The Call of Duty: Ghosts of the Battlefield franchise
Nick Mendoza, a Cuban-American former Miami police officer, fights against drug cartels that have set up operations in the city. Halfway through the game, he is betrayed by his superiors and arrested for a crime he didn't commit. After spending three years behind bars, he is broke out and embarks on a quest to get back at his betrayers.
First, the game was released during the time most players were still playing Battlefield 4, and most players chose to stick with that game over paying 60$ for Hardline, killing any chances of it being a commercial success. The game is basically a stereotypical modern military FPS, except with cops and criminals instead of soldiers and terrorists. It would be better as a completely new IP and if it was more polished.
While the soundtrack, vehicle designs, and sound design are amazing, like other Battlefield or DICE games, the same cannot be said for the entire game itself. The graphics look much worse than Battlefield 4, despite running on the same engine, which can make playing as a Professional while using a Sniper difficult. What's worse is lots of glitches and bugs, including environmental clipping. The load times are prolonged; sometimes it takes more than two minutes just to wait for another mission! Worse, the cut scenes are unskippable. The early versions even had framerate issues.
With bare-bones presentation and appalling physics, the story is bad in that feels like a generic cop drama show, with bland, unlikable and forgettable characters, characters making stupid decisions, and overall poor writing. One moment in the campaign is extremely stupid as Nick and his crew are letting the police know about the cocaine, one of them decides to let a deal of cocaine get run over by a train and let cocaine get onto the crew. Then, Khai has the prison bus that Nick is in to be blown up, which could ended up killing him (which he survived the explosion), the other inmates, which can make her hypocritical at times as she broke Nick out but risked the lives of others. The script is cringe, especially one line with Khai saying "Karate is mystical bullshit". The so-called episodes (missions) in the single-player campaign are very repetitive; the campaign itself is also very short and easy. Despite the bad story, at times it makes you interested.
The new multiplayer mode Hotwire is very forgettable as all you need to do is drive a marked vehicle as fast as possible to acquire points, it was made worse as there were servers for that mode and Blood Money that relied on farming XP when the game. It may be fine for others who want to get the more grindy assignments, but it is upsetting for those who want to play those modes for fun. Aside from Hotwire being forgettable, the multiplayer mode is still fun. Though you will be finding Conquest and Team Deathmatch mostly, even on console, just like every other Battlefield game released on consoles. Even the map design is uninspired.
The server quality is disappointing. At least those servers are still much better than Battlefield 4 at launch. Also, the friendly and enemy AI is nonsensical.
Hit boxes can be poor at times. For a example, if a molotov (exclusively the criminals) or the incendiary (exclusively for the cops) at a wall, it can hit the enemy player even if they are in cover.
The weapon animations are a big improvement over the previous games, as they have robotic animations. The 1887 has a reload animation that is a reference to Termenator 2: Judgement Day. In addition to this there are lots of funny rare reload animations.
Some weapons like the FAL and the aforementioned 1887 is overpowered. The 1887 is mostly a one hit kill towards the torso. The Ballistic shield is broken if used only to cover up fire from behind, and it's mostly abused by players who use the Enforcer class.
The Ultimate edition bonus content does not justify the high price point at the time of release, which was 120 US Dollars at release before getting price drops. All you get from it is Premium and gold and premium Battlepacks. And speaking of Premium, it is not worth it today unless you are boosting trophies/achievements as the DLC is pretty much dead.
I don't think this game qualifies very well. It's not Battlefield, and--worse--it's terrible. Just stick to playing Battlefield 4 and prior releases. EA never seems to learn from their troubles.
