Every year there is a new COD game and so the previous year’s game, and the games before that are quickly forgotten about (except COD 4: MW of course)
I haven’t played the single player campaign of a COD game in years and yet for some reason reading this article: The secret sci-fi greatness of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare really made me want to play Infinite Warfare.
Two breathless hours later, now securely set up in the Bridge of the Retribution, I understood that there was more to this game than I had expected, and, with my mind drifting to thoughts of Alien’s opening sequence, I realized that against all the odds, Infinite Warfare manages to not just be a serviceable science fiction game, but a great one after all.
That was doubly surprising considering Infinite Warfare’s shaky pedigree. After all, this is the bad Call of Duty, the one whose YouTube debut was disliked to oblivion, the one where that pernicious military phrase “boots on the ground” came into use and the one that sold 50 percent less than its series counterparts. After release Activision even distanced itself from its own game, with CEO Eric Hirshberg claiming “it just didn’t feel enough like Call of Duty”. It’s also hard not to see Infinite Warfare’s ‘failure’ as contributing to the death of the Call of Duty campaign, with Black Ops 4 releasing last year without one altogether (although this year’s entry will reportedly have one).
But perhaps “not feeling like Call of Duty” is what allows Infinite Warfare to aspire to something else. After the rote prologue, the game abandons the series’ typical character switching, for example, instead keeping you firmly in the boots of one Commander Nick Reyes. This allows it to string together a continuous set of missions that seamlessly take you from a grand celebration, through an invasion, into orbit, into a chaotic space battle and then drifting into land on the Retribution. Unlike the prologue, this exhilarating charge doesn’t dump lore on you, instead it elegantly lets you walk through it. Walk-and-talk is the trick here, switching out cutscenes for mobile meetings that keep forward momentum and stay economical on the details. Momentum is everything in these first missions, and there are few games that can match the sense of headlong pace the game delivers. And in these two hours Infinite Warfare comes to life in the transitions it makes between the shooting, not the shooting itself.
It was partly the fact that it “didn’t feel enough like Call of Duty” that actually drew me to the game, that and the way the sci-fi setting is realised (see the article). And I’m really enjoying it.
There is the spectacle, the Michael Bay explosions etc. which actually works really well with the sci-fi setting. In some ways the style of spaceships and the tech makes me think of Star Citizen - a much more polished and orchestrated Star Citizen.
The action packed shooting and movement feels good, you can clearly see they borrowed or were “inspired” by Titanfall in this regard. The missions are varied too as you choose which mission to do from a map of the Solar System.
Then there’s the unexpected, Deus Ex kind of feel as you walk around your Space Carrier, the Retribution, in between missions, checking your audio logs, watching the propaganda-like news reports and hearing the conversations of the crew members. All the while there is the creak of the bulkheads, the chunky, utilitarian design of the spacecraft, creating a real sense of place.
The plot is typical COD stuff but is certainly elevated by the characters you interact with. E3N (nicknamed Ethan), your robotic soldier pal is really likeable, and provides some brilliant humorous dialogue. All in all, this has been a pleasant surprise and a fun game to play.