Riley’s Day Out: Call of Duty Ghosts All-Access

Riley’s Day Out: Call of Duty Ghosts All-Access

The Call of Duty All Access event was shown live today in a GameTrailers.com event hosted by Geoff Keighley and Justine Ezarik. Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg took to the stage and spoke about wanting to bring the event to Call of Duty enthusiasts, saying “if we can’t bring them all to E3, let’s bring E3 to our fans.”

We dived into the first video segment proper, showing gameplay from a mission titled “Into the Deep”. We witnessed (special ops?) scuba divers dive and swim towards sonar heard underwater, with guns at the ready.  The divers ran across an enemy patrol and engaged them before moving on. The mission seemed very similar to certain missions in Modern Warfare 2 where stealth was paramount. The divers kept getting knocked back by the strong sonar waves emitted by an enemy submarine. Rubble in the water was quite noticeable with crates, lighthouses and other buildings submerged in the depths around the divers. The player then took out the enemy submarine with a remote controlled torpedo (used the same way as the Valkyrie rocket in Black Ops). After the submarine was destroyed, debris began to fall and the divers swam steadily away to safety. Since this is Call of Duty and nothing would be that easy, we saw more enemies catch up to the divers before the video ended.

Call of Duty, water you doing? Are you shore you want to go this route? Heh…sorry about the puns…I’ll just go and krill myself.

Mark Rubin from Activision then took to the stage beside Justine. We learned that we play as the “Underdogs”, during a time after the military, government and our way of life is “decimated” by a mass event. The dog, which was the highlight of the Xbox One reveal, was then explained. The player is meant to have an emotional connection with the Alsatian (or German Shepherd, if you will) named Riley, as he is an active character in the single-player portion and accompanies you through portions of the campaign.

Another gameplay video was shown where we found the team in an arborous area with sheer cliffs and decimated buildings (probably due to the constant tremors afflicting the area). We got to see Riley do his thing in this video and attack enemies (seen from Riley’s perspective, thanks to a camera attached to the dog’s back). After some enemies are dealt with, we took back control of the human player once again, which suggests that the dog can/will be used to scout ahead for enemies. Apparently, in order to control the dog, the player must “sync up” with Riley and pull up the camera situated on the dog’s back. In the video, the player’s character automatically took out enemies while we played as the dog. Riley also helped clear out other areas along the way, and took out enemies at will. At the end of this clip we see our player and his team-mate pull down their masks revealing they are ghosts (Editor: Sometimes it has to be said: NOT LITERALLY).

Hi, I’m Riley! I like long walks on the beach, I love to smell rumps, and I munch on human necks for snacks. Call me!

A first look at the E3 2013 booth is then revealed, while streaming a few clips from the two missions shown before. The clips are shown on a 122 foot wide and 30 feet tall screen, covering the viewer with 190 degrees of mind-blowing Riley antics. This “environment” is to help the viewers immerse themselves into the world of Call of Duty: Ghosts.

For any Call of Duty fan, nothing seemed too original besides the dog. Albeit, even Riley seemed familiar in that he controlled just about the same as the bots and other remote devices we used in previous Call of Duty titles. However, if you’re a CoD fan and you watched the event, you probably didn’t care too much for the campaign and are patiently awaiting the multiplayer reveal (which will inevitably come soon). Gameplay mechanics seem the same as always, even though Infinity Ward stated that they would be using a new engine (Editor’s note: it’s not. A highly modified version of the Quake 3 engine is not a new engine). Overall, I feel the campaign looks pretty unique compared to previous ones, but for me, this game will live or die based on its multiplayer component.

You can watch a full video of the event by clicking HERE.