Battlefield 4 has already set the bar pretty low with a campaign mode that clocks in at around four hours, as noted on Worlds Factory. Well, prepare to have your socks blown off with Call of Duty: Ghosts' campaign mode, because it clocks in at around four and a half hours on the regular difficulty setting.
A tipster, who has early access to the game and completed the story mode, let us know that the campaign is quite paltry and offers less play time than previous entries in the annual shooter series. The game was not only completed in such a short amount of time, but a screenshot of the last level in the campaign mode was passed along to us for proof. You can check out the image of the final stage called “Ghost Killer” over on the imgur page. Warning: that's a bit of a spoiler if you click on the link and click on the image. Just saying.
Despite the campaign being short, it seems to be a new trend with shooter games these days. One could attribute the short campaigns to the fact that many of these big fall titles are cross generational titles and the developers have had to cut corners to get them playable across multiple platforms.
I'm not sure what to really think about the four-hour campaign given that a lot of it depends on how fun the campaign is; whether or not there are any decent cooperative modes to play; if there are plenty of unlockable secrets to add to your profile or if there are extra challenges. For the most part, the previous eight-hour campaigns usually contained a lot of fluff and stuffing to keep players trudging along.
Effacing the unnecessary missions and gameplay that do nothing more than pad the time frame can't be viewed as a bad thing. I mean, if it's four hours and offers up memorable moments of fun carnage and entertaining tidbits of delectable mayhem, it sure beats eight slagging hours of intermittent fun... right? Well, according to the tipster the campaign was mostly “bleh” (to paraphrase).
I've never been a fan of Call of Duty, so the exchange of campaign length to something shorter and potentially sweeter/terrible doesn't phase me, but it could prove to be the deciding factor of some gamers who put down $60 every year for the same thing that's a little bit different.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that most people buy Call of Duty games for the multiplayer anyway. So an increase in replayability on the multiplayer front at the expense of a less bombastic single-player campaign can't be viewed as all bad. Besides, with split-screen gameplay, new co-op modes and that almost tempting looking Extinction addition, you can't exactly say that it's bad that Activision had Infinity Ward give up four even less memorable hours of the campaign to focus on something that actually adds value to the game.
Call of Duty: Ghosts is set for release this Tuesday for the current generation consoles, and will be available for the next-generation consoles when they launch later in the month. Oh yeah, and don't forget the PS4 version of COD: Ghosts is native 1080p, but the Xbox One version of the game is only native 720p... so, if you don't like jaggies you know which one to go with.
This news is brought you by people who don't give a flying fart about embargos and NDAs and I thank them for that... and maybe you should to, depending on if you were basing your buying decision on the length of the campaign. For more information on Call of Duty feel free to visit the official website.
