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thepeculiarauthor · 1 day ago

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Call of Duty: Ghosts didn't get enough love so I wrote an entire review!

The Rundown

First, a quick rundown from Wikipedia, if you’re new to the game. Call of Duty: Ghosts is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It is the tenth major installment in the Call of Duty series and the sixth developed by Infinity Ward… The game acts as a standalone installment… Ghosts inherits much of the core gameplay and structure of previous titles, with a mission-based campaign and an open-ended multiplayer, but introduces a near-future setting to the series as well as an increased focus on tactical gameplay…

Post-apocalyptic sci-fi meets recon missions and a lot of crazy situations. This is one of the reasons I love post-apoc, and write it myself, because you can ask, “What if this happened?” even if it’s outlandish or crazy or just plain sadistic fun. I sort of chime in with the other players that said this is an innovative game.

Ghosts has a pretty cool plot, but it’s also a really good balance of plot and characters. Especially with post-apoc and all, you can either have too much of a focus on the plot, or too much of a focus on the characters, to where it’s heavy-handed and bogged down. Ghosts had great pacing, great action, and the characters pushed the plot along, so everything was smoothly intertwined. The gameplay was pretty cool in campaign. There were a few little janky parts and moments, but nothing major. I also enjoyed the different settings a lot.

Now that the semi-professional overview of the game is completed, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what I really enjoyed, and maybe, some stuff I didn’t enjoy. Be warned, this review has a lot of spoilers, but I’m also 11 years late to the game, so you probably don’t care.

Also, as a slight disclaimer: a lot of the game’s “hate” was directed toward the game’s multiplayer option. I haven’t played multiplayer on Ghosts, so I have no thoughts about it, and this review won’t have any feedback on that. I will note people are still playing multiplayer, though. I booted up one game before jumping into the campaign, so it’s funny that for a “hated” multiplayer game, people are still running it over a decade later, but, yeah.

A Unique Relationship Dynamic

Ghosts is the only CoD game I’ve played where the MCs are bloodkin, which was such a cool detail. I grew up with four siblings, and there is so much to explore in sibling relationships, but you rarely see it in fiction — not genuine, deep relationships, anyway. Sure, the premise of most war/military stories are camaraderie, which is brotherhood, but there is still a difference in that vs. being siblings. Siblings share the same parents, upbringing, and have known each other since one of them was born; so there’s so much to unpack. I think Ghosts did a pretty good job at exploring that dynamic. It was sort of interesting to see Hesh be the “leader,” but Logan still takes so closely after their dad, too. It was so obvious that the game had so much in store with this dynamic, and the build up to a second game was really well done… But more on the forsaken “game two” later.

I really enjoyed Hesh and Logan. I liked the subtly implied thing throughout that Logan was maybe in Hesh’s shadow… But we didn’t see bad blood, so to speak. Logan/we still followed Hesh anywhere, covered him, saved him. I think it’s a realistic reminder that siblings and parents can have all sorts of little hiccups, but still be family. Again, maybe a small thing to note, but you don’t see it much? It’s usually, “Dad, you always loved/treated this sibling better than me! I’ll kill you!” which isn’t realistic.

The Traitor Trope

Anyway, speaking of the Walker dad… I like the trope they used with Elias Walker and Gabriel Rorke. I like the trope of brother bonds going bad, for whatever reason, and the group left behind having to figure out how to stop the “bad brother” from destroying things. It was interesting to have the “bad guys” break Rorke down and make him into a new person, and it was fun to see him hunt the Ghosts and want to eliminate them all… except Logan. (Which, on that note, very few stories end with the “bad guy winning,” which was fun!)

And I think the brother dynamic and traitor trope go hand-in-hand in this game! It felt that the game wanted you to notice that Hesh was the leader, and Logan followed, so maybe that was why Rorke saw different potential in Logan? (I mean, realistically, he probably saw the skills and “fire” in Logan, but maybe figured he would also be easier to break down?)

I mean, from a gameplay perspective, sure, it would have been cool to have options for Logan to make his own decisions throughout the game — but this game is also over a decade old, and I can imagine the logistics of offering that much leeway in a game model is hard, so I’m not too bothered by it.

(Update after writing this: so, as it turns out, the developers did intend for a multiple-options factor for the game’s ending, like BO2, I think. But they tossed the idea right before launch so the game had one ending, instead. Again, probably for a smooth build up into a second game, but… We didn't get the second game.)

Overall, while I loved the story and cast, the plot twist at the ending was a bit annoying. I knew it was coming — it’s the lil’ trope CoD can’t get enough of. “We killed the bad guy! Sure, we didn’t see the corpse or anything, but he’s as good as dead!” (I don’t know if I’m a sadistic little freak, but if a guy killed my dad / almost killed my brother and my group, I would find a way to decapitate him for good measure, but alas. What would you do? Let me know below, haha.) I think it would have been more believable to have the brothers fail, maybe narrowly so, but still fail, because seeing a guy escape a crash in the water, explosions, and yeah, a .45 round to the chest… Kind of a stretch. I think it could have been a bit more realistic, and dramatic, if Hesh had gone for a different angle to cause the domino effect, but whatever.

Loose Ends

There are a few other minor things I wanted to note that I enjoyed…

I know people that hate Elias — saying he was a bad father and all — but I didn’t think that was really the gig. I think when you’re part of a secret recon group, that until your kids prove they can be trusted/somewhat safe with that intel, you can’t just yap about it, and that if they want to prove themselves capable, they do have to be tested.

The intro mission to save Ajax was well done. One of the more impactful scenes in the franchise. The narration toward that scene later was a sucker punch, too, when Hesh acknowledged how the Ghosts treated their dead.

The cast. Man, what a group of characters. The Ghosts were amazing, and I genuinely don’t think the franchise/fandom gives any of them enough recognition. I think if they did a second game, it’d hit harder this round, for sure, and I think the cast deserves it.

Keegan running missions with Logan was one of my favorite parts. Again, I kinda liked the correlation of Keegan taking Logan under his wing / maybe seeing his potential, maybe even more so than Elias, and then Rorke seeing the same, but in his twisted version. At least, that’s my take on that.

Riley was such a fun addition, and a cool shoutout to K9s, which is another thing we rarely see in media, but should.

The voice acting was on point. Across the board, super well done. Hesh yelling for Logan at the very end? One of the few times I’ve actually gotten chills while playing a game.

The soundtrack was pretty good, too. Really nice tone for Ghosts. (Also, going from the “what just happened” at the ending and then getting hit with “Survival” by Eminem was absolutely hilarious.)

Overall, I have to admit, besides some minor plot things (like, you know, why not just kill Rorke instead of using a missile that, somehow, didn’t work; or maybe, elaborate on why the Ghosts weren’t actually readying a mission to get the brothers out, which could’ve added even more urgency to the ending, but my writer-brain digresses), I didn’t have much I disliked about the game. I liked it. It was a lot of fun to play. I really hope, even still, that a second game is released.

The Overarching Theme

This was a part of a decade where writing was heartfelt.

Modern Warfare 2, launched in 2009, was, and to this day, still is, one of the most heartfelt pieces of fiction created, but I notice a theme during that time period where most things had that gritty heart, and Ghosts is no different. Stories back then could have grit and hellfire and chaos and themes that reminded you of why you fight, why you get up every day, why loving people really matters.

I think Ghosts reminded its audiences that family is still pretty much all you have. (And, maybe another lesson would be, “Make sure they’re actually dead.”) Because nowadays, a lot of stories, in any shape or form, are just cheap money grabs, mindless jabs at nihilism or emptiness or shallowness, and stories that cater to lust. So stories like “OG” Call of Duty are insanely refreshing and sobering, as both a person/gamer, and even as a story creator.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts, too. Let me know if you’ve played Ghosts, and what you thought of it. I’ll have reviews posted for Black Ops 6, the original Modern Warfare 2 / the remake MWII, coming shortly, so sub for more content. And if you love the OG CoD, and like to read / want to try to read more, give my books a shot. The Infidel Books are like CoD meets Red Dawn, of sorts. You can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L656RT5

Angela

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