COD Ghosts 3 yrs later

[BodyPolitic]

Don't go by steam's release date this game released Nov 5 2013. It did not have a very good launch and was panned pretty hard, for graphics and performance. Now looking back after a few years I'm seeing it in a slightly better light.

To understand Ghosts you need to understand its time and place, Infinity Ward (The good COD dev once upon a time) was still reeling over the loss of thier 2 founding members and creators of COD 4 MW, and had thier last game (though winning in sales) Modernwarfare 3 blown out of the water by Battlefield 3, which looked a generatin ahead of the ageing Modern Warfare engine.

The launch of the new generation of consoles was supposed to be met with a new cod engine that would be able to go toe to toe with battlefied, enter Ghosts. The big problem was PS3,Xb360 still had huge install bases and for that holiday season, being number 1 on ps4/xb1 but losing on the older systems would be considered a failure all around. So Ghosts tried to compromise, they saw one of the big things being touted in the next BF (4) was enviroment destruction (levolution ) So really went in deep on that in Ghosts and surprisingly even today the enviromental destruction parts of Ghosts are still impressive, streets buckling, houses splintering, eroded buildings falling into the sea. All very good stuff and a step ahead of the prev COD, and even I would say BF3 in the detail of the destruction.

Unfortunately they focused on that, but left a old lighting system and didn't have pyhsically based rendering, that wonderfull lighting/rendering you see in todays games that make materials like nylon, or canvas look realistic and have depth. This hurt Ghost badly, BF 4 had PbR and looked fantastic, did it matter that the "levolution" was prerigged and had parts fall out like lego blocks? Not really, when you could see the freaking leather of your gloves, or the canvas of your backpacks and know it looked real. Having cool destruction physics dont' mean much if its all light by a flyspecked nightlight. On top of that 2gb vram cards where having a very hard time coping w/ ghosts and its hungry use of resources for textures that didn't look as good or real as in Battlefield 4. So you got a not as good looking game, and it doesnt run well on the avg gaming rig? Set up for failure, and the crown was passed to BF4.

Now I can play Ghosts on max settings and have it bounce off the 144hz refresh rate, now I can sit back and enjoy watching the streets rip themselves apart,from orbital kinetic strikes. Now I can play a story thats a little more grounded, and while still grandiose offers something of a bleak but compelling image of beaten but not broken america fighting for survival, where the difference between victory and defeat isn't down to having some great mech, but on the skills of the tier 1 teams, on how well you work with your dog, vs how well you pilot your drone. Also thought the aliens in extinction where a really cool touch that moved away from the zombies that infected most recent cod multiplayers.

This isn't a great game by any means, but it does do some things well, has an interesting story and is an attempt to show moderm warfare vs far future warfare. If you are thinking of giving it spin agian, go for it! Maybe I'll catch you in extinction match

[WALKaBOUT50]

no help nader

[pastythief]

i love th game, and your review really helped me make the decision to pklay it again. many thanks.

[( قهوة)]

Yea this game is not bad just some annoying things, for example I can play II Worlds game(old one) on my 21:9 monitor, but no CoD titles, only using Flawless Screen, but can get vac. this is way I will consider before buying another CoD game.

[Nucas]

games that straddle console generations always look disappointing. gta 5 looks substandard for the same reason.

[BodyPolitic]

Originally posted by ☠☺☠:

Yea this game is not bad just some annoying things, for example I can play II Worlds game(old one) on my 21:9 monitor, but no CoD titles, only using Flawless Screen, but can get vac. this is way I will consider before buying another CoD game.

I honestly enjoyed Black Ops 3 . I'm more of a campaign guy in most games and Blk Ops 3 was almost like playing Mass Effect COD with the powers etc