ASSASSIN'S CREED 4: BLACK FLAG REVIEW - FREESEDOTGAME

ASSASSIN'S CREED 4: BLACK FLAG REVIEW

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY.

Reviewed on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox 360 | OCTOBER 29, 2013

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a smart, sprawling sequel that wisely places an emphasis on freedom and fun while trimming most of the fat that bogged down Assassin’s Creed III’s ambitious but uneven adventure. Ubisoft’s take on the Golden Age of Piracy begins in 1715, and is presented with a much-appreciated lighter tone that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself in the name of an entertaining journey.

Sailing across the massive expanse of The Caribbean, exploring gorgeous and unique islands, and getting yourself into all sorts of swashbuckling trouble provide some of the most rewarding and memorable stretches of gameplay I’ve experienced all year. Even after putting in well over 40 hours with the Xbox 360, Wii U, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 versions, I’m still discovering new islands to explore and tombs to raid.

No matter which console you decide to play Black Flag on, you can rest easy knowing that it’s one of the best looking games of 2013. The current-gen versions build upon the already-gorgeous AC 3 by showcasing well-lit, tropical locales and the amazing water effects on the open seas. And on next gen, the experience is even more impressive thanks to minimal loading and maximum draw distances that seem to go on for miles. The way the camera zooms out when your ship reaches its maximum speed, the speakers bombard you with the sounds of the wind, and the sunset turns blood-orange, is simply amazing.

All versions of the game come with some form of off-screen support. The Wii U GamePad acts as a map that comes in handy when you're searching for a particularly hidden piece of treasure, or you can play Black Flag directly off of the screen on your controller. The other versions support Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed IV Companion App, a free download that lets you turn any tablet into a home for maps, an Animus database, and much more. There's a lot of information to digest in Black Flag, and being able to utilize a second screen instead of constantly bouncing in and out of menus helps keep you in the experience.

Black Flag learns from AC 3’s initial 10 hours of banal hand-holding by immediately throwing you into the action. After a lean and exhilarating opening mission that places you in the blood-soaked boots of Connor’s much livelier and more likeable grandfather Edward Kenway, the world blossoms and allows you to explore its vast uncharted waters. The size of the world is staggering, and the fact that it's absolutely brimming with fun and rewarding activities made me want to get lost as possible as I traveled from point A to point B.

When you ignore the main mission prompt and simply set out in search of your own fun, Black Flag is at its best. It treats you like an adult, and allows you to explore its gorgeous and activity-filled world to your heart’s content. Want to discover every nook and cranny of Kingston’s sprawling expanse in search of Templar secrets? Or would you rather buy a small fishing boat and hunt for all manner of deadly sea creatures, using your spoils to upgrade your character? Maybe you just want to sail to a remote island, climb to the top of a mountain, and gaze in awe at the world around you. Black Flag is all about embracing freedom and carving your own path through the world.

The freedom to tell your own stories also exists in the multiplayer mode, which, once again, refines the unique cat-and-mouse gameplay originally introduced in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Having to blend into your surroundings and try to trick other players into thinking you're an A.I.-controlled NPC provides ample moments of tense and entertaining mayhem. Just like previous versions, it’s a welcome alternative to the standard deathmatch that's become the norm in most multiplayer games, but it’s not substantial enough to be the main reason to keep coming back to Black Flag.

Also back and better than ever is the series' signature feeling of momentum. It does a great job of marrying the vertical city-based traversal of Assassin’s Creed II with the energetic frontier movement of AC 3. That being said, Edward still occasionally disobeyed my commands by errantly jumping off rooftops and climbing up walls that I never wanted to scale in the first place, but those are minor nuisances. Also, the world’s vast scope invites a handful of hiccups. For instance, the body of a guard who’s holding a necessary key might disappear if you leave the area, meaning that you have to restart a mission. Black Flag is peppered with these sorts of annoyances, and though they certainly aren't deal-breakers, they had a tendency to pull me out of the experience a bit too often.

Ubisoft wisely avoids the morose spaghetti bowl that Assassin’s Creed’s plot lines have become in favor of a much lighter tale that embraces the adventuresome spirit of classic pirate stories. I loved the fact that Edward is so unlike his Assassin relatives, and much more interested in the pursuit of money than the opaque goals of some secret cabal. It's a refreshing change of pace from a series that had started to take itself a bit too seriously.

This lighter tone is also evident in the way that Black Flag feels less violent than its predecessors. Death animations are relatively short and sweet, with a surprising lack of blood for a game centered around stabbing people. The restraint is admirable, and it makes combat more fun and less serious business slaughter than in recent years. Then again, Black Flag also tends to repeat some of the Assassin's Creed series’ favorite mistakes, like forcing you to tail a prospective victim at a safe distance for minutes on end while you’re given an exposition dump. It’s mighty annoying that I had to spend 10 minutes listening to rarely memorable dialogue before I could make the kill.

While the main story is a bit of letdown, I was honestly shocked at how much I enjoyed my time spent outside of the Animus. These first-person missions are mostly optional, but surprisingly great. As a new Abstergo employee working to develop an entertainment product based on Edward’s life, you’ll quickly find yourself embroiled in a bit of corporate espionage that ultimately leads to you to discover all sorts of secrets that gleefully hint at the future of the series.

THE VERDICT

The amazing world of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has kept me gladly occupied for longer than any other game in the series, even though its story isn’t the strongest. At no point in my dozens of hours was I ever at a loss for something to do. Simply sailing wherever the wind takes me and seeing what sort of trouble I can get into is a complete joy. Beyond the underwhelming main campaign, Black Flag delivers a world brimming with gorgeous places to go, amazing secrets to discover, and nefarious pirates to stab.

8.5 GREAT

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a gorgeous, fantastic sequel that gives you the freedom to make your own fun. 

+ Epic scope

+ Great side quests

+ Lighter tone

+ Beautiful moments

– Disappointing main story

MARTY SLIVA 29 OCT 2013

BATTLEFIELD 4 REVIEW - FREESEDOTGAME

BATTLEFIELD 4 REVIEW - FREESEDOTGAME

64 STYLES OF DANGER

Reviewed on PC | OCTOBER 28, 2013

Battlefield 4 is a greatest hits album of DICE’s multiplayer first-person shooter legacy. It retains the defining DNA of Battlefield 1942, re-adopts Battlefield 2’s brilliant Commander mode, and exaggerates the destruction of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, all while embracing the realism, class reorganization, and gorgeous graphics of Battlefield 3. Most of the time, Battlefield’s unpredictable, vehicular-based competitive combat is predictably excellent. What I didn’t anticipate was DICE getting in its own way.

What we've never seen before in a Battlefield game is the drastic, and often inconsistent way Battlefield 4 forces its two massive 32-player teams to adjust to evolving environmental conditions. A dam bursts, crushing everything below with metric tonnes of rubble and floods. Half a hotel disintegrates, exposing a control point and depriving snipers of a valuable perch. Large-scale destruction like this changes the fundamental layout of an area, forcing combatants to react intelligently and change their strategies and loadouts on the fly. Even after the magic and surprise is gone, teams always need to be prepared for how they’ll react when a crumbled tower keeps their tanks out of enemy territory. Coming out on top because your new strategy adapts to and harnesses the new level design is even more satisfying than the XP and armory unlocks you earn along the way.

That said, not every instance of awe-inspiring devastation is as excellent as these. Often, triggering the event takes minutes of work, and the result is sometimes superfluous, feeling more like DICE’s obligation to include it in every map rather than something that achieves anything of value. A smashed satellite at the center of a map becomes a minor inconvenience for vehicles, for example. A toppled tower actually makes it irritating to navigate an underground area, and manually detonating underground explosives from a terminal takes you away from the action in one of the biggest maps. Most offensive of all, a flooding town’s rising water levels significantly inhibits mobility – and is especially frustrating if you’re in a fierce tug-of-war for a base-busting bomb in the terrific new Obliteration mode.

If you're smart about it, you can take advantage of most maps’ effects, though – including some of the less magnificent, more subtle things. Diminished visibility as a typhoon assaults an island might mean changing your favorite red-dot sight for something that sees in the dark. Hunting bomb carriers as the sun rises means they’re increasingly vulnerable as the match goes on – the faster they arm control points early on, the easier their lives will be later.

In addition to those major destruction events, DICE has rediscovered a major factor that defines Battlefield’s greatness among other modern military shooters: finally, for the first time since Bad Company 2, teams can tear down most simple structures. Knocking out supports to topple houses and collapse roads isn’t quite as exciting as a skyscraper sinking into a bay, but it’s great for keeping enemies out of troublesome spots or creating a crawl space to hide in. One of my favorite maps – Golmud Railway, where DICE’s designers take expert advantage of its enormous scale, several scattered control points, and aerial warfare – has a mobile control point in the form of a train. Fighting for control is an entertaining, mobile struggle.

More than anything, and despite its new features, Battlefield 4 most closely resembles Battlefield 3, if only for the similar feel of its physical, scary weapons. Accounting for bullet drop as a sniper – which involves more mental math now thanks to adjustable zero-targeting ranges – remains one of the most fulfilling things about Battlefield’s skill-based gunplay. Elsewhere, one of the smallest departures is the most significant, at least for knife-fighters. Stealth attacks from behind, as usual, guarantee a new set of dog tags for your knife-kill collection. Stabbing at someone from the front, however, gives them a brief opportunity to reverse the attack. Counter-kills are an incredibly satisfying way to put down someone who wasn’t careful enough to wait for you to turn your back, and an interesting new tactical layer to what used to be a panic button.

Where Battlefield 4 most brilliantly distances Battlefield 3 is in its map design. The best Battlefield maps are challenging and satisfying, demanding you take advantage of everything at your disposal, and Battlefield 4 does this extremely well.

Screaming across the terrain in the bouncy new off-road buggy is a blast, but its vulnerability may lead you to choose a tank instead. But even its rear is vulnerable to infantry rockets. Battlefield’s interesting relationship between infantry and vehicles goes deeper here, with additional means to take down enemies, whether you’re immobilizing vehicles or filling them with a team to attack in force. The soldiers in that ride will likely have a more varied array of gear than ever, too, because character classes and vehicles have more extensive customization options in Battlefield 4. Recon is no longer limited to the sniper/shotgunner role, allowing him to equip a mid-range DMR to do some actual recon. Classes are defined by gadgets rather than guns, and it permits a more aggressive play style for unit types previously restricted by their loadout options. Much like Battlefield 4’s gameplay, its customization is more liberated than ever.

Terrific level design is responsible for a lot of what makes this work well, and I’d wager that a good chunk of Battlefield 4’s maps will live as classics. Everything is, as always, engineered around Battlefield’s territory-control Conquest mode. Hainan Resort, with its destructible hotel centerpiece and terrific mix of air/ground/sea combat options, is Wake Island-levels of outstanding. Awesome opportunities exist for every class, every pilot, every aggressive paratrooper to pull off an unbelievable kill or anxiety-inducing control point capture.

It's not the only excellent one. The Rogue Transmission map gives planes plenty of breathing room, and ATVs can avoid aerial vehicles using underground passageways. It’s a map that demands a sense of spatial awareness and having a reliable, coordinated squad. It’s also one of Battlefield’s best-in-class vehicular balancing acts – vulnerable four-wheelers can still escape tanks, which in turn have a great, unobstructed view for clearing the air of choppers and jets.

Not every map works great with every mode, though. The thrill of punching through enemy lines, destroying control points, and proceeding to the next seems less strategic than ever in some Rush maps. Paracel Storm, for example, funnels attackers into punishing bottlenecks dominated by defenders. In others, predatory offense can feel like desperate brute force, particularly in matches with lots of players. Obliteration maps with water are the most troublesome – the mode’s bomb resets if it ends up in the drink, leading to chaotic confusion and frustrating losses.

Domination is a fast and focused Conquest variant with scaled-down maps and infantry-only fighting, which is a nice change of pace from the contemplative exploration of the open-ended Battlefield maps. In that sense, it’s closer to Call of Duty than Battlefield, for better or worse. Likewise, Defuse mode is a shameless Counter-Strike clone with a Battlefield twist. Planting a bomb behind enemy lines without respawning is even scarier when someone punches a hole through a wall with a rocket. Explosives and exposure don’t break it, mercifully, since the complex maps have so many routes to escape or flank foes. Operation Locker, a tight-quarters prison with winding hallways and plenty of places to flank enemies, always has me looking over my shoulder, and will find a dedicated Domination/Defuse audience, no doubt.
Commander Mode brings out the best in Battlefield 4. When one player on each team steps away from their guns to issue orders from a top-down tactical screen to 31 teammates, amazing things can happen. It's hard to believe that participating war in a hands-off capacity can be this satisfying! Coordinated Commanders who work well with their squads will find themselves steamrolling enemies who can’t.

The symbiotic relationship between soldier and Commander creates cyclical reward that enables new strategies in Conquest, Rush, and Obliteration, if you choose to use it. Commanders who send reinforcements to a suppressed squad, or send enemy-spotting UAVs overhead of hotspots, will earn the trust of a team. Squads who capture specialized control points earn additional attack options for their leader to deploy, such as a missile strike. Like in Battlefield 2, Commander Mode will change the way serious players play a Battlefield game. It is, more so than the sometimes-awesome evolution of landscapes, a reliably interesting feature that DICE should never let go of again.

Also difficult to fathom is how Battlefield 4’s campaign uses so much to accomplish so little.
You might've seen the first 17-minute video that DICE released of Battlefield 4 gameplay, featuring a run through the first story mission: a frantic escape sequence in Azerbaijan. It’s a spectacular showcase of Frostbite 3 engine’s incredible technical capabilities, DICE’s skillful ability to build tension, and Battlefield’s prowess as a flexible sandbox shooter. It is also emblematic of Battlefield 4’s complete inability to restrain itself.

Its campaign is an obnoxious assault of explosions, blood, profanity, and anger wrapped in an apparent parody of a first-person shooter. In five hours, Battlefield 4 hits on almost every predictable cliché expected: Tank mission, boat mission, stealth mission, jailbreak, sewers, sudden but inevitable betrayal, dastardly Russians, defying orders, and, of course, a torture sequence. Retreading thoroughly charted territory isn’t exciting here, and Battlefield 4 regularly squanders or underutilizes its fragmented strengths in designing those levels.
It introduces squad commands, allowing you to order teammates to attack, but it’s just that simple. Point, allies attack, and then you move on. Why aren’t they shooting at enemies like this in the first place? Level design is increasingly constrained as the campaign proceeds, and corridors and other tight spaces leave little room for options, team play, and the flexibility that we see flaunted in earlier, larger encounters. Spaces seem to shrink over time, and verticality is tossed aside in favor of forward-facing firefights.

I’ll give it this: Battlefield 4’s single-player never quite sinks to the same level as Battlefield 3’s oppressive linearity, follow-the-leader structure, and borderline absence of interaction. It's also very pretty, and the stellar lighting, particle, physical, and environmental effects are impressive across the vibrant, visually diverse settings. But it’s a surface-level success where there isn’t much depth.

Leveraging that realism, Battlefield 4 aims for an evocative, emotional experience, and utterly fails. I count its disjointed story among the least emotionally affecting experiences I’ve had with a game (that actually tried for one). Any plea for plausibility or depth dies when a bodycount milestone earns you a headshot bonus, weapon unlock, or gold medal pop-up. Between its unwillingness to put primary characters at serious risk and a meaningless moral-choice finale, Battlefield 4 pulls almost every emotional punch.

Meanwhile, the plot has too many moving parts and not enough time to give them each due credit. It’s unsure whether to focus on the suffering of your squad or the geopolitical gibberish. Writing is not Battlefield 4’s strong suit. Sometimes it fails to explain narrative progression clearly. Other times it’s awkward, out of place, and embarrassing. One of its most confusing story surprises with nonsensical blasé: “Things were f***ed. Then they were unf***ed.” When a secondary character doesn’t make it to the next scene, a squadmate pointlessly notes that the “dude is dead.” My personal favorite: “If you’ve survived a nuclear explosion like I have” is the actual start to a sentence someone says.
Honestly, it feels like something is missing here. A gaping “Two Days Later” hole introduces sudden changes in character behavior and an out-of-nowhere new setting and to-do list. It’s as if half a campaign and the whole of its humanity got lost along the way.

THE VERDICT

Battlefield 4 is an excellent multiplayer game that makes the most of its ambitions, proving once again that destruction is a valuable strategic addition to competitive combat, which reaches its full potential with two killer Commanders are bringing out the best in their squads. On the other hand, its single-player campaign is a disappointing, but a functioning and familiar game with overwhelming action and remarkable spectacle.

8.5 GREAT

Battlefield 4’s devastating destruction is an interesting, imperfect addition to its excellent multiplayer. 

+ Incredible map design

+ Dynamic environments

+ Rewarding Commander Mode

– Mode/map mismatches

– Mediocre single-player

MITCH DYER 28 OCT 2013

CALL OF DUTY GHOSTS REVIEW - FREESEDOTGAME

CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS REVIEW

OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS.

NOVEMBER 5, 2013
Reviewed on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Xbox 360

Like a good sequel should, Call of Duty: Ghosts doesn’t ignore the formula of fast, fluid gameplay that has made the series famous, but introduces a unique new premise, unprecedented player personalization, and sweeping changes that breathe new life into the multiplayer experience. It’s over-the-top and at times unnecessarily complex, but serves both current and next-generation consoles with ambitious new ideas and tremendous replay value.

Despite sharing a name with one of Modern Warfare’s best-known characters, Ghosts takes place in an entirely new Call of Duty universe set in the not-too-distant future. In a genre overwrought with antiquated Russian conflicts and ambiguous Middle Eastern terrorist threats, Ghosts takes on a refreshingly unique premise in which the threat comes not from the east, but the south: a federation of oil-rich South American nations rises to take over the hemisphere, pushing north and coming to blows with the U.S.

The prelude establishes a harrowing vision of a United States homeland that's broken but not beaten – not quite Red Dawn, but not Fallout 3, either. It’s a space not often explored by modern shooters, and its mood is heightened by missions set in a besieged Santa Monica and the wasted remains of San Diego, to the tune of an excellent, somber score from David Buckley (The Town, Metal Gear Solid 4). But ultimately, time on the poignant homefront is short lived as the story goes behind enemy lines in Caracas, the Andes mountains, and other exotic locales.

Those might lack to familiarity, but the variety of environments keeps the campaign fresh, not only in terms of visuals, but in gameplay as well. Instead of just fighting waves of enemies through a linear stage at ground level, you’ll find yourself rappelling down skyscrapers, flying helicopters, having firefights in space, commanding tanks, scuba diving through shipwrecks, playing as a dog, and evading shark attacks. Each requires new strategy, acute situational awareness, and – in the case of the space and water missions – special consideration for verticality and physics.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Call of Duty game without elaborate setpieces, fierce shootouts, and tense stealth missions, and Ghosts delivers some of the most memorable experiences in the series. I felt genuine dread as the ground and buildings collapsed around me during orbital weapons strikes, the zero-gravity spectacle of the Federation’s space station ambush is awe-inspiring, and bursting through a highrise window as the entire building crumbles during the Federation Day mission is exhilarating.

But like previous CoDs, the story of Ghosts struggles to remain in focus amidst the fray of explosive cinematic moments and relentless firefights. Narrated loading sequences with stylized story animations push the campaign forward, but only last for one or two minutes before launching back into the action. It’s there, on the front lines, that much of the plot progression is presented and oftentimes lost.

It's by no means an achievement in dramatic storytelling — it's more about dumb fun — and it lacks the player-choice element introduced with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but when given time to breathe Ghosts actually offers some interesting human drama. The story centers around two brothers, Logan and Hesh, their father Elias, and yes, their dog Reilly as they fight the Federation as part of the battered remnants of the U.S. military, and later as the elite Ghosts squad. The family ties, specifically the relationship between Logan and Hesh, made me care about the protagonists in a series that's habitually made its characters a dispensable commodity. The voice acting is decent overall, though there are periodic moments of cringe-worthy dialog, like one superfluous moment when Elias reveals he’s a member of the Ghosts. And then there’s Riley. Though the subject of many a meme at this point, Riley not only acts as a useful tool for recon and silently dispatching enemies, but is integral to several dramatic sequences, saving your character on more than one occasion.
The story stumbles in the second act when it strays away from the more evocative character focus in favor of a long stretch of back-to-back missions driven almost exclusively by guns-blazing combat. While not poorly done, this visually arresting, action-packed, but ultimately hollow middle stands in stark contrast to the effective first and final acts. On the bright side, that padded out my play time to roughly 10 hours, making this campaign one of the longest CoD single-player experiences.

Or, in the case of those for whom multiplayer is the primary focus, it handily gets out of the way other than to serve as the inspiration for map environments, equipment, and weapon design.

Ghosts preserves much of the look and feel of the traditional Call of Duty multiplayer experience, but introduces sweeping changes that make it more personalized, more diverse, and better balanced. At its core lies the expansive new Create a Soldier system, which affords us the ability to create and customize 10 unique characters, each with up to six loadouts, for a total of 60 available classes and 20,000 possible configurations. Create a Soldier also riffs on Black Ops II’s Pick 10 system, allowing you to forego certain equipment in order to outfit a primary weapon with extra attachments or enable extra perks. In all, there are an impressive 39 weapons, 12 pieces of equipment, 35 new perks, 36 scorestreaks spanning three categories, and various weapons attachments to choose from.
Create a Solider is ambitious in its scope, and the sheer breadth of options caters to and empowers every style of play. Whether you want to run around like a high-powered knife-wielding mutant or move stealthily through a map by using heightened senses, you can. But for all of its versatility, Create a Soldier is dauntingly complex next to previous Call of Duty games. Even after hours of matches and experimentation, I felt as though I had only begun to understand the nuances of each of the 35 unique perks and how to optimize my classes for a specific style of play. On the one hand, Create a Soldier’s depth will have enthusiast players honing their perfect loadouts for months, but on the other, it makes for a more challenging entry-level experience.

It's a credit to developer Infinity Ward that even while running around with a maxed-out weapon and the best complimentary perks I could find, at no point did I see a player gain a noticeable advantage. Unlike Black Ops II, which favors lightweight SMGs, Ghosts’ balance encourages you to explore a variety of weapon types. SMGs are considerably less effective, while assault rifles are faster to shoulder and have a reduced impact on speed. A new class of weapons, called marksman rifles, bridges the gap between sniper rifles and assault rifles, providing range and power with greater mobility. Sniper rifles remain largely unaltered with two notable exceptions: new optics that preserve (but blur) your peripheral vision, and aim-assist has been reduced to make obnoxious quick-scoping harder to exploit.
The added emphasis on ranged weapons is paired with considerably larger maps, which greatly outnumber those that feature more traditional tight-quarters designs in the 15 included battlefields. In deathmatch-style gametypes, teams will often find themselves spread across smaller contingents at different sides of the map, whereas objective modes will draw everybody to certain points. Instead of just funneling players toward enemies via a limited number of paths, Ghosts presents an array of alternative routes, making team play far more effective than traditional run-and-gun strategy – in fact, running around these large maps gets lonely and boring. Traditional lone wolf-style play also throws a wrench in the spawn system, making enemies often appear nearby without warning. Playing in a well-coordinated group is more gratifying than ever, but more casual solo games can be frustrating.

There’s also the much-touted map dynamicism, which disrupts pathways and sightlines using everything from player-triggered gates to a missile strike that turns the environment to a smoldering wasteland. The effect is less impactful and cinematic than Battlefield 4’s crumbling buildings and dams, but with considerably smaller maps and faster-paced gameplay, grander scale or frequency would have been distracting. Instead, the traps and map events are only brief interruptions that can shake things up if one team becomes entrenched, but won’t fundamentally alter the course of a game.

Ghosts multiplayer introduces five brand-new gametypes alongside all of the series staples like Domination and Kill Confirmed, for a total of 13 different modes. Although many of the new modes expand upon existing gametypes, each adds a fresh dynamic. My favorite new addition, Grind, is like Kill Confirmed, except that it requires you to not only collect dog tags from downed enemies, but also deposit them in one of two “banks” on the map before being killed yourself. Another, Cranked, is like Team Deathmatch, but whenever you score a kill, you’re given a 30 seconds to rack up another kill – or else you'll explode. Although they’re simple modifiers, the new gametypes are immensely fun and breathe new life into multiplayer.

Extinction, Ghosts’ new alien invasion mode, is better compared to Valve's Left 4 Dead games than Treyarch’s zombie modes from Black Ops. It's a four-player cooperative mode wherein you fight off monstrous creatures through a miniature campaign set in a large, multi-stage level. Unlike zombies, the aliens are nimble and unpredictable, leaping over objects and scaling walls. It's a tough challenge, and teams must carefully consider their loadouts, special abilities, equipment, and power-up trees to ensure survival, making for an interesting strategic dynamic.

For a more traditional Call of Duty experience, but sheltered from the fierce competitive landscape of multiplayer, there’s Squads: a suite of cooperative modes that offers wave defense (AKA horde mode) and competitive bot matches. In a cool touch, Squads uses your custom characters and classes as the basis for A.I. soldiers that play alongside you to battle other bots or human players. Bot matches are hardly novel for the genre, but the soldiers in Squads are especially notable because of how easy it is to mistake them for human players due to their use of advanced tactics. It's impressive how they move through maps aggressively, and appear to be acutely aware of other players.

Squads is an excellent testing ground, and offers a nice respite from online multiplayer while also contributing to online character progression using the unified Create a Soldier system. Most importantly, the new Call of Duty profile system allows players to carry over their stats, unlocks, and characters created for Squads or multiplayer across generations. If you play on Xbox 360 and visit a friend who owns a Xbox One, your character and all progression is carried over, and comes back home with you.

This is possible, in part, because of cross-generation, cross-platform feature parity. Character customization, maps, dynamic events, weapons, gametypes, and constant 60fps multiplayer framerates are ubiquitous across current- and next-gen platforms. (So far I’ve tested the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, PC, and PlayStation 4 versions.) The biggest variations between platforms falls upon visuals and player counts. On the current-gen versions Ghosts looks nearly identical, though I did encounter occasional framerate issues during the single-player campaign on PS3 and PS4.

Like Black Ops II, the Wii U version takes advantage of the gamepad to present a secondary display for the in-game map and provide touchscreen shortcuts to custom loadouts. The gamepad’s display can also be used to play without a TV, though it also supports Wii Remotes and the controller. Graphically, the Wii U version is comparable to Xbox 360 and PS3, and overall, runs smoothly. Unsurprisingly, the PC version scales well from low- to high-end machines, and in most cases, looks superior to the next-gen experience.
It’s difficult to appreciate the variation between current-gen and next-gen in TV commercials or a browser window, but up close and personal, the difference is drastic. Whereas the current-gen versions look muddy with blotchy textures, characters, weapon models, and environments are presented in vivid detail on PlayStation 4. The Call of Duty engine fares surprisingly well on next-gen, but even then Ghosts lacks a lot of the added atmospheric effects and visual panache that makes competing games look so realistic. I’m eager to see what a future Call of Duty looks like when maintaining 60 frames-per-second on current-gen is no longer a concern.

There is, however, one notable exclusion from current-gen. Historically, Call of Duty has limited a majority of its modes to 12 players, but offered an additional playlist that supports 18-player matches known as Ground War. While the larger-scale matches live on with the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, owners of the Xbox 360, Wii U, and PS3 versions are capped at 12 players. It’s a surprising step back for the series, and the larger maps could have benefited from the higher player count.

It should also be noted that my smooth multiplayer experience was hosted on a dedicated server hosted by Activision – and most of yours will be, too. Activision says that all platforms will use a hybrid of dedicated servers and peer-to-peer matchmaking, which should eliminate many of the lag issues we've seen in the past. If all goes well, the days of being tossed into a game hosted by someone 2,000 miles away on a dial-up connection will be behind us.

THE VERDICT

Call of Duty: Ghosts isn't a reinvention of the franchise, but proves there's still room for innovation within its existing formula. Though at the risk of overcomplicating things at times, its robust multiplayer gameplay, surprisingly fun co-op modes, and lengthy, challenging, and varied campaign makes Ghosts one of the best Call of Duty games to date.

8.8 GREAT

Call of Duty: Ghosts' robust multiplayer suite and refreshingly varied campaign make it one of the best in the series.

+ Greater team focus

+ Robust class system

+ Exceptional campaign

– Maps too large

– Overly complex

SCOTT LOWE 5 NOV 2013

ROCKSMITH 2014 REVIEW - FREESEDOTGAME

ROCKSMITH 2014 REVIEW

FINGER PICKIN' GOOD.

Reviewed on Macintosh, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC
OCTOBER 22, 2013

From the plastic-instrument-littered graveyard of the rhythm game genre rose the original Rocksmith, a game that took the familiar note-highway interface of the Guitar Hero series and applied it to the full scale-length of a proper guitar. Using that same impressive note-recognition technology, Rocksmith 2014 makes for a much smoother learning and practicing experience thanks to its effortless presentation and more flexible approach to player progression. It’s always going to be a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, but Rocksmith 2014 makes it a heck of a lot easier to sit back and enjoy the ride.
The “2014” moniker may suggest a merely incremental upgrade from the original game, but Rocksmith 2014 has benefited from quite a significant overhaul to all facets of the experience. Most readily apparent is the completely revamped and non-linear menu navigation. Everything you need at any moment is right under your increasingly calloused fingertips. You can swiftly hop in and out of technique lessons, chord charts, songs, and the wonderfully retro Guitarcade mini-games; it never really gives you enough of a pause to put down your instrument.

Gone is the regimented and repetitive Journey mode, and in its place is the new Mission mode that takes you by the hand rather than pull you by the nose. You’re constantly provided with aptitude appropriate tasks to complete, such as learning a new scale or beating a certain high score in the Guitarcade, but these objectives never become roadblocks; you can decide entirely how you want to progress, and which areas you want to focus on.
There’s been a variety of tweaks across the board to Rocksmith 2014’s actual gameplay, most notably the new visual cues for things like tapped notes and harmonics, along with a fingerprint overlay for chords to ensure smoother playing transitions. But by far the biggest game-changer is the revamping of the Riff Repeater. This ability to isolate, slow-down, and vary the difficulty of a song section is buried in its own separate mode in the original Rocksmith. In Rocksmith 2014, you can activate it at any time - making it much easier to learn more complicated phrases such as solos on the fly and therefore much faster than before.

When you eventually start to nail every note and chord in a song, Rocksmith 2014 automatically switches to Master mode and the notes just fade away. It’s at these times it’s at its most powerful, creating Zen-like moments when you're flush with a genuine sense of accomplishment that no Achievement Unlocked or Trophy pop-up could ever match. It’s like having your training wheels suddenly explode off your bike and freewheeling it down the highway. It’s truly exhilarating.

Some songs will certainly take longer to master than others, but the tracklisting also feels far more considered this time around. While there’s no accounting for taste, the 50 on-disc tracks available feel satisfyingly comprehensive when it comes to technique, spanning a skill range from the simple power-chords of the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop and Jack White’s Sixteen Saltines; to carpal tunnel-inducing metal tracks like Iron Maiden’s The Trooper and Mastodon’s Blood and Thunder; to the technical tour de force that is Joe Satriani’s Satch Boogie. If you own the original game you can import its entire track list too (for a one-time fee), and any DLC also carries across - with all of the back catalogue tracks supporting Rocksmith 2014’s new gameplay features.

Of course it’s not enough just to play like your favourite guitar heroes; you need to sound like them too. The actual guitar tones in Rocksmith 2014 are more authentic than ever thanks to the official emulation of big-name amp makers like Marshall, Orange, and ENGL. You can play through virtual recreations of such lusted-after rigs as Marshall’s JCM800 or the Orange Tiny Terror, and while they’re never going to blow your hair back like the real thing, they provide near enough approximations to serve as a sort of try-before-you-buy service. Considering that Rocksmith 2014 costs less than most small practice amps, the new amp modelling alone might make it appealing to bedroom guitarists tight on space, like perhaps those in college dorm rooms.

Aside from the entirely new list of songs to learn and amp models to customise, there’s a suite of new Guitarcade mini-games that are essentially a fun way to forget how otherwise mundane it can be to practice scales. Not only are there more of them this time around, but they’re also meatier and better presented. For example, the 2D beat-’em-up inspired Scale Warriors - in which you pummel street thugs by hitting corresponding notes in alternating scales - is set across multiple urban environments, each linked with stylish 16-bit inspired cutscenes.

But my favourite addition to Rocksmith 2014 is the innovative Session mode, which is honestly like nothing else I’ve ever experienced in any game or piece of musical software. You pick the instruments in your four-piece backing band, customise settings such as the scale and tempo, and then you can basically go nuts all up and down the neck with the band reacting dynamically to the intensity of your playing. Not only is this a great way to explore the fretboard and experiment with new scales, but it’s also an invaluable tool for honing your improvisational skills - you can even play it with a friend for some guitar solo face-offs (or face-melting-offs). It’s a great vehicle for coming up with riffs of your own too, which makes it a slight shame that there’s no in-game recorder to capture your ideas with.
Yet for all of its features and encyclopedic approach to chords and scales, there is a ceiling to the skills Rocksmith 2014 can provide you with. It stops short of teaching you advanced techniques such as sweep-picking or more extreme two-handed tapping, but it isn’t really aiming to be the be-all and end-all of guitar and bass tutelage. It’s not meant to be played in a vacuum devoid of other instructional influences - you should still absolutely watch videos on YouTube, buy tablature books, jam with friends or even seek out more formal teaching if you really want to master the fretboard.

Lastly, it would be remiss of me not to mention the audio latency levels. The developers claim that they’ve tightened up the latency at least in terms of the software, and certainly when I played the PC version of Rocksmith 2014 or the console versions with the audio fed into a separate home theatre system (via analogue cables), the audio latency was truly imperceptible. However, when I ran the audio via HDMI straight into the back of television, there was still a noticeable delay between when a note was struck and when it sounded out of the TV speakers. So for those of you who have no external devices to output the audio to, be mindful that it may have a negative impact on your enjoyment with the game.

THE VERDICT

What makes Rocksmith 2014 such a great companion for any guitarist or bassist is its power to incentivise: it’s capable of sparking new passions or rekindling old ones in players of all skill levels via its successful gamification of common guitar-playing techniques. It’s smooth, flexible, always encouraging, and makes practicing a pleasure rather than a chore. Whether you’re a fretboard virgin or a would be virtuoso, Rocksmith 2014 deserves a place in your daily practice routine.

9.0 AMAZING

WIth its liberating and fun approach to the fretboard, Rocksmith 2014 is guitar practice made (almost) perfect.

+ Instant riff repeater

+ Intuitive design

+ Session mode

+ Flexible mission mode

– No recording

– Some HDMI latency

TRISTAN OGILVIE 22 OCT 2013