Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s nonstop action and epic story redeems Infinity Ward

Plenty of memorable moments

The action is intense enough to sear some scenes into my mind. The first time I came up against a giant C12 robot was intense. It’s a terrifying thing to charge up a hill while evading heavy return fire. I remember a couple of times when I had to use every gun and every piece of ammo to hold off a horde of attacking robots. Flying into space battles full of capital ships and hostile fighters is a sight to behold. The setpieces — or cinematic action scenes — are huge in scope and memorable.

But the explosions weren’t the only memorable parts. Reyes and his lieutenant, Nora Salter, are battlefield veterans, and many moments test their mettle — and friendship and trust. The conversations can be raw. One moment between Reyes and Ethan the robot when death is near and they communicate as if they are saying farewell. It was a dialogue between a man and a robot, but it’s touching. In so many ways you’ll feel like you’re in the middle of a game that combines Call of Duty and Uncharted.

Now I wonder why that is?

The Jackal fights bring more gameplay variety

The Jackal introduces jet-like combat in outer space, but it’s not a flight simulator. You fight on a 2D plane, for the most part, using controls that map  well to the first-person shooter controls. You can hover or descend, and maneuver left or right easily. For the most part this is a good thing, but it does produce some annoyances (I’ll get to these later). Yet, adding the ship-to-ship space combat and dogfighting was a good decision that makes the action more intense and variable. It doesn’t lessen the intensity, as you’re either pulling the trigger of a gun or firing the cannon of a space fighter.

“In some of the Jackal missions, there are times you can do more up and down,” said Dave Stoll, head of Infinity Ward, in an interview with GamesBeat. “But it was important to kind of keep stuff on a plane. You can get very disoriented. This is more of a cinematic experience than a flight sim. We try to keep things on a level plane. In some of the more challenging Jackal assaults, like when you’re taking out the destroyers, they’re at different heights and you can take yourself—I don’t get seasick, so I can flip upside down and do all kinds of stuff. But for ease of accessibility we kind of keep stuff on a plane.”

It has a sense of humor

The hero has his sidekick, but it’s a mechanical one. Reyes has a companion in Ethan (formally spelled ETH.3n, and it’s short for Enhanced Tactical Humanoid 3rd Revision). And Ethan is the funniest character, providing comic relief in a grim war story.

Ethan is capable of human-like emotions and responses, and he isn’t obtuse. He doesn’t joke when it’s inappropriate, and he’s a badass fighter. But when the captain asks Ethan what the Navy’s solution to a tough fight is, Ethan replies, “Send in the marines.”

“That’s tough line, I’ll tell you. Doing a robot, a talking robot, that’s a tough line to walk,” said Stoll. “It’s been done so many times in pop culture, in entertainment. We’ve created a robot, I think, that does his own kind of thing. He’s not like any of the others.”

Ethan pulls it off. And his humor spurs some emotional moments as well.

The combat is fierce, from planetary firefights to zero-gravity assaults

I played on Regular difficulty, and I thought that middle level was too tough at times. Replaying the same firefights over and over is a little embarrassing. But I had to do it quite a few times during the course of the campaign. And I loved it. This is truly a Call of Duty game because it delivers so many scenes with endless combat. You have to empty clips, count on your comrades for help, and find ways to outflank or outthink the enemy. You’re constantly changing weapons, scrounging for ammo, jumping out of the way of gigantic wrecks and explosions, hacking the enemy’s tech, and using your grenades.

Combat in zero gravity is tough, forcing you to learn how to use the grappling hook, which pulls you at a high speed to an enemy or to cover. Fortunately, you don’t tumble through space doing somersaults. You can float in one direction and pick off the enemies by puncturing their suits. There’s a huge range of fighting, from taking on humans to dealing with giant robots. The depth, intensity, and breadth of combat is impressive.

Multiplayer is intense and massive

When you get shot in the Frontier multiplayer map in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, your dead body starts floating in space. That’s because the gravity boots stop working when you die. You face a learning curve when it comes to figuring out which weapons are the best, but they fall into the familiar categories of pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, heavy guns, and assault rifles. This gives Call of Duty fans plenty to like and plenty to learn. The zero gravity combat adds a sci-fi feel that modern-war diehards don’t really like. But I felt that Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer definitely felt like Call of Duty.

You can choose from among six combat rigs, like Warfighter, that let you define your style of play. The weapon types are familiar, but you’ll have fun choosing your accessories like the Seeker grenades or the Biospike explosive knife. But you can also customize your guns as you get more experience. I’m looking forward to progressing up the ladder and unlocking the badass equipment.

Zombies is light-hearted fun

Zombies in Spaceland is a big bonus in Infinite Warfare, as it’s the first time Infinity Ward has tackled the co-op gameplay mode that Treyarch has always put in its Call of Duty games. In contrast to the serious Infinite Warfare, Zombies in Spaceland is as goofy as can be. The Valley Girl will gag zombies with a spoon. You can make zombies dance on a disco floor and cut them down with lasers.

When you die, you can play 1980s arcade games such as Pitfall. You can team up with multiple players and try to survive as long as possible in an abandoned theme park. You have to conserve your ammo yet make sure your friends stay alive. You can revive them, but if there are zombies about, they’ll take you down. As you go up in levels, the slaughter becomes more intense. It becomes just as intense as Infinite Warfare.

“I think we wanted to make a Zombies that was fun and cool and would get people interested because the theme was more accessible, and then try to ease people in, make the beginning a bit more accessible,” said Stoll at Infinity Ward. “Of course, for Zombies, you must have all the crazy cocktail of quests and stuff going on in the levels. One of my big hopes for this game—the campaign is great, the multiplayer is great. But getting more people to try out Zombies would be great.”