off. Stuff like the AK47 ( my favourite) was a poor weapon, even with certain attachments it was terrible. I remember it being solid in BO1, though. By the way, might just be me but I felt that the MP9 was a bit overpowered, for a machine pistol it was a bit of a killer, to me it felt like a AS/SMG hybrid. You didn't even need any attachments for it.

Also I encountered a few hackers on MW3 (and BO1) and quite frankly it's pathetic, innocent people are getting banned for entering modded (unknowingly) lobbies or even watching theatre, yet the morons who cheat get away with it, sad.



Well, Samantha also said at the end "my daddy has a plan to help win the war" so Treyarch will most likely expand on that given that Zombies is what most people spend their money on. There's no way they'd abandon their main source of income.

Speaking of Zombies, did any check out CoD:Online? They have "cyborg zombies" (lol) Activision wants to bring it out to the West, lets hope not.

Oh god, the bloody Nazi Zombie thing...Now that's a plot tumor that got waaaaay out of control if I ever saw one. It's like if they took the innocuous romance sub-plot from Mass Effect 1 and expanded it into a full-blown Leisure Suit Shepard side game in ME2, complete with a never-ending slew of DLCs that eventually outweigh the extra content of the actual game proper.

Here is a look at the first DLC for ghosts which includes 4 Maps, 1 new gun and 1 new Extinction level

What do you guys think?

Pretty nice but for God's sake dont link to Ali-A, he just view-whores and reuploads from the official COD channel.

I would really like to know that the "Maverick AR and Sniper Rifle is.

I'm sorry, I was referring to MW3 with the short sightranges. Ghosts has longer sightranges, that's right. My problem with ghosts maps is that they are all too different from each other. Sure, normally that's a good thing, but they messed up the playlists. It's really stupid to have Strikezone and Stonehaven in the same playlist imho. If I want to play CQB, I'd play Strikezone, if I want to snipe, I'd play Stormfront, but you usually can't, because you'll end up joining a game in progress where you have no idea what map it is. In addition, most of Ghosts maps are way too large for 12 players in TDM, and a lot of them are pretty bad in Domination because you have way too long distances between flags.
Yeah, you're right, Warhawk is a nice map, but since you can't choose what maps you'll play, that won't really help.

Ghosts maps aren't generally bad. I'd say theya re pretty good actually (with a few exceptions), but the playlists/gamemodes are badly balanced.

Regarding BO2, it was extremly focused on short ranges and CQB, but at least it did it right. Most gamemodes (and also most weapons) worked perfectly on those maps. Of course, if you want long range TDM though, BO2 is not for you.

Onslaught DLC trailer

OH MY YOU ACTUALLY GET TO PLAY AS A HORROR MOVIE VILLAIN HOW unoriginal and silly is that?

My thoughts about that trailer:

- 3 of the 4 looked pretty good actually. It seems they made them more colorful this time which is a good thing imho.
- The other map, Fog: What the fuck? A Horror movie map? Seriously? Keep that shit in Zombies or Extinction and not in goddamn MP.
- The new gun seems nice, but I'm pretty sure it will be the only DLC weapon. Just like in BO2 they want to lure people into buying the season pass.

So what do you guys think of the DLC?

It looks interesting, to say the least though I will probably wait on buying it.

Man, the single player is like a comedy. This one YouTuber makes you want to watch the campaign to see the shitty AI and other stupid crap.

Well, it seems Call of Duty has really started accepting the presence of children playing their games... I am actually glad this shit is not for the Wii U so I won't have to see it in multiplayer. Wow, just... wow...

The price, inferno, and circuit camos look ok, but the duckey and the space cats ones.
Really?, I mean come on if you want to portray COD as a gritty shooter at lease have the camos be a little more serious, sure in Black Ops2 you could get a mustache recital for your guns, but space cats?

Anyone who isn't a 10 years-old will never waste cash on this bullshit.

Price as an extra character is fine, but seriously..........Who the heck would use childish colorful camo??? Might as well add pink camo with hearts? LOL

How about some kiss camo? Like a red camo with pink lips
Commander, I've spotted... A soldier in kiss camo...
LOL

Why not kiss face paint as a customization option?

How about makeup? A whole new menu for makeup including mascara, lipstick, and stuffs

That would be pretty interesting, though depending on how much freedom you had it would probably turn out like the custom emblem system where lots of people would use it to draw stupid stuff like swastikas, penises, ect.

Lol penis on your face
Like you would probably have just selectable pre-done makeup things.