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

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered provides your modern war fix

If you really miss the modern war setting of the previous Call of Duty games, you can get it in the special editions that include Modern Warfare Remastered. I played this again in high-definition, and it is still one of the best games ever made. I have to say I enjoyed using the “noob tube,” or the grenade launcher attached to the assault rifle. It’s just like old times.

Side missions make the game replayable

The single-player campaign has a story that you’ll want to get through as fast as possible. But there are side missions in the game where you can veer off the story, or just come back to when you play the game the second time around. You won’t miss anything if you skip these missions, but you can make your way around the solar system and make yourself stronger for the final mission.

What you won’t like

I have surprisingly few gripes. I have a little nitpicking to do, but these are relatively minor complaints in a game that has some epic highs.

Sometimes space combat seems too much like modern war

The weaponry was familiar, as the designers didn’t want to change too much on players. That’s a good idea, but once in a while I felt like I was playing a modern warfare game. I could choose between pistols, assault rifles, rocket launchers, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Only the grenades offered something out of science fiction. I could toss an anti-gravity grenade, or seeker grenades that crawled off to find enemies. That was imaginative. I can appreciate that the developers wanted to preserve the feeling of Call of Duty. But in making the combat too familiar, they robbed us of a vision of what weapons in the future would look like.

The pace slows down unexpectedly

The whole game takes place in the course of 24 hours or so, as Captain Reyes takes his team into one battle after another. The firefights are grueling. But every now and then, the pace slows down and you feel like you’re in a role-playing game like Mass Effect. You can stop at the gun range and practice for as long as you like. You can stop at the captain’s quarters and read Reyes’ emails and audio logs. You can also step off of the main storyline and perform side missions that don’t advance the narrative. It’s just a little jarring to have these quiet little moments in a campaign that is so full of action.

Space fighter combat is too arcadey

It was a rare experience to pilot a vehicle for an extended amount of time in a Call of Duty game. I enjoyed it. I never got sick or woozy while fighting in the jet-like Jackal fighters in space. The aerial combat in space was familiar in some ways, as the controls for maneuvering the Jackal were not so different from maneuvering an infantry soldier. But in some ways, the dogfighting was far easier than it should have been.

The graphics engine is able to put huge numbers of enemies on the screen at once. But the dogfights are simple and aren’t as difficult as they should have been. For instance, huge capital ships loom in the space battles. When you run into one of them, you don’t blow up. You just bounce off them and stop. And the fleeing enemies don’t maneuver like they’re being chased. They evade you, but in a predictable 2D plane. If they really took advantage of the three dimensions of space, they would be really hard to hit. In this way, I felt like space combat just isn’t challenging enough.

On the other hand, I appreciated the fact that it was far easier to fly a Jackal in space than a biplane in Battlefield 1.

The worst villains go down without boss fights

Admiral Sanal Kotch is a particularly annoying villain. Played by Kit Harington (Jon Snow in Game of Thrones), Kotch is brutal and loves giving speeches about the poor oppressed Settlement Defense Front and why it was so justified in launching a Pearl Harbor-style assault on Earth and its United Nations Space Alliance. But we don’t get a chance to take him down in single combat. The same goes for another villainous traitor. I enjoyed blasting lots of grunts and robots on the path to these villains, but I felt robbed in the final firefights. If you’re going to create great villains, you need to create the satisfaction in taking them down in the most dramatic way possible.

Conclusion

In some ways, we should be thankful for Call of Duty: Ghosts, which was a creative failure. It made Activision step back and give its studios more time to work on games. And it forced Infinity Ward to take risks.

“There was a desire among a lot of the team when I got there to do something different, to really mix up the formula,” Stoll said. “That was part of the impetus for—when you’re in the Call of Duty franchise, you’re either doing not enough or too much, you know what I mean? People really wanted to do something different. There was so much passion on the team for doing this game.”

As I mentioned, this has plenty to like and to learn. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare delivers a familiar Call of Duty gameplay in an innovative new setting that should satisfy gamers who are tired of playing the same old thing.

Score: 93/100

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a copy of PS4 edition of the game for this review.