Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/18/game_theory_call_of_duty_ghosts/
HAUNTED HOWITZERS, it’s Call of Duty Ghosts
Plus: More Zelda and a fairy tale of New York...
Posted in Personal Tech, 18th November 2013 09:33 GMT
Game Theory It’s a final stand for the current generation of console hardware as we go on patrol with the latest release in the increasingly tired Call of Duty series, Ghosts, but have a much more entertaining time with A Link Between Worlds in the latest Zelda game, and get to grips with the Big Bad Wolf in Fables: The Wolf Among Us.
Call of Duty: Ghosts
If ever a series was frantically treading water it’s Call of Duty. Ghosts represents a last shout for a game engine that should have been packed off to Eastbourne with a pipe and slippers years ago.
FPS: Frequently Plugged Shooter
Plainly, Ghosts offers so few new ideas that it feels like a late-night repeat show. The solo campaign might sport an original storyline that sets out to pitch you into a war-torn United States, but actually playing it is a strangely bland, unsatisfying experience, despite - or perhaps because of - the hectic shoot-outs.
Little has changed. The enemy AI is just dim, the range of environment just as limited and the ways you might approach an encounter just as finite as last time. So much so that it’s hard not to point to such shortfalls as areas that are simply not good enough – and haven’t been for some time.
Novelties like outer space and inner ocean scenarios, and sending Riley the attack dog out to subdue foes, might paper over some of the cracks. But ultimately Ghosts feels like a case of ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’, as George Bush famously never quite managed to say.
Space, man
It all gets a lot better when it comes to the multiplayer side of things, of course. Here, the ageing engine manages to keep play zipping along nicely.
Modes of play such as Cranked, Search and Rescue, Domination, and Blitz recycle online FPS stalwarts. That said, the sheer variety on show will ensure that the series’ zillions of devotees will keep the servers filled for months to come.
Expect to experience combat that seems to take place in fast-forward, across maps where life is cheap and the next respawn is but a quick replay of your abrupt death away. Oh, and yes, you can take your trusty German Shepherd online too.
Even Sparky the Wonder Dog can’t save this one
For the novice there’s the option to practise with bots. Gamers looking for something completely different can take on Extinction mode. Imagine Black Ops’ Zombie mode with the undead swapped for aliens, and you won’t be too far away.
All very entertaining, then, but shallow, despite a vast number of unlockables designed to provide a constant stream of reasons to come back. I put it all down to the continued feeling of déjà vu.
Overly familiar gameplay is a complaint also easily attributed to Battlefield 4, of course. But the yearly cycle of Call of Duty simply makes the whole exercise feel all the more staid and its failure to develop in interesting ways even more apparent.
Fast-food gaming?
Buy it for its online community and its fast, frenetic and honed multiplayer gameplay. Just don’t expect to see very much you haven’t seen before.
The Wolf Among Us Episode One: Faith
I must admit, I’ve never actually read a Fables comic. I’d heard about the premise – characters from fairy tales living together in the real world – but never has it found a place on my pull-list. Thanks to the excellence of The Wolf Among Us, I think that’s about to change.
The Wolf Among Us is Telltale Games’ latest attempt to future-proof the point-and-click adventure. Like The Walking Dead adaptation it came up with last year, play entails relatively simple environmental puzzles mixed with frenzied action scenes where you’ll have to hit the correct buttons to complete purposefully tough quick time event sequences.
My, what big fists you have
Central to proceedings is Sheriff Bigby Wolf – aka the Big Bad Wolf of both Little Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs fame. His job is to protect the Fables living in New York City, or else consign them to The Farm should they misbehave and refuse to use “Glamours” – magic that makes the likes of Mr Toad appear human.
Bigby is a clichéd noir character, as likely to solve any given situation with his fists (and claws) as much as with his wits. The constant battle between brains and brawn is neatly portrayed in the offering of a variety of responses that genuinely alter how certain parts of the story pan out.
It’s a narrative that soon sees Bigby on the scent of a killer, and one that offers up new suspects at every cliffhanging turn. It weaves its way between such characters as both Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and Colin – the pig who built his house from straw — as it goes.
Ya huffed, ya puffed, and now my f**n’ house is f**n’ blown down
Each section is written as if the fairy tale really was a long, long time ago and New York’s dark underbelly has been eating away at the Fable’s virtue. Don’t be surprised to see your favourite characters addicted to illicit substances or even working the streets.
Bigby himself habitually smokes Huff’n’Puff cigarettes – the only item of “nutrition” in his otherwise barren fridge. Colin the pig is a bourbon-slugging couch potato who has still to come to terms with the loss of his straw house.
It’s these clever references, combined with some of the best character dialogue I’ve heard all year – just watch Bigby consult the Magic Mirror – that makes The Wolf Among Us a real joy to play.
Mirror, mirror on the floor, who’s the fairest mutha of them all?
For the record, I completed it, without any problems or pauses for thought, in about 90 minutes. Yes it’s linear, and more interactive story than game, but I don’t think that changes what is a fantastically realised piece of entertainment. And it only 19 quid.
Besides, you can always do what I did and complete it all over again, making sure you take all those different forks along the road to discover whole new scenes and exchanges. Believe me, you’ll be glad you did.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Zelda games: they’re like the comfiest pullover you own, the one you take no small amount of pleasure in snuggling into when the cold, dark nights start closing in.
A Link Between Worlds is no different, offering all the usual, familiar Zelda elements – dungeons, Master Sword, hookshot, etc – but spruced up just enough so it doesn’t feel like the moths have been at it since you last put it on.
Top down dungeoneering
It’s a sequel of a kind too, in that it revisits the Dark World, a land that those of us who braved the classic A Link to the Past – and who hasn’t? – will fondly remember.
As before, the Light and Dark Worlds, or Hyrule and Lorule, are reflections of each other, albeit with geographical anomalies that mean a dead end in one might be dealt with by popping over into the other.
A nice gimmick, particularly when handled with Nintendo’s usual flair. So too is a brand new power that hands Link the ability to literally blend into walls. Here our hieroglyphic hero can span chasms where there is no bridge simply by merging with the cliff face itself.
Kitsch-en sink drama
This same power aids Link’s passing from world to world as he edges through cracks in the fabric of each. Dungeon exploration benefits from the trick too. Truly, Nintendo has pushed the feature far to create whole new ways to bamboozle.
In 2D mode, this 3DS game’s tremendous musical score switches, noticeably, from stereo to mono. An almost incidental touch, but one that illustrates the polish applied throughout.
Fans will also appreciate a move away from a linear path through the game. Zelda games usually dictate the player’s next move by bestowing Link with ability-expanding items one by one, but not so here.
Link’d in
Instead, Link can hire, and eventually buy, nearly every item – bombs, bow, hookshot, boomerang and more – from the game’s beginnings. It’s a small shift that at once puts the choice of where to explore next firmly in the player’s hands.
Perhaps the best way to recommend A Link Between Worlds is to say it’s the best top-down Zelda title since A Link to the Past on the SNES. Indeed, given the imagination on show and its surprising toughness, it’s probably better still. ®