Call of Duty: Ghosts is the latest in a long line of games putting you as the player in the midst of intense action and combat.  I got on board with the original game, Call of Duty, and though I have not played every game in the series I certainly consider myself a fan of what the game developers attempt to create as a gaming experience.  I remember the first time I was pinned down trying to storm the beach at Normandy as one of the best gaming moments I’ve ever had.  It was only a game, but was the most eye-opening experience I’ve had in how impossibly crazy that battle must have been.  This is my first experience with any of the modern warfare Call of Duty games and it was a thrill ride.

Ghosts primarily follows the character of Logan Walker, son of one of the members of an elite special operations force from which the game takes its name.  Though you occasionally play other characters, mostly in flashback scenes, Logan is your window into the action for most of the gameplay experience.  In Ghosts the world has become a war zone, with a combined Federation waging war on America in the hopes of its utter destruction.  Your job is to make sure that does not happen, at any cost.  To keep the story more person-centered, a storyline develops in which a former Ghost, Rourke, is pulling the Federation strings and your team wants to take him down as part of the operation.   The story is entertaining and keeps you engaged through to the very end. Which probably shouldn’t be surprising given that it was written by the Academy Award winning writer of the film Traffic, Stephen Gaghan.

This is a first-person shooter game, so much of what you are involved in is intense firefights with enemy forces.   Most often this takes place with boots on the ground, but the game does offer a number of other options to keep things interesting, including driving tanks, flying helicopters, manning remote missile launchers and more.  Settings are not simply one nondescript military location after the other, but instead feature underwater missions, missions that take place in cities, on a train, and in a variety of other locations including two missions in space that will have players thinking about the move Gravity. Chapters are timed nicely to keep the plot moving forward while making sure the gameplay does not get stale.

As in all of the Call of Duty games, Ghosts features a more realistic combat experience in that you can only carry a realistic number of weapons and ammunition.  In this case you may carry two guns, a knife, some ammo clips and a limited number of smoke and regular grenades.  You gain more ammo by picking up the guns of fallen friends or foe as you progress through battle zones.  The weapons provided are of an interesting variety and many have a nice kick to them.

The voice acting is top-notch as are the graphics in this game.  I played it on the XBox 360 and can only imagine how impressive this thing must be on the XBox One and Playstation 4.  Wow!  There is just so much to like here.  For my money there really is very little to complain about with any Call of Duty game with the exception of the complaint that seems to plague them all: they are always too short.   I opened Ghosts on Christmas morning and played it briefly that evening.  I spread my gameplay time out over the last few days and still fired through to the end credits much more quickly than I anticipated.  Had I not known that this is the Call of Duty M.O. going in I’m sure it would have a significant effect on my overall rating of the game.  Knowing that, however, means that the brevity of the game was not wildly disappointing.  The replay factor on this on, for me, is through the roof and I look forward to doing it all over again soon.

At this risk of overusing the word intense, I can only say that if you are looking for a truly intensive battle game, the Call of Duty series does not disappoint.  Ghosts ends with the hint of a sequel to come and that excites me, but even if that was not the case I would highly recommend this game.   It earns a solid 9/10 from me.