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Do you remember that bit in The Dark Knight Rises when Bane escapes from a plane in flight, blowing it in half and whisking himself to freedom as the fuselage falls away? Infinity Ward certainly does. It recreates the scene almost exactly in Call of Duty: Ghosts. It's just one of many widescreen blockbuster moments in a game that is, as always, propelled more by macho bombast than narrative coherence - but in lifting so blatantly from such a famous scene in a recent popular movie, it offers us a glimpse at the desperate emptiness that can so easily creep into a series when annual updates require a constant stream of wow moments.Following Treyarch's mostly successful attempt to inject change and ambition into the COD formula with Black Ops 2's branching narrative and loadout-agnostic construction, the Ghosts campaign can't help but feel like a step backwards. Penned by Hollywood screenwriter Stephen Gaghan - whose work includes such intelligent political thrillers as Traffic and Syriana - the dimwitted, flag-waving, chest-beating story is perhaps the biggest letdown.
In the opening scenes, we see how a US military satellite armed with kinetic rods - essentially giant space spears that use gravity alone to create horrifying devastation when they crash to Earth - is captured and turned against San Diego by the forces of the Federation. In one of the game's only surprises, this Federation is composed not of scheming Russians, imperial Chinese or demented Arabs, but of vengeful South American countries which turn a global energy crisis into the touchpaper for their own worldwide revolution.
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