That's thing, most people I know who get Call of Duty every year will get this and spend the next three or four months talking about how they don't like it as much as the last one, but somehow they'll manage to continue playing it until the next one comes out. My guess is the biggest complaint will be the lack of zombies.

The campaign itself is getting mixed reception with sites like IGN thinking it was great while Jeff and others didn't share the same enthusiasm. It also seems some changes and omissions to multiplayer were what appears to have divided the critics in the end and even though CoD will still go one to sell the ludicrous numbers I do wonder if any of the reviews will be taken serious by Activision to improve Infinity Ward's next game in the series.

@humanity: Because if they couldn't rely on selling 20 million copies of the same game every year, they might be forced to design a new one.

This just further cements the idea that Infinity Ward is the off year for Call of Duty instead of Treyarch.

Why can't someone else design something better? Is Infinity Ward the only FPS developer on the market? Why are we all so hung up on IW changing their game rather than demanding others come up with something better to trump it?

@nekroskop: Eh, I was never one of those "Same shit, different year" people. I enjoyed the summer blockbuster single player campaigns. And the multiplayer was usually fun for a couple weeks.

If what I head about them removing Search and Destroy is true then it deserves a 3 star. I will find out in about an hour.

It's mentioned in several reviews that it was replaced. I was debating between this and Battlefield 4 for a shooter on the PS4 and hearing that made my decision a lot easier. S&D was one of my favorite modes back when I played Call of Duty.

They aren't using the Quake III engine... there's just some code left over - and I believe it's for some online business. Has nothing to do with the gameplay or graphics as far as I know.

I know but it's easier to make fun of it that way.

It's still one old piece of shit engine, it feels identical to Call of Duty 2 still, with some extra graphics tacked on.

That's because Shane "Biggest COD fan" Satterfield is no longer there.

haha fair enough, agreed

Because there's only so much consumer time and money to go around, and it's all tied up in the same handful of games every year. There's no point making something new (at least not with any kind of budget) until the market demands it.

I'm not really looking at the developers to decide to change, I'm waiting for the market to force them to change. That'll happen sooner or later, and personally I'd be happier with sooner rather than later. An awful lot of the industry's output is tied up in reproducing those same games over and over again and it'd be nice if the market were a little quicker to punish them for such a lack of creativity and ambition. It'd be nice because it'd instantly lead to more creativity and ambition.

The market saying "You know what, 7 releases of this game is enough now... We have these brand new consoles, how about let's try something new?" would be an incredibly refreshing start to the generation. I'm not expecting that, because it'll take a while for this supertanker to slow down, but the press finally not giving CoD a free pass based on name alone is a good start.

No bonuses for the devs this year.

Unfortunately the market and the press are two completely separate entities. Just because CoD will start reviewing in the average scale, as it's still a fundamentally good game just not as ambitious anymore, won't mean sales will start dropping. There are millions of people out there that are happy with this game, and they don't need drastic changes. Are they wrong? Is the vocal minority that bemoans everything Call of Duty related to dictate how the franchise should behave for the millions that simply don't care and are happy with another yearly iteration?

There is no point in making something new until the market demands it? That is insanity. So we're all supposed to only eat porridge until we get bored and only then get something new? This sort of thinking would lead the entire industry to complete stagnation. I don't want to wait until Call of Duty gets to the point where it's hardly turning a profit anymore before someone makes a new game. I want three new choices each year, I want the developer to fight for my money by making something bigger and better without waiting for the competition to fold in on itself.

I just can't fathom why people are so caught up with wanting to change this formula that is working just fine for millions of people instead of asking for something new. I have friends that buy the new NBA game every year, and they love it. On top of that every year when a new CoD comes out, that is someones very first CoD game, and to them it is all very cool and exciting. And honestly, what else is there? You have Battlefield, which plays completely differently than CoD does.. and what else? Where is the competition? Medal of Honor? Resistence? Killzone? Who actually does this better than Call of Duty does?

You're right that it's a new generation, and it would be really refreshing to see other developers come up with a shooter so awesome that we would all instantly jump ship and not even look back.

It would be a really interesting experiment for someone who has never played a Call of Duty game before to review this one. I would love to see the impressions of that person.

So sleeping dogs, a game that activision canned because of "quality reasons", ended up with a higher metacritic than ghosts.

oh call of duty...

im really curious to see if this one sells as strong as the others, i feel like this game will either prove or disprove the power of reviews on influencing purchases.

He's talking about from a business standpoint. There's no point in Activision just dropping CoD (a franchise that is one of the best selling ever since MW) to make a new title because the new title is a risk. Making Black Ops III is a much, much smaller risk. For consumers they are going to think (Should I get this new Gun game? Or should I get the new Black Ops? AHH YEAH FUCK YEAH BLACK OPS II WAS THE SHIT IMMA GET THE NEW ONE). There's nothing wrong with that mentality from either side.

@davidwitten22: Of course. That is why Activision isn't supposed to drop it's own successful series, that's inane - it's the job of others to develop something better to dethrone the king.

Not while the others can just copycat that proven blueprint and still be successful. Even the great white hope Titanfall is by the CoD architects and looks about 95% CoD.

Nobody will bother going out of their way to make something new / different because not enough people are demanding that. Rest assured, people will eventually get bored of just playing the same few games over and over again, it'll just take some longer than others. If the vast majority are perfectly happy repeatedly paying for the same game every year -often multiple times- then indeed, who am I to argue with them? If collectively we want stagnation then that's what we'll have.

"This sort of thinking would lead the entire industry to complete stagnation."

Welcome to the last five years.

@jimbo: Stagnation in the FPS genre alone, and mainly caused by no one else stepping up to deliver a better experience apart from Battlefield, which is stagnant in it's own way by now.

I wouldn't say it was limited to FPS, I'd say the whole top end of our industry has been more or less stagnant since about '07. There were a clutch of massively successful 'blueprint' games released across the board around '05-'07 (Gears, WoW, CoD4, Guitar Hero) which then got re-released or imitated to death since then. Same thing will happen to all of them eventually, we're just at different points along the 'Dear God, enough of this fucking game already' road for each of those blueprints, with 3 of them now dead or in terminal decline. It's only a matter of time before CoD's very specific brand of brain dead, compulsion driven FPS joins them.

Ultimately the blame for stagnation rests with consumers for allowing it. As soon as we refuse it, it will stop. Hopefully the belated arrival of new hardware will help lift the limits on what is achievable, but the industry will still require a shove in the right direction from consumers.

I"m going to play this for Xbox One, and I really enjoyed Black Ops and Black Ops 2. But I noticed something funny in a commercial that just aired during Monday Night Football. There's a splash screen of scores near the end of the commercial, and I knew critical reception had been kind of tepid. So I froze the screen as best I could.

The most prominent score displayed is a big "100" set dead-cetner in the screen. It's from something called "Zoo" that I'm not that familiar with. If I was forced to guess, I think that's a British "lad mag," like the US's Maxim?

The other displayed 100s are from places called "God Is a Geek" and "Biogamer Girl." I have no ideas what these are. Publications? Youtube channels? Blogs like mine? The final 100 is from "Nuts."

The National Post, a Canadian newspaper I equate with the US's USA Today, gave it a 90. USA Today itself is placed in the center with an 87.5 The other outlets I recognize, Machinima and another Canadian national paper The Globe and Mail, are among the low end of displayed scores at 85.

Other featured outlets, with scores ranging from the 90s to 85, are a ton of places I've never heard of. Here's a sampling:

Canadianonlinegamers, Gamevortex, Gaming Age, Gamealive.com, Gamereactor Portugal, Jeuxactu, Eurogamer Portugal, Xboxlife.DK, Xboxlive.fr, 9lives.be, NZ Gamer, Gaming Illustrated. IGN's score is on screen for maybe a third of a second.

My point is, if you want to make a commercial with review scores, you can probably find enough places from which you can cherry-pick.

Totally agree with this. Really depressing to see Halo 4 try and copy from CoD, when it shouldn't have had to.

I think this COD could give Battlefield, Titanfall, Destiny a good chance to grab some of CODs Market share.

This will sell the question is if this is the COD that make people hesitant to preorder the next one. Like i was with Assasins creed 4 after the last one.

I think like WoW its to big to just fail but i can imagine the userbase will have waned to some degree by the time the next one is released.

#SAMEDUTYDIFFERENTDAY

I'm not really wanting to buy COD anything anymore, though I may eventually (this winter, steam sale) get Blops2. I'm not supposed to do that but I probably will.

My salient point, I cannot believe how freaking washed out Ghosts looked. Strictly for that, they need to look over the fence at Battlefield 4, and say they aren't giving that up again.

Otherwise, military shooters. Burned out on them.

There is a film .... errr.... "critic" named Mark S Allen who is notorious for never saying anything is bad and therefore being on a lot of quotes in trailers or on movie boxes. He is really basically a host but made that his thing.

Games are no different here and I'm sure that'll be a growing thing.

Not that maybe they couldn't like it. But games will do the same, making quotes with tiny text saying who it was by.

I love when it's just one word, like "EPIC".

Ditto. I"m always tempted to go back and look for context, like "This was an epic waste of time..."

If I remember tonight, I want to go back to Bioshock Infinite, which I think had a similar style trailer, and compare the outlets used in that to this.

There has been "FPS Fatigue" across the the tail end of the generation. No one should be surprised people are bored of another Spectacle FPS game.

Say what you will, but Megan Fox looked smoking hot in the commercials