5. Even Call Of Duty Has Gone Apocalyptic
I never enter the Call of Duty campaigns expecting much of a sophomoric and thought provoking tale of war anymore. Its unfortunately a ship that sailed with the last great story being found in Black Ops. Everything since has been a whole lot of forgettable nonsense framing a cacophony of explosions and slow motion breaches. Occasionally the franchise excels here (The zero gravity plane sequence where youre defending the President in Modern Warfare 3 springs to mind), but for the most part its not really enough to define a campaign as anything to write home about. Ghosts unfortunately doesnt abandon this disappointing line of thinking as you will spend half of the game wondering why the hell youre doing anything youre doing. I swear an overwhelming majority of the games missions were constructed before the actual plot was even conceptualized. Within an hour you will go from blowing up an oil rig to sneaking into a factory to blowing up another ship (but this time youre underwater so exciting), unable to fully make sense or care about why youre partaking in these 15 minute exercises. Im not joking either, each mission lasts around 15 minutes leaving you even further perplexed at what is going on. Its kind of hard to get yourself invested in a moment when in 15 minutes you will have moved somewhere else entirety. For example, theres a mission where youre briefed on taking down this heavily guarded ship. Want to know what it consists of? All you do is follow around your AI partner underwater, grab a missile launcher, and shoot it. THAT was heavily guarded? Just train Michael Phelps on how to fire a rocket launcher and he could have done it himself! The pacing of the story is just appallingly bad and unable to connect with players on any emotional level. The plot itself isnt even that tantalizing and centers on you hunting down a Ghost turned Federation leader named Rorke. Sure, it takes place in an apocalyptic version of America thanks to terrorists hijacking a space station weapon and nuking areas, but simply brandishing your tale as apocalyptic doesnt mean anything if theres nothing interesting to care about. Without diving into spoilers, I also have to mention that the ending is insultingly bad. The sheer amount of leaps in logic and endurance of the human body is put to preposterous levels. They should have just called the damn game Call of Duty: Terminator. If you watch the entire ending sequence youll instantly catch my drift. I think the worst aspect of it all though is that it ends on an unresolved cliffhanger that perfectly aligns the plot for a predictably and equally embarrassing sequel. Admittedly, the voice acting is good with Rorkes voice actor being the highlight. His character is pretty generic and typical of military shooter villains but his gruffy voice and psychotic tendencies make for some great moments sprinkled along the way. His past is a haunting one with the audio files that expand on the character highlighting the entire campaign.