Answer: Oh, yeah its Call of Duty, that shooting-dudes game coming out every year
TLDR; The game is pretty good, go buy. Vidmaster likes it.I have absolutely no idea
why the most recent title named
Infinite Warfare is getting so much hate
everywhere, half of the reviews I have read are just plain wrong in places. So, I present my review of CoD: Infinite Warfare tailored to the FS2 community:
Disclaimer first, I like the CoD games a lot but do not religiously: I buy like every third game, I play the campaign (and regularly replay when the mood strikes) and I play a bit of online multiplayer. I never bought any Map DLC or Season Pass. And I think
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the very best interactive experiences ever made, playing it back then was a revelation. But again, I am not a zealot and I play many more games including shooters, old ones like DOS-Doom or Marathon, arena-shooters like Unreal Tournament or semi-simulation games like original Ghost Recon, and story-driven ones like the reimagined Wolfenstein, Riddick or Half-Life.
Infinite Warfare is a military sci-fi shooter, which lets you play an Alpha 1-type of solider who is both marine and pilot, similar to the setup in
Space: Above and Beyond. Your job is to defend Earth when the almost comically evil and obviously fascist colonials decide to attack. That character has a name, a voice, a best pal and unwavering loyaltiy and commitment to what the game perceives as military duty, that is it. Let's discuss plot, presentation and gameplay:
Plot-wise, this is a basic war story about operations, combat in the sense of actions and reactions and not a complex epic or mystery story full of twists. Think Freespace instead of Blue Planet. The script is serviceable material but do not expect anything special. The remarkable thing about the experience is how unified it feels, in contrast to many modern games there is a sense of continuity in what happens on screen. There are no real time jumps, no protagonist switches (outside the prolog) or "in the meantime" cutscenes. This makes the plot pretty gripping
since you are never taken out of it, whatever the quality of the script may be. Instead of the usual "appearing somewhere in the level and action ensuses" you actually reach that level in some way, usually by flying there. This is an extreme contrast to how CoD worked in the past, especially the more recent games and it is pretty brilliant. Even the briefings are now sensibly integrated, no bodiless more voices. It is also toned down a lot in the blockbuster department, there are less absurd set-pieces and what is there makes more sense. Plot-wise, this game is definitely new material. Less clever than some predecessors but much more coherent. Some logic holes of course, but it is still CoD
.
Graphics are modern and good looking, the Sound is pretty awesome and voice acting is mostly spectacular (where the script permits
). Music is surprisingly tame, way less aggressive than previous CoDs. I wished for a little more impact sometimes. Art design is stellar, especially inside your Carrier Vessel. In short, not much to discuss here.
Gameplay is an interesting mix indeed
. To the uninitiated, CoD's standard gameplay involves your FPS-character getting escorted through a series of combat encounters against numerically superior forces by pretty much useless friendly AI. The battlespace is pretty deadly
for both you and any enemy and there is a ****load of different guns, tools, devices and grenades. Its basically military-porn.
When Titanfall came out a while back, I hailed it as the first real innovative shooter in years as it mixed CoD-style gunplay with Mechs, Parcour and an old-school double jump and I stand by that. Its movement mechanics have been incorporated into CoD since then, though never on the same level. Compared to previous games, I would actually argue that the game's speed has been reduced and time to kill has actually increased. It still plays fast but not as fast as earlier titles, which was pretty surprising but not negatively so. The level design consists mostly of the usual corridors and there is little chance to effectively use the parcour and jetpack stuff in the campaign
. This stuff has been designed for Multiplayer first and you notice. Plus it could have used a better tutorial, the game pretty much assumes you are a veteran CoD player.
Aside from the standard gunplay, there are zero-g sections and fighter combat levels and both are excellent and not mere gimmicks, contrary to what most of the reviews say out there. The Zero-G stuff is comparable to
Shattered Horizon (a now defunct but awesome astronaut shooter) and the only issue here is that they still have that stupid auto-leveling that you cannot disable completely
. The figher combat on the other hand is probably the thing getting the most hate for no apparent
reason, again undeserved. It is not on rails, it is not a one-time affair and its also not automatic. What we are looking at is the CoD version of a space-shooter, aka drilled down to the essentials of shooting and not getting shot in an extremely dense and fast environment. Make no mistake, this is no flight sim and little situational awareness is required: As long as you do not die you will win eventually
. No escort-list, to cargo containers to scan, no wingmen to order around. You either shoot down enemy planes or you attack larger ships which comes down to destroying their turrets or engines. The closed game here is actually
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, which sports a similar lock-on feature as this game where chasing the enemy is semi-automated if necessary. Space combat is fine, fast and light on mechanics but it does not outstay its welcome. And most of all, it feels integrated both plot- and gameplay-wise
.
Ever since CoD became big and anual, people started hating it, complaining about the lack of innovation in the industry and that the game was ****, and Activision was evil and the whatnot. But this thread should really not devolve into that discussion. Bottom line is, if you like military sci-fi and shooters, you should get this game. And since this is a Freespace Community, there might be people like that here. And I urge those people to give this game a chance and post their own opinions here if what I wrote above seemed appealing.
EDIT: By the way, my Steam says
10 hours for my initial playthrough through the single-player campaign on VETERAN, the hard but not hardest difficulty, which me being a CoD regular (or veteran
). Considering that I got probably 9 hours of real campaign experience (toilet breaks, pausing to talk to someone, ...) I can only conclude that the 5 hour campaign comments are once again senseless hating and skipping all the side-missions (I did all).
