I'm not jaded with my favorite entertainment medium by a long shot, but when my relationship with a well-regarded franchise is reduced to the word "whatever," there are forces at work that are stronger than my ability to see the best in every single piece of interactive entertainment that I can get my hands on. With the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts - Devastation, I find that the raucous wave pool I once had a blast fighting for my life in has slowly evaporated away to little more than a tepid kiddie pool. You've got four new maps, each with their own subtle gimmick, and one more Extinction chapter. If other, better shooters haven't pulled you away from Call of Duty: Ghosts by now, you may as well go all in. The $15 price tag is as unjustified as ever, though.

I gather that most of the people who are going to own Call of Duty: Ghosts - Devastation are solely in it for the competitive multiplayer. Granted, Extinction is still fun and there's some new content on that front, but I'll get into that later. These expansions usually sell on the merits of being able to kill people in different environments than everyone is used to, and will likely continue to do so regardless of how good the maps actually are. Here, they're par for the course. Two are great, and the others are just okay.

We'll start with the elephant in the room. Players seemed to receive the whole Michael Myers thing rather well in Onslaught, so Infinity Ward attempts to replicate that success in Ruins, a jungle environment that mixes the natural world with the supernatural. The Mayan imagery and natural dangers are the obvious threat; the volcano far off in the distance can be triggered with a Field Order Reward. The other is not so organic; you become the Predator. Aesthetic differences aside, the benefits are similar to those obtained by being the Halloween psychopath. But, of course, you can bleed, and therefore you can be killed. Ruins is one of the two greats in the pack.

The other star map is Unearthed, a map that delves into the Extinction sidestory a bit. This craggy wasteland is what remains of an excavation site; naturally, the Cryptids are involved. They tie into the primary Field Order Reward for this map; you can summon three of the little exploding Cryptids to home in on approaching enemies.

Collision is as bog-standard as Call of Duty maps go. You've got a container ship that has somehow found its way into a bridge. So naturally, the opportunities for cover and verticality are exactly what you'd expect: plentiful and slight. But in terms of originality, it's a total flop. Even the Field Order Reward (a double strafe from the greatly-feared Warthog) lacks excitement for all except the individual unleashing it.

Finally, we have Behemoth, a hazardous map loaded with chokepoints. If you find yourself in a team that lacks skill, this is not the place to be; Field Order Rewards allow achieving players the opportunity to climb into the gunner seat of a chopper and just waste everyone on the screen until someone finally gets wise.

With Call of Duty: Ghosts - Devastation comes a new chapter in the Extinction saga: Mayday. This chapter is a straightforward rescue/destroy mission very much along the lines of Resident Evil 4. The action remains as intense as it ever was. That's for better and for worse: if the original debut of the Extinction Mode didn't do anything for you, this new chapter won't change your mind. But you will miss out on some interesting sights, most of which have to do with a new Cryptid type and a boss encounter that I won't dare spoil for you.

With Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare having been recently announced, we can (and should) hope that some meaningful changes are in the pipe. For all I know, Activision can continue to keep doing what they've been doing and get along just fine. But the only emotion I'm left with at this point is indifference, and it's about to reach critical mass. Hardcore fans of the series will already own Call of Duty: Ghosts - Devastation, and will be having a ball, but for everyone else, I invoke the words of Officer Barbrady: "Okay, move along, people. There's nothing to see here."