Much like gaming journalism's Jim Sterling, I am actually quite a fan of the Call of Duty games. But not for the usual reasons. I do not touch the multi-player because with a few rare exceptions, I do not care for multi-player and especially not for competitive multi-player. But I do enjoy the Call of Duty campaigns. As simple and cheesy as they are, they do provide a lot of action packed experiences and some great set pieces and big budget Hollywood-like thrills. I'll usually only play through them once but it's a good thrill ride while it lasts. The stories in these games is usually fairly thin on the ground and just an excuse to kill lots of dudes (with the exception of the Black Ops sub-series which I felt had a bit more to it) but that doesn't really matter because I'm just usually in it for the dude shooting and big explosions.
The "plot" this time takes on a sort of Red Dawn motif where America has been invaded and mostly destroyed by the newly founded South American Federation and it all fires off with them attacking and setting off an American space defence system called Odin. You soon become part of one of the few remaining elite American military groups called "The Ghosts" and must solve this problem. With guns.
The game-play is the usual standard FPS kind of thing. But there are a few new things to mix it up. One of main ones that was widely touted upon the games announcement is the now famous Call of Duty Dog, Riley:
Not wanting to issue spoilers here, but Riley does not play as huge a role in the game as you'd think only being present for a few levels out of the 18 total. But he is very awesome when he is there being able to be commanded to kill any enemy you can see with the press of a button or remote controlled at some times using him to stalk through sections and eat people.
There are also a few interesting types of different level like completely underwater scuba levels and even levels in SPACE where you float around shooting dudes which is fun. Apart from these ones, most are fairly normal ones on the ground mostly on foot, but some sweet vehicle levels too including tanks and such but are all very action filled and tense providing plenty of thrills.
Despite this being one of the big next-gen games, I played this on PC with maxed out settings and in Directx 11 and it did look very nice but not an enormous step up from last year's Black Ops II. But still nicer that it does in XBone or PS4 due to much more powerful hardware. "Next gen" graphics and abilities have been around for quite a while on PC so I'm not terribly excited about any of the next gen consoles myself or any of their social media or TV features. I already have a PC that can do it all better.
Again, not wanting to do spoilers, but the ending does seem like a major set up for a sequel but despite this, the sequel has not been confirmed yet.
An enjoyable game all in all if you're a Call of Duty fan or a fan of big budget shooters or dogs. If not, you can probably skip this one but I had fun with it while it lasted.
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