Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty: Ghosts launched on PlayStation 4 as one of the new console's launch titles – in North America on November 15, 2013, just a few days after the PS4 itself launched. It includes a complete campaign about the Ghosts unit fighting against a South American federation, a full multiplayer, the Squads social system, and the cooperative survival mode Extinction. The game was developed by Infinity Ward.

As a launch next-gen title, the PS4 version offered higher resolution and frame rate than the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, more detailed textures, and more elaborate lighting, which is why contemporary reviews often cited it as the technically best-looking version of the game. The controls made use of the DualShock 4 controller's features, including its touchpad for some menu functions. Just like the version for the previous generation of PlayStation consoles, it received the four paid map packs later than Xbox players, for whom Microsoft secured a timed exclusivity on all downloadable content at the time.

Ghosts was among the first multiplatform games where players could directly compare the difference between the old and new console generations, and the PS4 version, together with the Xbox One edition, clearly showed where the graphical quality of big action titles was heading in the following years. Content-wise it doesn't differ from the PS3 version; the difference is purely technical.

The game's campaign takes place mostly from the perspective of brothers Logan and David Walker and their father, a special forces veteran, and emphasizes cinematic, action-oriented sequences, including a space mission and submarine action. The PlayStation 4 version offers this story structure and all the launch multiplayer maps in the same form as other platforms, only with higher graphical quality.

The game also offered a reworked multiplayer engine with dynamic environmental elements, such as collapsing buildings or changing weather, which behaved the same way on all platforms. On PlayStation 4, players could also, for the first time in the series, watch friends' multiplayer matches through a spectator feature directly from the console, without having to play themselves.

Why play it: Thanks to the ability to watch friends' multiplayer matches directly from the console and the dynamic environment of the arenas, Ghosts on PS4 is an interesting choice even for those who prefer watching the action rather than playing it themselves.