Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: Attack of the Space Terrorists.

The yearly Call of Duty release belies the fact that there are 3 developers behind the franchise: Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer. The last game we saw from the original developer was all the way back in 2013 when they debuted Call of Duty: Ghosts, an uncharacteristic stumble for them. By comparison both Sledgehammer and Treyarch’s entries were both superior, signalling that Infinity Ward was no longer the king of the franchise it created. Infinite Warfare was then their chance to prove that they knew how to do Call of Duty best but, unfortunately, they’ve missed the mark once again.

Infinite Warfare is set in the distant future, one where humanity has expanded its presence throughout the solar system. However over time tensions between the United Nations Space Alliance and the denziens of Mars have led to the formation of the Settlement Defense Front; a ruthless militaristic organisation hell bent on Mars becoming the one and only super power in the solar system. You are Nick Reyes, a captain of the Special Combat Air Recon force who commands a fleet of futuristic warplanes, charged with the defense of Earth and all UNSA protected territories. With news of a specialist strike team being taken out by the SDF during a tenuous cease fire agreement tensions are running high and a system wide war is a very real possibility.

Infinite Warfare is the first Call of Duty to be release only for current generation platforms, leaving the PlayStation 3 and Box 360 behind. The improvement in graphical fidelity from Black Ops III is slight but noticeable, the inclusion of more modern effects like physically-based rendering evident the more realistic lighting effects. The automatic graphics selection does a good job although it priortises frame rate over better visuals. With a few tweaks however it’s quite easy to knock up the detail a few notches without any noticeable drops in framerates. Like all other fast-paced shooters the environments are mostly designed to look good as you’re rushing past as up close the lack of detail becomes rather evident. Overall it’s a solid improvement over its predecessors.

Infinite Warfare follows the tried and true Call of Duty formula, pitting you agains the enemy of the day with an array of weapons and abilities to combat them with. The missions are your standard corridor shooter affair with some rudimentary stealth sections thrown in here or there. New to the series is the ability to choose between a variety of different missions, a good chunk of which take place wholly in your futuristic warplane/ship. The missions also give you upgrades to both your ship and your player character, slowly building you up into the war machine every player imagines themselves to be. Other than that there’s not too much difference between Infinite Warfare and the numerous futuristic shooters that have preceded it.

Combat is, as always, fast paced and polished to the nth degree. Whilst you’ll still suffer from the enemy AI that’s able to snipe you with a pistol from across the map (especially at higher difficulties) you’ll still be able to run and gun your way through the majority of the game. One particular letdown here is the weapon variety as a lot of them feel very similar and thus you don’t feel as compelled to experiment as you would have in previous Call of Duty titles. There are some truly inventive ideas though, like the shotgun that has a lock-on sight, something which even made it into the multi-player version. The various grenades and gadgets provide a decent amount of combat variation although once you’ve used them all once it becomes clear that the shock grenades and the shield are probably the only ones you want to keep on you.

The non-campaign single player missions are unfortunately quite bland, especially the SCAR ones which are all basically the same, just played out in different locations. Thankfully they can be ground out pretty quickly, enabling you to blase through the campaign without a smattering of side quests constantly begging for your attention. In all honesty it probably would’ve served Infinite Warfare better to not have the overworld and instead focus on the core missions, feeding you upgrades through optional objectives or something similar. If a space nut like myself gets bored with flying around space in a futuristic warship then you know something is terribly wrong.

The story is typical Call of Duty: heavy on action and light on the details. Infinity Ward tried halfheartedly to avoid the typical America vs The Evil Foreigners trope but with all the key good characters being Americans and the bad ones foreign sounding it fails the sniff test instantly. There’s also too little development given to the numerous characters thrown at you so when the inevitable happens the emotional impact is essentially nothing. The fact that I’m struggling to come up with any memorable moments in the game should tell you just how little of an impact the story had on me.

The multiplayer experience was unfortunately marred by several launch issues, most notably a horrendously broken matchmaking system. After finishing the campaign I immediately dove into the multiplayer only to be met with no games to play. I tried all the options in the hopes it was just one game mode that was broken to no avail. After sitting there for 15 minutes I figured I’d try out Titanfall 2 just to see if I could still get a game and, lo and behold, I was playing not 30 seconds later. This has been fixed for the most part but I still can’t get a game of Domination to save my life. It’s sad really as I had such a good time with Black Ops III’s multi I was really excited to get back into the scene. It seems this time around it’s simply not to be.

One thing that bears mentioning is the new weapon crafting system which, unfortunately, has some of the troubling features of a pay to win system. You see you can craft variants of guns which have perks, all of which stack with their attachment counterpart. These weapons require salvage, a good deal of it for the higher end variants, something which comes in drips and drabs if you play normally. However, and this is the key, rare supply drops come with salvage, something which you can buy with actual money. I was ok with the new weapons in Black Ops III being locked behind supply drops since they were on par with the regular weapons but these ones are by definition more powerful. It’s a pity because I think the system is great otherwise.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is an unfortunate continuation of Treyarch’s previous stumbles, failing to live up to the standard that the other developers of the series are setting. For the most part it’s still your tried and true Call of Duty game however there are several issues which mar the overall experience. The repetitive single player missions distract from the much higher quality campaign missions and the effort developing them would have been better spent elsewhere. The multiplayer had some uncharacteristic teething issues, something which I’m sure turned thousands of players away for good. Finally the inclusion of a system that allows players to pay to get ahead of others isn’t something that should be encouraged, even if the underlying system was novel. Overall whilst Infinite Warfare keeps the core aspects of the Call of Duty franchise in tact it’s additions do nothing but distract from what makes these games good. I hope Infinity Ward takes the lessons learned from this second stumble and turns their next title into something worthy of their pedigree.

Rating: 7.5/10

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 right now for $89.95, $99.995 and $99.95 respectively. Game was played on the PC with 14 hours of total play time and 64% of the achievements unlocked.