Call of Duty : Ghosts

With the Modern Warfare trilogy laid to rest, Call of Duty: Ghosts marks a new chapter for the world’s favourite first-person shooter. It certainly talks a good game - promising further refinements to the series’ winning multiplayer action, including maps with destructible environments, whizzy new game modes and more customisation options for your virtual soldiers. But are these promises mere apparitions?

OLD FAVOURITES

Let’s cut to the chase. Regardless of the rhetoric, Call of Duty is not about pushing back the frontiers of game design. It’s the Status Quo of games - unadventurous and predictable yet entertaining all the same. So it’s no surprise that Ghosts’ multiplayer relies on the familiar favourites, with the Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Free-for-All and Infected modes all making (welcome) returns.

There is more freedom to personalise soldiers, though, including the long-overdue option to play as a woman. There’s enhanced movement, too, so you can now leap over obstacles like a Parkour master and lean out of cover. These are minor upgrades in the grand scheme of things, but they're welcome all the same.

NEW MODES

Alongside the classics, Ghosts has four new competitive multiplayer modes. Hunted has ill-equipped players fighting for control of zones to win better weapons. Search & Rescue is a Search & Destroy remix in which you respawn fallen allies by collecting their dog tags.

Things step up a gear with the Kamikaze action of Cranked, where players explode if they don’t follow up a kill with another within 30 seconds. Blitz is another goodie - a contest to score by entering the enemy team’s zone. It’s like rugby. With guns. And it's pretty awesome.

SQUADS AND EXTINCTION

Beyond the competitive arena are two more new multiplayer modes, the first of which - Squads - is baffling. It lets you create squads of automaton soldiers that you then lead into battle against teams created by other players. There’s some good A.I. on show but we can’t see the point when matches with real people are just a couple of button presses away.

The other mode is Extinction, a co-operative campaign that takes Left 4 Dead, swaps the zombies for alien hordes and then strips out all the personality. It’s serviceable but very forgettable.

BIGGER MAPS

Ghosts introduces the concept of ‘dynamic maps’ to the series. These allow players to lay traps, shoot open gates, destroy walls and interact with the environment. But alas, it’s more liberating on paper than in practice. What can and can’t be done is tightly controlled so the novelty quickly fades as you get to know the maps.

On the plus side the maps are larger and less constricted than in previous Call of Dutys - a shift that favours team work over lone mavericks and makes for slightly slower battles. We like it, but more frenetic Call of Duty fans might be disappointed.

ACTION MOVIES

Finally, there’s the solo campaign. It’s a tale of orbital death rays, a remote-controlled dog and a Venezuela-led invasion of the USA - an improbable feat for a country currently struggling with a national toilet roll shortage.

It’s very silly but makes up for it with loud bangs, big explosions and outlandish moments ripped out of the 1980s action movie playbook - think space station gun battles and escapes from collapsing skyscrapers. While it re-treads well-worn ground, it rattles along at such a pace that it’s easy to get sucked in, even if none of it will stay with you for longer than a few minutes.

VERDICT

By the skin of its teeth Ghosts is another enjoyable dose of Call of Duty. The new competitive multiplayer modes, the refreshed movement and larger maps are welcome developments but the Squads and Extinction modes fail to impress and, as ever, it’s the tried and tested Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed options that really thrill. It’s good enough, but there’s little here to make Ghosts an essential purchase.

Sony SmartWatch 2

Sony's original SmartWatch last year didn't get too many people excited, but with the Samsung Galaxy Gear hitting the shelves and Apple's long-rumoured iWatch getting closer, the time is clearly ripe to release an updated version to stay in the increasingly high-stakes smart watch game.

Design
Like the Gear it's designed as an addition to a smartphone, rather than as a standalone device. It's not quite as capable as Samsung's model (it doesn't have a camera, for example), or as powerful; but it's lighter, has considerably longer battery life and can be used in conjunction with more devices. It's water resistant (IP57 rating, which should be good for up to 30 mins at a depth of one meter), which makes it a bit more practical for wearing out and about though you'll still want to take it off before you go swimming.

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Style-wise, it's slimmer, and a little more subtle with its all-black face than Samsung's wrist brick -- it actually looks like a watch. It has a choice of default watch faces beneath which sit touch-sensitive icons for home, back and menu, and it sports the large silvery power button on the side familiar from Sony's Xperia handsets.

Software and features
It's supposed to be compatible with any smartphone that uses Android 4.0 or later, which immediately makes it a much more flexible device than the Gear, that's limited to a very small number of Samsung handsets.


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Download Sony's Smart Connect app from Google Play, touch the NFC-enabled device to the SmartWatch and it will automatically hook up. Most of its apps don't come preinstalled, but you can individually download apps for reading (not initiating) calls, texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter and more. You can't actually take calls on the SmartWatch as there's no microphone or speaker, though you can answer calls and then talk via a Bluetooth headset. Notifications popped up promptly and texts and emails appeared clearly, automatically sized to fit the screen when the phone was pocketed.

There are presently over 140 apps available for the SmartWatch (much more than the Gear), though it's the usual mix of pretty goods and so-whats, including exercise apps, games, languages and remote controls. Some, like the very limited and glitchy map app, are free, but others, including WhatsApp Alerts, cost a fee.

Email notifications are supported, and we tested with Gmail and Microsoft accounts (although it's worth noting you can't reply to them on the device). Currently Microsoft Exchange and Hotmail/Outlook emails only work for notifications if paired with a Sony Xperia Z1, as Sony has adapted its implementation of Android to support it; other Android devices cannot support Microsoft's email technology currently. Some software is also dependent on being used with Sony-created software. The music playback controls, for example, only work with Sony's Android music player; playing, pausing and skipping Spotify is a no-go area. Disappointing.

The 1.6-inch screen is the same size as the Gear's but it offers a lower resolution of 220x176 pixels -- not great, but it's fine for viewing updates and notifications. The battery life is considerably better than Samsung's competitor: leave it on all the time and you should get three to four days out of it, extending to a week or so if you switch it off at night.

Charging is via a standard microUSB slot hidden behind a rubber cover on the side. It powers up by pressing the outsize silver button on the side, which matches aesthetically with the power button on Sony's Xperia handsets.


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Conclusion

It's cheaper and lighter than the Galaxy Gear, and it has more social networking apps at launch, immediately making it more useful and less of a toy than Samsung's device, and the subtler style will be a bonus for many. It's not perfect and it's important to bear in mind this is very much a consumption device for getting notifications and updates, but it is useful at times. It needs to evolve quickly, with a lot more apps, to keep pace with developments over the next few months. A fun product for early adopters, but not quite for the mainstream just yet.

Assasins Creed IV: Black Flag

The pirate’s life for you.  That’s what Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag promises, and the fantasy it delivers sets new benchmarks not only for Ubisoft’s series but for open-world gaming. You are Edward Kenway, a privateer-turned-pirate seeking riches and renown on the high seas in the years prior to the events of ACIII. That game, of course, drew criticism for its gratingly earnest protagonist – Edward’s grandson, Connor – and for the sly edutainment of toggling between historical settings and cameos of important figures. Black Flag hasn’t abandoned the series’ love of history, but Ubisoft Montreal lightens

proceedings with bawdy humour and lovable seafaring drunkards aplenty. The recipe that makes Caribbean cruises such a popular holiday – sunshine, open water, gorgeous beaches – is the same one that makes Black Flag’s virtual world so enticing.

From a graphical standpoint, Black Flag’s world is built to amaze regardless of which console generation you’re playing it on. The fact that it was developed for the current generation and ported to PS4 and Xbox One means we’re talking about marginal sweeteners, not a generational leap. The tropical foliage in jungle environs has a more dynamic lilt and sway. Watching a cutscene of Edward speaking

to his quartermaster Adéwalé at the stern, the current-gen version assumes your eyes are focused on the conversing men and soft-focuses the background details such as water and passing land, while the PS4 version maintains distinct water surface detail and crisper wood textures on the boat. It’s noticeable, but feels more like the step up we’ve become accustomed to between existing console and PC games.

It wouldn’t be an Assassin’s Creed game if the main quest thread didn’t eventually veer into the fantastical, and so it’s with little surprise that we discover that Black Flag’s plot hinges on a crystal cube containing human blood. The series’ affection for Lost-style sci-fi inscrutability has been dialed back considerably, however. At its