Simon 'Ghost' Riley and The Black Ops

Its only been a month Black Ops cold war has been announced and the hype is astoundingly increasing by the minute. But, the past few months have been quite monotonous and purposeless, to be honest. Almost as if I'm going through an existential crisis of sorts. As a 23-year-old, I shouldn't be saying such things, such words that have anything to do with depression and such. My peers are saying I'm not old enough to worry about purpose! Or that I haven't found my calling yet, so this is just a phase. And some even said that COVID has made me lazy, which I have to say might be right!

Even after being told of so many motivational stories, nothing seemed to be working for me. Whenever I've been into such situations in the past, the self-illuminating things I've done include a trip down the memory lane to my childhood, to remember and relive the golden memories I have. But this time, I could only go back to my Call of Duty days; All the LAN parties with long-forgotten childhood friends, playing in nuke town of COD BO2 multiplayer, and all that. Almost like an odd bit of perpetuity is shadowing my attempt at recreation. So, I thought, why not just give into it. As of now, I'm almost through playing all of the past releases up to Call of Duty: Ghosts and intend to play through till the new Modern warfare. And for some reason, I feel awfully alive already. Almost like I'm back in my childhood, eating caramelized popcorn and diving deep into the world of Captain Price.

It'd be near impossible if I wanted to do a review on the full franchise. If I start doing so, I fear even a ten-thousand-word post will fail to do justice. And most of the people reading this already know more or less about Call of Duty. Instead, it would be better to just talk about a couple of most famous characters from the franchise in a nutshell and share the attachments and the bonds those characters forcefully built with me! An ode to my childhood, perhaps. That way, this would still be a gaming post, I reckon.

My first introduction to the franchise was through Call of Duty: Black Ops around 2010, maybe. It's hard to keep track of time nowadays. At that time, most of my friends played Starcraft, Diablo, age of empire, and such action RPG's. But one can only play so much of that, eh! So I started slowly going through platformers like Metroid or Castlevania. And then came before me COD BO. And oh boy, was I blown away. My friends kept telling me how third-person shooters are basic mindless games with any campaign stories to build on. And only after playing, I understood how wrong they were.

Black ops, the three-part game, let go of the story continuity after the first two. For that reason, its only natural to hate BO3. It has a great multiplayer that resulted in Killzone's creation, but I was never an online player and never bothered with it. My relations with games are a bit more personal. I crave interactive stories and, at the core of this insatiable thirst, lay black ops.

I mean, who wouldn't love to dive into an immersive world of the sixties, the era of the cold war, the age of conspiracy theories. I immediately fell in love with the dynamics between Alex Mason, Woods, and Reznov. The story spanning from Vietnam, Cuba to the Arctic Circle and Siberia only gives an in-depth foreshadowing of what Call of Duty in its baser form really is.

Character building was more natural in the modern warfare series incorporating one of the most favorite game characters ever to exist, Captain Price. That rugged dude with a cowboy hat, smoking cigars and shooting enemies. But people always seem to forget about one other character who most COD enthusiasts say deserve a standalone game, Simon' ghost' Riley, one of the most popular nonplayable characters in the franchise.

To those who skip in-game lore, let me tell you a story. Story of how a normal brit kid, later on, became the ruthless solder named Ghost.

Simon Riley, Aka Ghost, was raised in a very abusive environment. A drunk father and a bully brother made his life a living hell. At times the torture increased up to be almost inhuman. His father would bring dangerous animals from the market, including snakes, and forced him to kiss them, to toughen him up. And his brother would wear that symbolic skull painted mask at nights to scare him. Later on, he took up that persona to show off what he had survived and beat to climb up.

Such abuses slowly turned him into a bit psychotic. His only escape till he was old enough was as an apprentice to a butcher. When September 11 occurred, he joined the British military forces and later on became a member of the Special Task Force-SAS.

As an older man, his primary goal was to take care of his family. But being very skilled at what he does, he was always pulled out and randomly put on missions. Such one was Manuel Roba, a drug lord. It was to be easy. But, while at the very end stages, he was betrayed by his team leader to put through immense torture once again. He was buried neck-deep and left for dead, and somehow he escaped.

He came back to his family, and slowly, all the trauma was going away. Stability came back in his life only to be ripped apart and dissected once again. Due to disagreement with his former colleague, Kevin Sparks, his whole family was murdered! In a fit of rage, he took his revenge. He wiped out all of them, along with Manuel Roba.

And after that, he was approached by Captain Price to join task force 141 and work for him. So that is the backstory behind him having such a twisted sense of justice. Bet you didn't know that now did ya!:p

Now, The hidden bit of silver lining is that because of such intricate characters, COD is what it is now. Such attention to depth is what I look in a game and, in this instance, delivered it was! In the latest modern Warfare Season 3, he and Alex both come back. But such pleasures are too minimal in an small expanse or DLC. Until the new COD Black Ops releases, we have nothing new about Ghost.

But if you want to read and know more of the side stories of Call of duty, just head on to the fandom wiki site. All of what you read here are available there too! Only in a more understandable format and with none of the excess baggage land blabberings. After all, avoiding a human touch is very hard for me:V