Call of Duty Ghosts shakes up venerable video game

If theres an uptick in work and school absences this week, there will be one clear culprit: the newCall of Dutygame. Millions will be staying up late and calling in sick so they can spend time playingActivisionslatest first-person shooter,Call of Duty: Ghosts, which hits stores Tuesday.

What is it about this violent game - in which players take on the role ofmachinegun-totingsoldiers in a quest to obliterate each other in online virtual environments - that is so appealing?

For some its the successful recipe of adrenaline-fuelled action fans have come to expect from theCall of Dutyfranchise over the past decade.

For others, its going to be the new features the games developers have come up this time around to fend off increasingly innovative competitors.

Intensity, realism

To hear the games publisher explain the appeal,Call of Dutytaps into some very primal aspects of the psyche.

Its the intensity of the game, first and foremost, says Daniel Suarez, vice-president of production atActivisionPublishing. Unlike other games, the immersion that you get being in first-person [view], the detail of the environment, whats going on around you be it the sound or visual, just feels that much more realistic than any other type of genre out there.

Whether its epic scenes of skyscrapers or aircraft blowing up, or enemy bullets zinging by, players get to experience everything first-hand because they are literally in the virtual shoes of the games main character. Its a front-row ticket to a fast-paced adrenaline ride, pure and simple.

Clearly,gamershave been consistently lapping this stuff up. Last years entry in theCODfranchise,Black Ops 2, set a record for the most revenue made in 24 hours by any entertainment property, at $500 million. The previous record was $400 million, set by the 2011 instalment of the game,Modern Warfare 3.

Ghosts is expected to earn mega-bucks too, although its unlikely to eclipse this yearsuber-blockbusterGrand Theft Auto V, which earned $1 billion in its first three days. Nevertheless,Call of Dutygames are consistently among the biggest entertainment products of the year in any medium.

Battles of the sexes

First-person shooters likeCall of Dutyhave tended to hold strong appeal for males in particular, because they relate to the make-believe games many played when they were young.Call of Dutyis in some ways a virtual evolution and expression of cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, or army men, or any number of role-playing games that children concoct.

But while boys and men still make up the overwhelming majority of players, the communal nature of the games online modes appeals to both genders, which makes them similar to social networks such as Facebook.

About a fifth ofCall of Dutys 40 million monthly players are female and that percentage is rising, according toActivision, which is why playable female characters are being added for the first time inGhosts.

Weve seen so much growth come into the franchise from this area, Suarez says. When you go to these midnight openings, its not 100-per-cent male. Id say its 60-40.

Innovation

TheCODfranchises massive success with both sexes has attracted competitors eager to get in on the action.

While still far off from postingCall of Duty-type numbers, Electronic ArtsBattlefieldseries is the most serious competitor.Battlefield 4, the latest instalment that was released last week, is expected to sell 15 million units, or around half of whatBlack Ops 2is estimated to have sold.

Call of Dutytends to focus on smaller, soldier-versus-soldier battles. EAsBattlefieldgames offer up a different take on the military shooter, with large online environments where players can drive all kinds of vehicles, from tanks to helicopters.Battlefieldboasts millions of players online at any given time, and its growing success is pressuringActivisionsdevelopers to try new things to keep players from defecting.

For fans of the genre thats good news, because its forcing innovation.

For example, theCall of Dutyfranchise has been taking heat from coregamersin recent years for offering up the same-old, same-old recipe a theatrical single-playerrollercoasterride full of big explosions, supplemented by a slightly tweaked and updated onlinemultiplayermode. SoGhosts creators have added some new experiences to broaden the audience appeal.

While there are the requisite jungle- and oil-rig settings,Ghosts single-player campaign also launches players into space and sinks them to the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, differentgravitiesaffect the inevitable firefights in new and interesting ways.

Ghostsalso offers up an intriguing story penned by StephenGaghan, the Academy Award-winning writer ofTraffic, that features a South American enemy. Its a refreshing change for military shooters, which usually portray the same caricatured Middle Eastern or Russian terrorists as the bad guys.

Gaghansscript also has slightly more believable characters in the form of two brothers, Logan andHesh, who may elicit more empathy from players (another rarity in shooters) than the usual generic soldiers.

Indeed, Riley the brothers highly capable canine sidekick, who players get to control may be one of the most likeable characters in video games this year.

Online play

Beyond that, the series bread and butter onlinegameplay is also seeing a host of new additions.

The most notable is Extinction, a co-operative mode in which up to four players battle escalating waves of aliens. While previousCall of Dutygames featured zombie hordes, the addition of aliens is a big departure for a series that is otherwise rooted in military realism.

Ghostsalso features several new online game modes, such as Cranked, where players spontaneouslycombustunless they shoot another player within a given time limit, and Hunted, where new weapons must continually be sought out because of a severe lack of ammunition.

The new game is being made available on theXboxOne and PlayStation 4, the respective next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony that are launching this month.Ghostshas better graphics on the new machines, but future instalments of the franchise are likely to incorporate even more of the new consoles so-called next-gen features.

Both new consoles have better online-sharing and second-screen functions, for example, which respectively allow for uploading ofgameplayvideos and on-the-go gaming.

Ghostsis launching with a companion app for phones and tablets that will let players do some of that they can manage their characters and teams when away from the home, for example but future iterations will go even further, according to Suarez.

That said, although it has added new features inGhosts,Activisionisnt likely to deviate too much fromCall of Dutys successful formula in future iterations of the series. The sales are still there, despite what critics say.

Were always listening to fans, but at the end of the day we dont want to change the game into something they dont want, Suarez says. This is what aCall of Dutygame is, this is how we deliver the goods year in and year out.