Call of Duty: Ghosts will be damned if you peek away from your screen. Boredom is absolutely not allowed as the campaign pelts you with action vignettes—including a scene directly snagged from the opening of The Dark Knight Rises—and repeats its mantra ad nauseam: "Keep moving!"
I'm in space, I'm underwater, I'm piloting a dog, I'm piloting an Apache, I'm driving a tank that handles like a Lamborghini—all without ever really learning a new skill. The Apache, for instance, is magically repulsed from the ground—it's like piloting an air hockey disc—so finesse is unnecessary. On-screen cues tell you what you need to know as you're plunged into an airstrike: fire flares when an enemy locks on, left mouse button to fire your cannon, hold down the center mouse button to lock on with missiles. Then go to town.
It's fun in that it's something exciting to see and do: a theme park ride where I'm given an airsoft rifle to pelt the animatronics with. And it's a brilliant ride. There are pyrotechnics, car chases, submarines, and drone strikes. Once scene has me repelling down a skyscraper and shooting guards through the windows—and then the skyscraper collapses while I'm in it. It's every action scene Hollywood has imagined for the past 20 years packed into five to six hours of super-stylish interactive montages, and wrapped up in a goofy, inoffensive story about brothers trying to live up to their dad's super-soldier status.
Call of daddy
It's fun, but it's not engaging—Ghosts' campaign is even more passive than Telltale's recent point-and-clickers. In The Wolf Among Us, I have choices. In Ghosts, I have one choice, or failure. Frustratingly, even the decision to follow the constantly barked "keep moving" order can get me killed. That repeated flavor dialog should be ignored: save heroics for the scripted moments, stay crouched, and pop up sporadically to shoot at the bad guys.
Blowing up boats while remotely piloting a drone is fun and not at all challenging.
In rare instances, I was able to part from my squad, flank the enemy, and wipe them out with the advantage, but that kind of tactical planning was a sparsely present treat. It appeared once more in a jungle mission which put columns of guards between me and my squad, arming me only with a silenced pistol and sensor to detect nearby enemies. That was the only time I was given a goal and left to achieve it without explicit instructions for every action.
That was also the only time I got a magic bad guy sensor, and that's another of the campaign's failings: it fires off interesting ideas and then instantly forgets about them. Near the beginning, I'm introduced to my canine companion, Riley, and I can mark targets for him to quietly de-jugular. I did that once, when ordered to, and never again. Later, I get to use a remote-controlled sniper rifle to clear out a stadium. It's a great gadget that I'd have liked to plop down on my own a few times, but it never shows up again. Both weapons are like toys that I get to demo in the store, but never get to take home.
Sgt. Shark is awfully testy today.
But we get bored of toys after we take them home, whereas if we stay in the toy store, poking at everything that requires batteries, nothing needs to do more than light up and make noise to keep us entertained. And you won't ever be bored, because Ghosts' novelties are brilliant and bright, full of life and then whisked away before they can be broken open and revealed to be little electronic tricks.
If you buy Ghosts just for the multiplayer, I will say that you should at least play the campaign long enough to get to the first obligatory space scene. It's fantastic. It's Gravity with guns. I wish the whole thing had been in space.
The post Call of Duty: Ghosts PC review appeared first on PC Gamer.
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