Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Review

Ghosts in the machine?

The last time Call of Duty’s founding studio, Infinity Ward, had the lead developer role, the result was the disappointing Ghosts. Is Infinite Warfare a spectacular return to form or is the studio in a spiral of decline?

Story:

Certainly from a narrative perspective, Infinity Ward and Activision appear to have thrown pretty much everything they have at making Infinite Warfare as epic as possible, at the same time as finally breaking away from near-future combat and into full-blown space opera.

With an all-star cast including Kit Harrington and David Harewood (who are both incredibly, uncannily accurately represented) and a plot that takes you across the solar system, Infinite Warfare is nothing if not ambitious. It’s also far more ambitiously structured, with your character, Captain Reyes, moving seamlessly from space to ground combat, choosing his own mission path and where to take your cruiser, The Retribution in pursuit of Jon Snow (sorry, Admiral Salen Kotch).

There’s even optional side-missions to tackle. It’s not just a more complex narrative though – it feels grander and more carefully constructed than the throwaway plots of the more recent CoD games. Reyes doesn’t feel as indestructible as previous CoD leads, often relying on robot buddy Ethan to get him out of a sticky situation. Like BT in Titanfall, Ethan steals the show with a blend of wit and banter unbecoming of an AI. There’s also a satisfying ending, despite clearly being positioned as the first game in a new sub-brand of Call of Duty.

Gameplay:

I’d certainly be interested in playing more Infinite Warfare – I think the team have completely nailed the pacing and balance of the game between cut-scenes, quiet moments, bombastic first-person action and space combat. I also really liked how many missions mix it up – having you start on foot before jumping into your Jackal or vice-versa.

The flight controls and mission structure are also really nicely improved over the almost on-rails flying missions in recent CoD games. That’s not to say that flying the Jackal is even as complex as even an Ace Combat style of game – using your ‘future tech’ you can lock onto opponents easily and use autopilot to focus on the shooting and not the flying. It works well, helping keep your kill-count high and the action frenetic.

On foot, it’s a more familiar tale, although there’s enough energy weapons and special grenade types to give the game a different enough feel from Black Ops 3. Finally, upping the ante even more from previous games is the fact you end up as commander of Retribution, giving you the final say in how you direct the campaign. It’s a significant power trip, when you’re normally a heroic grunt, a small part in a wider war. This time you get to direct things, and that’s no bad thing.

The side missions are also really interesting, featuring plenty of space combat and zero-g elements. There’s even a stealth mission, which should probably show you just what a change of pace Infinite Warfare is to the usual CoD fare.

The campaign also lasts a decent amount of time too. A skilled player may be able to blast through just the core missions in 5-6 hours on the default difficulty, but with all the side missions available most players will probably take nearer 10 hours to get to the credits, making it the most generously sized campaign in the series for years.

Multiplayer:

But it’s the multiplayer element of Call of Duty that for once feels lacking in attention and innovation. I have been one of the many voices calling out for a number of years that having multiple teams has led to an inconsistent amount of progress to the games, with features being removed and added as the years go by. It normally felt like two steps forward, but one step back. This year, the approach appears to be ‘just use Black Ops’ multiplayer. The future tech and weapons from the single-player have carried across, but most of the movement, style and progression is basically the same as last year’s game. That’s not necessarily ‘wrong’, but the movement was much more fluid in Advanced Warfare, and compared to Titanfall the movement feels sluggish, and almost slow in comparison.