From its debut with World War games to the final frontier: space… Call of Duty has come a long way and it has been a very bumpy ride as it is not the only shooter on the market. How does the latest installment fare against the others? Is it an instant classic or does it get lost in space?
Call of Duty on the battlefield
COD VS BATTLEFIELD… A great war… Let’s end it. Right here and now. Call of Duty is a fast paced rollercoaster ride, the ultimate lone wolf’s fix. Battlefield is a tactical shooter relying on teammates. There’s no further comparison to be made! They’re not even set in the same environment.
Now that that’s out of the way we can start talking about Infinite Warfare.
A war carried by “Jon Snow” where your division has to stop him and his band of merry-men. Call of Duty always had these big global threatening plots since they dived into the Modern Warfare tome, which has got the HD treatment and was coincidentally bundled to Infinite Warfare as an added bonus. We’ve had recurring characters and a strong narrative that elevated the franchise to new heights. Since House of Cards’ Kevin Spacey’s character enticed us to get the game a couple of years back why not bring Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones to this installment and so they did. He fits the character and it is well executed yet it doesn’t save the campaign…
Get ready to be blown away… but not immediately
The campaign is as always too short. Now I get it, Call of Duty has always been about the multiplayer but why bother bringing in Jon Snow if you know most of the play hours will be on the multiplayer side of the game. Another thing that bothered me was the fact that the game has some pacing issues. It’s slow paced in some scenes and misses some trigger points in others. When it does take off, however, the Hollywood rollercoaster gets real! It impresses in these key stress moments but not enough to justify the slow moments before it.
Black Ops 3.5
Yet somehow this is the least of my problems. The game doesn’t feel like the next step in the COD franchise… To me, it seems like a “BLACK OPS 3.5” There’s just too little change since the BO3 game we got earlier. Call of Duty has come a long way from being the polished product it used to be. But that’s the cost of having to create a new game every single year. It hurts the franchise, whether you have different studios working on it or not. I invite you to look at the case of Assassin’s Creed. It started out as a very strong franchise but the last games somehow got lost in the fact that they were not polished enough… And now they’re taking a break from the yearly releases. Something to be considered? COD has been king for too long and it got very cozy in the world of shooters. But it didn’t remain the only shooter, nowadays there are younger franchises that pull off what the fans want. COD needs to consider the fact that it is no longer king among shooters. And don’t get me wrong, I can live with COD being the king again, but they need to rebrand and rework the core of their business model. It has been king before, they just need to get around the round table and plot its big return, even if it takes a year or two without the COD in stores.
It’s not the graphics this time, they are quite good!
Graphically this game isn’t bad at all. It’s not the best but it doesn’t deserve the critique it gets from the internet! At least not when we talk about the graphics. The game looks good, the cutscenes are top notch and all the effects and stressful shootouts transition to your screen without frame rate drops whatsoever. The core gameplay of running on walls is good! It’s not bad but they should make every structure available to this mechanic. I found myself in many situations trying to vault off walls that were not triggered by this mechanic. The dogfights were missing some organic feel to it yet I do believe that they have a lot more potential to them. The Halo franchise had a well-executed dogfight structure that I feel could be a good inspiration for the future games taking this path.
Multiplayer… AKA Bleeding ears…
Another place where you’ll find the special mechanics such as the wall running is in the fan favorite Multiplayer Mode.
Get ready to jump into another adventure leading to countless prestiges, customizable rigs and classes and way too many kids shouting stuff into their mics… The online experience has always been the main attraction to the series. Fast paced action, something I missed in the campaign was redeemed in the multiplayer. The matchmaking is fast and I had little connection problems. Deathmatch is one of my favorites yet it still misses a better and more intense reward system for team play. I did find a stronger team bond when I tried the Search and Destroy mode. This mode was one I had completely forgotten about and shows that the social demographic between Free for all and Search and Destroy couldn’t be any bigger. This is a mode where I did not find anyone calling me names or threatening me in Belorussian.
What surprised me was the amount of Prestige players on day 1 ?! It was very frustrating in the beginning to live more than 30 seconds through a match. I heavily relied on scavenging upgraded guns from others. Until I gained enough points to buy my way to carnage. Every rig has a special power and I really loved the edge you got once you activated it. Seeing my laser split towards multiple enemies and disintegrate others, brilliant. The multiplayer is good but even that feels like a re-hashed Black Ops 3.
Another mode that comes back to haunt us again is the one with the zombies we all grew to love. This is the one that has the most arcadey feeling to it and that’s good! It’s nice to fire up a quick game of zombies in the eighties and it’s all very colorful and less grim this time around. It’s a different take on the darker versions we got in earlier installments but it’s not bothering at all. The score is quite good as well! Why not make the Zombies in Spaceland as a stand-alone game? Left4Dead has left the scene and the Zombies in Spaceland has a lot of potential to fill that gap.
Conclusion:
“The Zombies in Spaceland” moments are brilliantly executed but unfortunately this isn’t a zombie game… We have to look at the fact that Call of Duty needs to innovate and reinvent itself. It needs to take a leap of faith and sit back at the drawing board. It’s not the worst game out there, but for a franchise that used to be a synonym for quality, it can do better. There are other shooters taking the throne and it’s not Jon Snow that will claim it back.
I was going to write a long mini-review, myself, but I figure a simple reaction to the game will suffice.
I wanted to give this game a real chance. I wanted to make-believe that the little entitled kids on the internet were just being over-reactive and overly critical because they’re suffering Call of Duty fatigue. I have played every Call of Duty except 3. I have enjoyed every Call of Duty. Even Ghosts, to a smaller degree (primarily, Squads).
But, I don’t like this one. In fact, I truly hate it. Now, it looks good. It sounds good. It even plays like your standard Call of Duty game– same core movement and combat mechanics. So, what changed? I played less than an hour of the campaign. In fact, I couldn’t play more than that– and most of that? Was spent dying at what I presume was the end of the first space battle. Why? Strafing runs on the final super carrier. Even after dropping down to recruit just so I could ‘enjoy’ the rest of the campaign didn’t help me at all. Kept getting wrecked by missile volley’s and turrets. E3N sucks at flying. The fighter sucks at locking on to missiles and turrets. I could not progress past the second strafing run. And for that, I am now here. I have uninstalled the game from my PS4, and now have Fallout 4 loaded on my Xbox.
I really wanted to like this game, and say “F YOU INTERNET, you spoiled little corn schuckers!” But… no dice.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, gets a solid 2 out of 10. Because the capital ships were really cool in design, and Salter is hot. Thats…. about it.
MAN. Jean maybe we should just give this guy your job. This is a solid piece of video game criticism right here.