Call of Duty, the largest and most popular franchise in the whole of the entertainment industry, with over 100 billion players, 10 million of them playing every day, and more than 25 billion online hours played is going to be the largest franchise to be entering into the next generation of consoles! Multiplayer is now one of the most important features of any game and now we have the Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer reveal!
Call of Duty: Ghosts, the next game to be released in the franchise, has amazing visuals, dynamic maps and excellent playability. Developed entirely by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer is going to be the most successful and largest multiplayer game of gaming history. With Call of Duty sales increasing every year, Ghosts looks set to be the most popular game in the franchise and bringing in the most profit for Activision and Infinity Ward. Late last night came the reveal of the long-awaited Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer reveal, there is a reveal of the multiplayer for every new Call of Duty game at some point in the summer, but for Ghosts it was last night – and the new array of weaponry, class systems and in-game combat is better than ever. With over 30 new weapons introduced into the game, players now have the ability to customize their gun in any way they like! In addition to customizing guns, a major factor, pointed out by last night’s host – Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, is that for the first time ever in Call of Duty, before you start playing online you can now customize the look of your online character with over 20,000 different outcomes; also new to the multiplayer character system of Call of Duty is that you can now play as a female soldier!
Here is the long-awaited multiplayer reveal trailer, tell us what you think of the Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer in the comments, at the end.
From the multiplayer reveal trailer we can see that there is going to be a new type of weapon class called the Marksman class, this class will finally draw the line between an assault rifle and a sniper rifle, allowing you to fire bullets out as a scoped semi-automatic sniper rifle or as iron-sight based single-shot assault rifle. In addition to this, you can see that your dog, Riley, can be used as a recon as he will bark, to let you know when an enemy is near, and then you have the ability to tell him to attack that enemy. From the looks of it, we will see new kill streaks and new game modes featured in Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer. One major all-new factor to notice is the dynamic gameplay events. Dynamic gameplay events will change the way you play the game and there will be a new meaning to “I gotta learn the maps.” In previous Call of Duty games that phrase would relate to where the good sniping points are, how to work out where an enemy is going to spawn and the layout of the map; but in Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer the way you think about the maps is going to be completely different. The reason for this is because you could find the best sniping point in a map and that could be sat on top of a building or a petrol station, but now you have to keep in mind “What if someone sneaks up on me, unnoticed, throws out a C4 and destroys the building I am on top of?” With that in mind, you will no longer be able to stay in the same place for long periods of time because people will notice where you are and instantly destroy your surroundings. Also in the trailer, we could see that there was a player sat in the bus, that was hanging off of the cliff, with one of the thirty new weapons, another player launched a rocket which went hurling into the bus knocking it off of the cliff and killing the player. Also, if you were wondering what the song was in the trailer, it was Eminem’s new song – Survival and the first time it had been played was last night during the trailer! Warning, contains explicit content.
Executive producer at Infinity Ward – Mark Rubin had this to say on multiplayer,
“For Call of Duty: Ghosts, multiplayer, everything got touched, nothing was sacred.We went through every single system in the game from maps and modes to animation and audio to who you are as a player. This is the BIGGEST overhaul of multiplayer we’ve done since the original Modern Warfare.”
Perks have always given different classes an advantage in their class, in the Modern Warfare series. Now, the perks system is being changed to allow you to have up to a possible eleven perks! Perks are now based on points instead of categories; there will be perks with the value of one point through to perks with the value of five points – you have eight points in total to use how you want, so you could use four perks valued at two points or eight perks valued at one point each. Dropping your secondary weapon and equipment will allow you to have up to eleven different perks!
Infinity Ward have added twenty new kill-streaks, these kill-streaks will now be more ground based, to aid you in seeing enemies on the map, instead of being air-based. However, there will still be a few air-based kill-streaks such as the infamous chopper gunner! Various changes to the air-based kill-streaks include the UAV, in every Call of Duty online game, it has been a drone in the air – this is not going to be the case in Ghosts. Instead, the UAV will be a ground-based recon called SatCom. You can gain kill-streaks through kills and now through in-game objectives such as getting 500 kills with a particular gun will reward you in-game to help you towards a kill-streak. The opposite of kill-streaks, death-streaks, will not be making a return in Ghosts. Strike Packages, from Modern Warfare 3 will be making a return, Support, Assault and Specialist to help you achieve different kill-streaks based on your class. The fan favourite kill streak, from Modern Warfare 2, The Nuke – which was worth 25 kills in Modern Warfare 2, was not mentioned in the kill-streaks, will we ever see this kill-streak again in a Call of Duty game?
Instead of XP (Experience Points) that Call of Duty fans have all known for a very long time, they are now called ‘Squad Points’. There is an advantage to squad points; instead of having to progress through the ranks to get different guns, like you have had to in previous Call of Duty games, now as soon as you have enough squad points for a certain gun, you are able to purchase it! Combined with squad points is the create-a-soldier. You will have the ability to create up to ten different soldiers, all with their own unique look, squad points and loadouts. Having ten different soldiers will help you greatly in the new online clan vs clan, called ‘Clan Wars’. However, these ten soldiers will only have one level of prestige each, but that will allow all of them together to add up to ten levels of prestige, that we all know has been the top prestige level in previous Call of Duty games.
In Call of Duty: Ghost you will be introduced to three new game modes: ‘Cranked’, ‘Search & Rescue’ and ‘Squads’.
Cranked is very similar to Team Deathmatch but the game gets quicker, reload, aiming-down-sights (ADS) and moving all get a lot quicker. There will also be a timer, displayed on-screen. The timer will increase when you get another kill, let the timer run down to zero, and you will explode.
SEARCH & RESCUE is like Search & Destroy, however you will not only have one life as you can be revived by a fellow team-mate. How this works is that when a player gets shot they will leave a tag on the floor, if one of your allies picks up this tag, then you will be revived and brought back into the game, but if an enemy picks up the tag, then you will be dead and out of the game.
SQUADS – Solo, cooperatively or competitively. Compete again AI or other players, you can earn squad points towards your progressive ranks online. The way you equip your squad will affect how they play in the game, if you equip one soldier with a sniper rifle, then they will go and find a good place to snipe. The AI is very clever in Call of Duty: Ghosts as they will play just like another human being, except they are not a human. Previously, there were bots in Call of Duty: Black Ops, but this game mode further expands on that as the new AI will be able to drop-shot you, slide along the floor, perform different manoeuvres and much more, that you would not have been able to see in Black Ops.
Overall, the multiplayer looks fantastic! With the use of cinematic yet dynamic experiences in-game, the array of new weapons, the new create-a-soldier, the customizable options and a lot more to improve the Call of Duty experience, has definitely paid off! With seven new game modes (three of which we have now been introduced to), thirty new weapons, a new class (Marksman class) and twenty new kill streaks can all be viewed on the Call of Duty mobile companion app. 20 million users, who already have a Call of Duty Elite account will not have to do anything other than download the app. Users who have not signed up for an Elite account will have to, if they want to view all of their loadouts, squad points, ranks and much more whilst they are away from their console on a mobile device. All of your loadouts, stats and ranks will be still be available even if you switch consoles, be that from Playstation 3 to Playstation 4, Xbox 360 to Xbox One, all of your content will still be available. To further improve the Call of Duty experience, Call of Duty: Ghosts will run at 60 frames per second (60 fps) on all systems – Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC will all run at 60 frames per second!
To see the full reveal, in all of its entirety, then you can find it below!
Call of Duty: Ghosts is releasing on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on November 5th 2013 and at a later date for the next generation consoles – Playstation 4 and Xbox One.
What are your thoughts on the first Call of Duty game for next generation consoles, are you impressed by the new aspects that have been added to Call of Duty: Ghosts?
