Even the Nvidia fanboys can agree that AMD has a good part with the 290X. And even the most diehard AMDer will concede that Intel’s CPUs are more efficient today. But there is no way in hell you’ll ever conquer the divide between the Call of Duty and Battlefield camps. The gulf is simply too deep and wide, the loyalties too entrenched. Still, we think there’s room for an objective assessment. So, this month we pit the latest titles in these two opposing franchises against each other to see which comes out on top, personal ties be damned.
Call of Duty: Ghosts has taken graphics up a notch with 4K textures, but its story line is somewhat silly.
Battlefield 4 features beautiful character animations but some pretty awful dialogue.
ROUND 1 Single-player
It’s no secret that Call of Duty has long been seen as an interactive movie shot from a script stolen from the reject pile at the Syfy channel. As bad as the plot might be, though, Infinity Ward has managed to turn even the most ridiculous story line into a fun-filled, action-packed romp. Yes, it has the deftness of Michael Bay with a train load of C4, but even haters can agree it’s an entertaining ride. That couldn’t be said of Battlefield 3, whose singleplayer mode was choppy and the storytelling boring. The narrative is greatly improved In Battlefield 4, but the script and some of the lines are still embarrassingly awful.
Winner: CoD: Ghosts
ROUND 2 Multiplayer
Both games are first-person shooters, but beyond that, the two really don’t resemble one another. Call of Duty: Ghosts has always been more of a twitch game and the multiplayer hasn’t changed much. It’s still mostly a two-dimensional affair (albeit with short periods of control of drones and choppers) but at its core, it’s a man-on-man game. Battlefield 4, however, incorporates myriad aspects that make it the superior—and more complex—game of the two. With full-time land, sea, and air operations, a Commander dropping cruise missiles on your head, as well as massive mixed-environment maps, it’s an intense and multifaceted 3D battlespace. Ghosts has its appeal in that it’s far easier to pick up, but Battlefield 4 easily gets the nod for an outstanding multiplayer mode that forces you to think, not just shoot.
Winner: Battlefield 4
ROUND 3 Eye Candy
We initially thought this category would easily go to Battlefield 4, with its destructible environments, impressive physics, and particle effects that make even burly systems cry. The single-player graphics are simply beautiful, and on multiplayer maps, players pull up lawn chairs to watch the buildings crumble or a dam break. Make no mistake: Battlefield 4 is a game that requires the latest- and-greatest gear to play at high frame rates at a high resolution. Call of Duty: Ghosts doesn’t just lie down and quit, though. The days of running CoD on integrated graphics are long behind us and the 4K textures (50GB of game’s worth) make CoD sheer beauty to behold on a 4K monitor. Hires textures aren’t everything, though—the environment matters. So, we think Battlefield 4 has a slight edge thanks to its use of physics.
Winner: Battlefield 4
ROUND 4 Realism
You don’t combat-reload an empty Remington shotgun by putting one in the tube and racking it. No, the proper course is to open the action, drop a shell in the ejection port, and then smartly run the action forward. It’s these little touches that make the weapons handling in Battlefield 4 a joy to experience. The developers of Call of Duty: Ghosts also spent some time modeling reloads correctly, including the magazine flip-out method that’s popular today in the Tacticool scene, so weapons handling in both games is good. While we acknowledge that both games are very far from being tactical shooters (who carries a reusable parachute in their ruck full-time that can deploy on demand, or brings an SMG into space?), we have to give Battlefield 4 the nod for at least trying to introduce some ballistics modeling, but most people, like Francis, should just lighten up.
Winner: Battlefield 4
ROUND 5 Bugs
They just don’t make ’em like they used to, do they? Actually, that’s not true at all. People just like to think that back in the day, when you installed a game by disc or cartridge and there was no Internet, that developers did their damnedest to wipe out all bugs before launch. That’s not true or we wouldn’t have memories of downloading esoteric patches via modem or waiting to get an updated floppy through the mail. Still, bugs today, like our games, seem grander and shinier than ever before. Call of Duty: Ghosts hasn’t been bug-free—the developers have issued several updates to address stability and performance. But compared to the launch of Battlefield 4, it’s been perfection. You know it’s bad when people can’t even play your game for an hour without a disconnect or crash. The pressure to squash the bugs has gotten so bad that publisher EA said it would halt all other development on the game and focus only on glitches until they were addressed. Ouch.
Winner: CoD: Ghosts
And the Winner Is…
It was closer than we expected, and frankly, we had some disappointments with both titles, which seem to be running out of ideas, but we’re giving the nod by a very narrow margin to Battlefield 4. This, of course, makes no difference to the fanboys and fangirls who will continue to skirmish on Internet forums and outside GameStop.
