Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

 

After playing the previous game, Advanced Warfare I was thinking maybe the COD series has started to lose its touch, with the far future high tech sci-fi stuff. Well, this time around, Infinite Warfare has taken it even further, into space, making the whole experience feel bizarre, like I kept asking myself "what game am I playing?" because it feels more like Star Wars or Star Trek than Call of Duty.


The idea this time is that its even further into the future, like year 2200 or something. The story unfortunately this time around is like the most bland CoD campaign I've ever experienced.  The characters are so stock-standard and one-dimensional you barely even remembr any of them. Except theres one character which is this like sentient robot called Ethan, I guess hes like the only memorable character but even still its lukewarm. Like every (or most) CoD campaigns, it centers around defeating a blatantly evil antagonist, lately its apparently always modelled after and acted by some real world famous celebrity. In the previous game, Advanced Warfare, it was Kevin Spacey. This time around, its one of the guys from Game of Thrones. Sadly hes really fucking boring, feels like hes there for a quick paycheck, you only ever really see him on computer screens in-game, he just stands there and says these evil monologues like "We will conquer you and make you suffer ha ha ha Mars eternum" the whole time, its dull. That's basically the whole story, you're the commander of some Star Trek spaceship and you and your team of mostly women (?) go around talking absolute military jargon nonsense for 15 minutes at a time before flying off to some enemy base to stop the evil invaders.

This time around, the game has a sort of hub area. Instead of linearly loading from one level to the next, its like they wanted a more open-ended experience that almost tries to avoid as many loading screens as possible. This means that when you complete a mission, you always have these long periods of down-time of watching your character manually leave the area, fly off to some place, then fly back to your base, then go through the elevator on your base, then walk around your base chatting about military jargon, then going back to the base hub-map, then selecting the main mission. It felt really unnecessary and boring. You know, I play CoD games mostly for the 'Go, go go, nonstop action!' but in this game, you frequently just have tons of periods of downtime where youre doing nothing except listening to characters talk about uninteresting garbage or flying your stupid little spaceship around.

Anyway, you beat the first mission or so and are granted with the ability to either choose side missions or main missions from the hub map, it was confusing at first because it forces you to select a random side mission before it will let you progress the campaign. That pissed me off. But after that, you can select main missions for the rest of the game. Apparently the reason to do side missions is to unlock new attachments or perks or something, but I never gave a shit. The unlocks/perks system in this game is different than the last previous ones. Instead of having experience points or skill points and seeing skill trees like Advanced Warfare, it seems like it just unlocks guranteed perks after each mission, making the whole thing seem pointless and trivial and inconsequential.

The actual combat in this game is probably atleast a bit better than the last game. The arsenal is a bit more fun to use, despite being even more in the future some of the guns are less futuristic looking and some are more aesthetic and tactical. Like you have a gun that looks almost like an M4, and one that looks like an AK. The guns look better and are more fun to use, and have more personality in them. Unlike Advanced Warfare, looking at guns on the ground you can actually tell them apart and understand their pros/cons because it shows you an image of them and its obvious which ones are SMG/Assault rifle or shotguns etc. There seems to be more variety. I still dont really like the arsenal and the guns arent great, but its a step up. Also, unlike the previous game which had a super overpowered wallhack gun sight you can get, in this game you can get one, its called Thermal or Trojan scope, but its way less effective and toned down which overall makes the combat more engaging because you dont have this super overpowered scope the whole time.  Also, its funny how in the previous game I wondered how these modern CoD games dont let you choose a loadout before each mission - well in this game you actually can. After choosing a mission from the hub you have to manually walk down to the armoury and then you can choose your loadout from a guy called Griff. This is the standard stuff of choosing 2 weapons, attachments, then gadgets. The gadgets once again are annoying to use, convuluted, and clunky. The controls for them suck like the Left/right bumpers, but even worse is the UI elements trying to show the gadgets. Its these two tiny icons in the middle of the screen and you cant even tell what they represent so the whole game whenever I tried to use a gadget It would be almost a total surprise what would come out of me. I really prefer the earlier Cod Games where its just a simple Grenade button or at most a flashbang or something, all these new gadgets like Spider bots, Drones, Hacking, Foam walls, Shields, whatever else shit is clunky bloat. Maybe if they could figure out a fun control scheme for it, it would be enjoyable, but even then I think its unnessesary gimmicks.

Again I played the campaign on Hardened difficulty. I think in this game more than the last, the AI is  way too accurate. If you poke your head out for a split second, youre already taking damage. After about halfway through the campaign I was dying almost atleast once per checkpoint. At least like all CoD games, they are forgiving and abundant with frequent checkpoints, but still I found myself getting really pissed off and frustrated with some of the sections in this game, mostly with how stupidly accurate the AI can be. I never really looked forward to, or enjoyed, fighting robot enemies in video games. They  arent as satisfying to fight against as humanoids, probably because no bloodspraying or grunts and grons as you shoot them or something, or its not as immersive I dont know - but sadly in this game theres quite a few sections where youre fighting droves of robot soldiers that are bulletsponges, sprint towards you and explode, and kill you in a second flat. Theres one level where the entire level is comprised of this and its miserable and not fun. Theres other sections where you are up against this big mech type enemies and you have to run around the map picking up rocket launchers to destroy them, also sucked balls because it makes you do these quick-time events as the final blow and its really easy to fuck it up and miss the tiny place it wants you to shoot, then making your character instantly vulnerable and you probably instantly die having to do the whole section again. Mostly, the enemies feel like massive bullet sponges in this game compared to the last, even the humanoids, and their accuracy is unfair at times.

I don't know why CoD campaigns always find it necessary to shove in vehicle sections, maybe because its easy to program and its showoff hollywood explosions or something. Usually I dont mind them too much, and sometimes its even a nice touch like in Modern Warfare 2 the skidoo or something. But sadly in this game its like every 15 minutes youre forced into this spaceship which has the most nauseating, motion sickness controls and visual effects its such a pile of shit - I hated it.  You fly around in this space ship, having to shoot down enemy ships, but the screen is flying around in circles so god-damn much it feels like I stuck my head in a washing machine. Theres way too many visual effects on screen, the HUD is obnoxious, these spaceship sections were genuinely like physically painful, hurt my head and eyes, and felt exhausting to look at after just 60 seconds. Towards the end of the game theres like an entire 20 minute segment inside the spaceship and I questioned if I even wanted to finish the fucking campaign because I kept failing the ship segment and it was like actual torture to keep retrying. Terrible and abundant ship segments.


As for the actual missions themselves, once again it was just disappointing or boring. As I said before, too much downtime. By the time you feel like youre actually in the combat and playing the game, it feels like it only lasts a few minutes then youre back doing some flying section or walking around listening to people talk for 15 minutes or some other gimmicky segment. One positive thing I can say is that atleast in this campaign there seemed like a lot less handholding from the AI teammates. The main complaint I had with the previous game was that you were constantly being bossed around by the NPC's, getting told when to shoot, where to stand, what to do etc. But in this game, there semed like a lot more segments where the player is free to play how they deem fit without the AI yelling instructions at you. So in that regard, it felt more like a video game experience than merely playing out some movie script. Sure, there are a bunch of moments where the AI is telling you what to do, but overall it felt like more moments where I was noticing that I had to freedom to do what I want, mostly.

There are a few zero-gravity segments where you will suddenly be floating around in space, but theres still enemies shooting at you as well who are also flying around. Mechanically though this is weird and seems out of place, because you still need to constantly be behind cover, because the AI is still super accurate even while flying around in space. So its like theres this whole emphesis to fly around in zero gravity, but most of the time I found myself floating to the ground anyway to hide behind some piece of cover the whole time, making the whole concept pointless. Its like these segments of the campaign were only balanced around the easier difficulties, while on Hardened and above it makes the whole flying around in zero gravity thing not viable. I found it strange and stupid.  

Not sure what else to say, really. The story as I said is really boring, and theres way too much of it. As I keep saying, theres too much downtime! I'd find myself half asleep on the couch waiting for the hordes of characters to stop talking their jargon, or waiting for the cutscene of the plane to land, or this and that tedious bullshit. Just plop me down into a battlefield with a sentence or two of what to do, I dont need a 20 minute exposition, its fucking annoying. Main Characters die here and there during the campaign but I never cared or barely even noticed or remembered who they were its that shallow and uninteresting. The few times the main antagonist shows up during cutscenes he just says some cliche one liner or is the shallow evil man so its eyeroll stuff really. Speaking of eyerolls, a lot of the deaths is especially eyeroll inducing I've found. Mostly sitting around behind some piece of cover waiting for my health to come back, pop my head out for a brief second and die instantly, making me redo the last 5 minutes kind of stuff. Or having to kill the giant mechs. Or the robots. Yeah, I'm repeating myself now.

The game really isnt any better than the previous one. It has some things that are better, then it has things that are worse. Overall it makes it feel like the same level of enjoyment. It has better weapons and arsenal, the controls and combat are slightly better with the gadgets handling, it has the ability to choose your loadout which I guess is kind of cool, the graphics of course are slightly better and has some nice lighting effects and super high budget high quality assets, but its like for every positive thing it has going for it, it has equally as many negatives compared to the last game. Like the awful constant flight sections, the completely uninteresting story where nothing cool ever happens, the constant boring downtimes - oh, and I almost forgot: They changed the mission structure. I mean, usually in CoD games you have levels that are like 15-20 minutes long. The kind of bite sized levels where you can tell yourself you'll just boot up the game and play a mission or two and go to bed because you know theyre short and managable. But in this game, theres only 7 main missions. Each one is over an hour long. Frequently I'd say to myself "Alright, I'll play a mission and then go to bed"  but then find myself launching the game and having to wait 20+ minutes before I'm even into the next fucking combat segment! Just sitting around listening to people talk or watching shit cutscenes. Then I have over another hour to get past one mission. I really preferred shorter, bite sized levels than this grueling drawn out huge mission structure they went with here, its annoying and can feel draining. Most of the levels take place inside space ships or these high-tech industrial settings which all look generic, the same, and mostly uninteresting. Towards the end of the game your ship crash lands on some desert planet which was I guess one of the most interesting parts of the game? Hard to say. I'm really hoping the rest of the CoD franchise can make up for these 3 medicore games in a row (Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, Infinite Warfare) because this shit has been really underwhelming as someone who's been around and played since the very first game in 2003.

4/10