Here we are. It has been six days since the grand release of Call of Duty: Ghosts. I have had time to play quite a bit and my opinions have changed a little bit.
Initially, I was very excited about Ghosts, that hasn’t changed. I still really like it but there are a few things that I have noticed that are driving me nuts. Some of the things that were frustrating me were fixed with the patch that was released yesterday but some things remain, and I don’t know that they will fix or address them…or even can.
First thing that drove me batty, which has since been fixed, was the inability to mute individual players while in game on multiplayer. Most of the time, even if they are annoying, I just tune out the other players unless I am looking for specific information such as enemy location or such. As everyone knows, there are those goofballs that insist on playing music in the background, have really annoying buzzing sounds (crappy headset), or are obviously playing from some location like the Mall of America where there are 60,000 people yelling and screaming in the background. Well, this makes hearing the game, as well as other players you want to hear very difficult. I want to mute these derps. Initially, the only time that you could mute individual players was in the lobby before a match. When you actually entered the match, the only option that you had for muting was to mute everyone or mute everyone except friends. Seeing that very few of my friends a) have a PS3 and b) play Ghosts, this would mean that I would always be muting everyone. As I mentioned, the patch that they released yesterday fixed this problem so, GOOD JOB Infinity Ward!
The next thing that is kind of driving me crazy is the weapons and the amount of damage they cause. It seems to me that there is a very large inconsistency in this regard. First off, I play a lot of Infected mode. I really like this mode and it lends to my style. I like one-on-one styles where you are not responsible to a team and only to yourself…you know, because I really suck and don’t want to bring others down LOL. In Infected mode, you start off with a Bulldog shotgun, an IED, and a concussion grenade. The goal is to survive for as long as possible without being infected. You become infected when you are killed by a player that is infected. The game starts with one player randomly being selected as infected. Unless you are this random player, the only weapons that you have when you are infected is your combat knife, throwing knife, and a tactical insertion. If you are lucky enough to be randomly selected as the first infected, you also receive a pistol until the first player is infected besides yourself.
Where am I going with that you ask? Well, here is the thing. Shotguns are great for in close, one shot, kills. The further you get away from your target, the less effective the shotgun is going to be. In the world of Call of Duty, the further you get away from your target, the more shots it is going to take to the point that the shotgun is ineffective. Where this inconsistency that I mentioned comes into play is the effective distance of the Bulldog. There have been several matches where I have been shot by a player at a range that should be well outside the range of the Bulldog. I have also seen where shots failed to kill an attacker when fired well within the expected range of the Bulldog. This inconsistency is ridiculous in my book. There should be no factor, other than weapons attachments, that effect the range of a particular weapon. Even with shotguns. To me, it seems there is some randomness built in here.
Also, when it comes to weapons, there seems to be some confusion over the damage that is caused by each weapon and, by contrast, based upon what player is using it. Take the ARX-160 for example. Within 1,000 units (CoD’s measurement of distance), the standard ARX-160 with no attachments should kill the enemy with 3 on-target shots. As an example of distance, a frag grenade in Ghosts has a lethal range of 102 units and you can throw a frag grenade up to 1,200 units. Discounting head shots of course, this should be pretty darn consistent. It isn’t. I have been super close to other players and unloaded half of my magazine into them and they hit me once or twice, and I go down and they continue on. As an experiment, I recorded the following video. The load out, simple. ARX-160 with VMR Sight, Foregrip, and Semi-Automatic. No secondary weapon, no Lethal or Tactical, no Perks, and no Strike Package. As a note, for some reason that makes no sense to me, the addition of the Semi-Automatic mod reduces the number of on-target hits from 3 to 2 within the same distance as an unmodified ARX-160. At a range of 2600 units, with the same configuration, it should take only 4 on-target hits.
Here is what happened:
This is by no means scientific, just an example of what I am seeing. Now, this was local and not multiplayer but it is the same thing I am seeing. The telling point is at the 2250 unit mark. The first round, it took 4 on-target shots to get the kill. That is what I expected. What took me by surprise is on the second go, it took 6 on-target hits to get the kill. I didn’t miss, you can see the hit markers and the reaction each time. This makes no sense.
Next, the iPad app. What a piece of useless crap! The entire reason that I downloaded and installed the app was the second screen feature that they advertise. Well, almost every time I try to use it, it says that the second screen feature will be rolled out soon. I don’t play in a clan, so all the clan features don’t mean a thing to me. Guys, don’t promote stuff until you have it working!
Finally, and this is the biggest thing to me, the dedicated servers…or lack there or. Where are the dedicated servers that we were lead to believe were going to happen? You know, to get rid of a lot of the hacker problems? To get rid of lag switching? I will admit that I don’t have any proof at this point, but I have already seen evidence of people cheating and taking advantage of some of the same issues that we have seen in the past editions of COD. A perfect example from a match I was playing yesterday; I was first infected. There were two players, split-screeners of course (I hate split-screeners) that, no matter what direction I came from, they were perched on top of a rock facing the direction that I came from. Now, if this had happened two or three times, I could write it off as coincidence. It happened ten times! Also, this was another example of their Bulldog shot guns having a range way beyond what would be expected of a shotgun of any type. In a game mode where you cannot adjust your weapons loadouts, there is no reason they should have an advantage over anyone else except if they are cheating in some manner.
Long story short, well…there is no short story from me, I still enjoy playing Ghosts. I am working on my game play, working on getting used to the newness of it. I am starting to understand the maps and I seem to be getting the hang of it. I will keep playing. I won’t let the negatives get me down…I will just adjust to them and carry on. Overall, it is still a good game in my mind, it just needs some tweaking and adjusting. That was expected in my mind and should have been in everyone else’s mind as well.
What do you think about Call of Duty: Ghosts now that it has been out for almost a week? What are your likes? What are your dislikes? What would you like to see changed?
Cheers for now
g33z3r_hd
