More than five years ago, I wrote in a review of Modern Warfare 3 that this series was starting to get stale. Now, after being the last gamer in the world to get a PS4 and playing the series’ first next-generation title, I’m even more convinced that the series simply has gotten stale. That’s not the worst thing in the world, as the Call of Duty series’ virtues, including tightly scripted and exciting action sequences, remain present. The new guns, grenades, and “exo-suit” abilities -- including the occasional ability to slow down time, to jump higher, to hover across larger gaps, and to climb walls -- are fun to use, although they conspire together to make this one of the easiest games in this series that I can recall. The graphics are, for the most part, impressive, although there are a lot of flat, ugly textures due to the large and complex areas being depicted. The story, as usual, is generic and uninteresting fare, albeit delivered with a higher caliber of actor than in past iterations.
There are levels that recall the highlights of older entries in the series, without quite replicating those “wow” moments I had when playing through Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the first time. The Santorini and Antarctica levels were the highlights for me, although more for the unusual and beautifully rendered settings than any innovations in gameplay or narrative. For the most part, I trudged through the game’s quick campaign -- about 6 hours in length -- in a state of mild amusement. I often found myself pushing forward just to get through the level and complete the game, just so I could say that I had, rather than immersed in the moment. The ending may actually be better than the average Call of Duty game, although I’m not sure that’s saying all that much.
Reviewing the games in this series forces one to confront fundamental questions about what a game score should represent. Is this a well-made, generally good-looking, and fun game? Certainly. Does that mean it automatically merits an 8 or 9 in the inflated world of video game reviews? And how much does one deduct for a series that minimally innovates after a dozen or more games, and after much of the magic of novelty has taken the shine off the series’ core constructs?