Call of Duty: Ghosts ‘Extinction Mode’ Officially Revealed In New Gameplay Trailer

Call of Duty: World at War (aka the last WWII COD game) practically spawned a sub-franchise of its own when it shipped with a fun-focused cooperative mode that let players team up and hold their ground against waves of incoming zombies. It was a genius move both from a marketing perspective and for monetization, since Zombies spun off its own mobile game, with followups in Black Ops and Black Ops 2 - each with plenty of DLC.

For Infinity Ward and the Modern Warfare series however, no such four-player co-op mode ever came to fruition. There was only the limited 2-player Spec Ops modes which didn’t quite have the flash or replayability. For Call of Duty: Ghosts, Activision is embracing what they learned from Treyarch’s COD co-op modes and so Call of Duty: Ghosts is shipping with a crazy four-player co-op mode of its own where players take on alien invaders instead of zombies. Sorry, no actual ghosts.

In Treyarch’s Zombies mode there was always an alien pistol. Now the Call of Duty franchise has actual aliens with the introduction of Extinction in Call of Duty: Ghosts. We first head about an alien co-op mode at the beginning of the month thanks to leaked achievement lists and a blurred shot from a trailer, and this weekend got the first image of the Extinction aliens along with details on all 14COD: Ghosts multiplayer maps.


Call of Duty: Ghosts introduces Extinction – an all-new 1-4 player cooperative game mode featuring a unique blend of fast-paced survival action, FPS base defense, scavenging and class leveling.

The official Extinction gameplay trailer released today highlights only one map of what we expect to be at least a few going by the number of available maps with each Zombies Mode, and it also seems to feature a similar dark and misty aesthetic. We do hope other maps don’t only focus on nighttime. The idea of scavenging and leveling are very appealing and one of the ways – outside of the obvious enemy faction change – Extinction will differentiate itself from Zombies is in how fast-paced it is.

Also note the emphasis on the female soldier, a first for the Call of Duty franchise and something Activision is using in its marketing against chief competitor Battlefield 4, a franchise that has yet to feature female character models in multiplayer. With the new Call of Duty mode seemingly intentionally unveiled the day before Battlefield 4 releases for current-gen consoles and PC, it’s time for DICE to do what we’ve all been waiting for – show us some next-gen dinosaurs.

Until then, use this stencil to cut up your own Halloween Extinction pumpkin.

Call of Duty: Ghosts releases November 5, 2013 for the PC, PS3, Wii U, and Xbox 360; November 15th for the PS4; and November 22nd for the Xbox One.