Activision’s blockbuster FPS franchise is back again with its latest addition to Call of Duty: Ghosts. The Onslaught map pack starts the season with an addition of four multiplayer maps, one extinction map, and a new hybrid assault/sniper rifle. Subject to the usual timed exclusivity on Xbox platforms, Onslaught was released January 28th for Xbox systems and February 27th for both PlayStation and PC platforms.
Ignition is a small to medium sized map that is largely a remade map from the original Modern Warfare 2. On one end of the map is a large crawler rig with multiple floors and vantage point for snipers to see down the central map corridor. A sentry gun placed on the top floor of the crawler can easily cover two of the three major corridors running straight down Ignition. Paths underneath the streets for multiple paths. There’s a countdown timer that counts down to a rocket test ignition that fails and leaves exploded wreckage across the map. On one side of the map is a test rocket that can be controlled via a nearby console, filling the test chamber with flames that can quickly take out soldiers nearby. One silly note is the loading screen for Ignition shows a ladder to climb up one of the small command posts that has been removed since launch.
The second map in the Onslaught pack, Containment, is easily the most forgettable one out of the four. There’s a central bridge linking the two sides of the side, but once it’s destroyed, there’s no direct path between both sides of the city, instead leaving players to travel down across the trench below. While down in the irradiated water, open radiation messes with the player’s electronics, rendering the radar useless until they can get out of the standing pools of water. There are two paths down on the ground floor to cross over, so a well positioned pair of snipers could easily hold down those choke points.
BayView takes place on a San Francisco pier, relatively early into the war as there isn’t much devastation wrought on the landscape yet. One novel attraction is the addition of a trolley driving around one half of map that you can climb inside, made entirely of wood that’s easy to nail a few shots through if you find someone camping inside. The map itself is Medium sized with a few buildings around to climb through that all have entrances and exits poking out in various directions that all provide different vantage points for those that want to sit and camp without making the map feel like a maze in any sense. While there are a number of open spaces scattered throughout the various shops and restaurants, most of the fighting takes place on either the pier where one of the objectives appears for search and destroy or in the open area just in front of the aquarium. There are some novel additions to the map, such as metal detectors inside a number of the retail shops that give off a faint ping when someone passes through.
The smallest yet most memorable map in the set is Fog, focused on a small group of cabins enclosed in a small forest swamp area. The cabin in the center of the map looks like a typical bajou shack, until you breach the one of two extra exits marked with red skulls. Hidden down below is a chamber of death, filled with tools of torture and a butcher’s playground. There is a constant light fog masking the area, when matched with the muted color palette makes it quite difficult to see snipers in the distance. One issue isolated to this map is when moving too close to certain corners, the camera will swing around and fill with white. This issue happened on a couple of instances on different game modes and was unique to Fog.