Hi,
Before reading this review, I will warn it is long in length, but will give you a very in depth and experienced review of the multiplayer mechanics of the game. I strongly recommend anyone that is wanting to go and get Ghosts, read this before you head to the store.
I have played Call of Duty for the past 6 years. I have every title that has came out on Xbox 360 from Call of Duty 2 to the latest Call of Duty Ghosts. Through playing the series for a very lengthy amount of time and by putting in hard hours into the game, I would more than enough say I'm qualified to give you a honest and fair review of this game.
Initially, before the release of Ghosts, I was not going to purchase this game. After seeing the poor (in my opinion) effort Activision made in their past two COD titles: Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops II, I was unwilling to put aside $60 for another cheap, internally broken game. However, a few weeks before release I had a change of heart and decided to give Ghosts at least a go.
One of the first things that I noticed once playing the game were the spawns for multiplayer. The spawns alone are what frustrates me the most about playing online. People will spawn behind you when you are on a killstreak and kill you, as well as make you spawn next to someone who is just coincidently coming around a corner so either you get killed, or they kill you. Now, before you ask, this is not free-for-all. With free-for-all, I understand the spawns may unintentionally put you near people as the game engine has to recognize where everyone is on the map. What I'm referring to is popular game modes such as Domination, Team Deathmatch and Ghosts' new game mode, Cranked. Along with having the opposing team spawn in front of you, or vise versa, you or the enemy team will not even spawn in the correct designated area. On multiple occasions, I have seen the enemy not spawn anywhere close to their flags in Domination, even though their flag is not being pushed. In Team Deathmatch and Cranked, I will find people spawn next to me when running around a corner, or having myself spawned in their spawn so I will be killed. For this fact alone, I have question on whether or not Infinity Ward, the main software of this game, even play tested the multiplayer of Ghosts. As it comes across me and by looking at some other reviews on this website, many others, that they just pushed out an unfinished game with many problems.
My second large problem with the multiplayer is two very large and underlying factors which can determine how successful players are in winning, that is both the maps and DLC's. With Call of Duty Ghosts, the maps which were released on the game, are a shadow of previous designs that have came in earlier titles. The maps are dark, uninviting and largely, poorly architected so that much of the action will happen in a certain area. Due to the darkness of maps and the poor floor design, it allows for persistent kills by "campers". With all the action flowing all into one, most often than not, central area of the map, campers can easily sit in buildings and pick off people one by one. Now, I understand this may be some people's stratergies in winning games or getting a high K/DR. However, I feel that people that do it lack the fundamental skills that make a GOOD Call of Duty player, as well as suck the enjoyment out of the game for everyone else. But with Call of Duty Ghosts' poor maps, you will succeed on this game if you camp. The maps on Ghosts reward bad play, but as well encourage yet again more camping ten year olds with laser sight LMG's.
My second section to my two part problem, is the DLC's on Ghosts. Currently, we are about two weeks away from the second map pack being released for Ghosts. This is an exciting time for many players as it is a new installation for the game. Maps, new camos and even avatars are being released for everyone to use. However, their is one aspect which Activision are leaving aside for their premium players, which is the use of DLC guns. Although this is not new and was first implemented in Call of Duty Black Ops II, Infinity Ward the makers of Ghosts, have decided to give players that have purchased map packs on the game, additional weapons. The two guns that have been released so far have been the Maverick and the new "Ripper" SMG. As you can already guess I have a large problem with them doing this. By including new weapons, which only certain players that have chose to buy the map packs can use, they add an entire new dynamic to the game. Both guns that have been released are incredibly over-powered and are by far, in my opinion, better than many of the weapons that were initially released on the game. The Maverick which is an assault rifle as well as a sniper, has low recoil as well as high damage for both the sniper and assault portions of the gun. The Ripper which is the newest installment and only released about a week ago, is an SMG, assault rifle combo. The Ripper which has excessively low recoil, high rate of fire and can switch on the fly between an SMG and AR, is the most overpowered weapon I have ever experienced whilst playing Call of Duty. Now that's a huge statement to make after witnessing, the M16A4 from COD4, to the UMP45 and FAMAS in MW2 and even the infamous, MP40 in World at War. But you have to take my word for it, this gun is hugely unfair towards all players. Not just for the factor of how powerful it is, but also for the fact that currently, this weapon is only allowed for premium players. People have paid $50 in advance to buy all the map packs, are allowed early access to this gun. Unfair, or what? That means, players who did not decide to pay $50 for all the maps, are now put at a huge disadvantage to the people that did. Through this being the case, Infinity Ward have not only created a huge in-balance in the game structure, but also made Ghosts almost like a free-to-play game (eg. World of Tanks) through having to pay to get more powerful added features. Coming into games by where DLC guns are used, players that did not pay for Ghosts premium are usually melted by users that did. This for me is a another huge error on Infinity Ward's part and another reason why I hugely dislike this game. All that we can hope for as users, is that Infinity Ward will patch the guns so that their killing ability will be dropped. But after looking at Infinity Ward's track record of producing patches from previous games such as MW2 and MW3, they will probably release a new camo DLC rather than patch their already broken game.
I'm sorry if you were reading this review in me mentioning the campaign of Call of Duty Ghosts. In most COD titles I will usually play the campaign at least once before the next release, however with Ghosts that is not the case. I played roughly three missions and had already lost complete interest due to the poor writing as well as being subjected to the usual standard Call of Duty "action" moments. In past years the campaigns for all of Call of Duty's have been least to say, lackluster. The last, really good campaign I played was Black Ops I, which had a planned easy to follow story, with twists and good action packed moments. The last three titles, with I would say the exception of MW3 in parts, have been awful. No story, horrible writing and boring missions just amount to most players losing interest. To be perfectly honest, I will most likely not play the Ghosts campaign as it will probably lose all credibility in the end, just like Black Ops II did, and have the antagonist and protagonist play an Avenged Sevenfold song together on stage.
This for me is the end of the review as it has taken me nearly two hours to write this. I strongly suggest to any of you out there which are intending to buy Ghosts reconsider. The spawns, maps and overpowered DLC weapons, for me, make this the worst Call of Duty to date. I would have mentioned the other things that bother me about this game such as the lack of game types, good connections and even the clearly planned gun battle deaths, but I thought I may bore you. This will be the last Call of Duty I will be purchasing, through this potentially being the last one to come on Xbox 360. I hope you enjoyed my review and if you can leave a comment (I'm new to this website) leave your opinions below. Thank you for your time and i hope you either learned something from this review, or it influenced your decision on purchasing this awful game.