Quick Look: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

So why it's zombies mode just robots? I mean that mission was alright.

Oh Duty is that you?

You have to admit not all the hate is unwarranted. Some of it is definitely a "hate whatever's popular" hivemind which must be what you're referring to, though.

@jacdg: I think this guy prefers Counter-Strike.

I'm only interested in the single player of these games, but it's $180 for like 15 hours of game play. Hopefully they will get to the point where the single player alone warrants the $60 price tag like DOOM did.

As a person who has sort of given up war video games, and to boot doesn't do multi-player, I have become impressed with Battlefield one and TitanFall 2. This COD, absolutely not so much. Jeff has sold me on TitanFall 2, and I understand to campaign does instruct one to a good degree for the multi-player. Battlefield campaign just looks awesome.

But this is just seems COD by rote in a new dress, something I began to dislike some time ago. I understand the multi-player draw

I like space stuff.

I can see where Jeff is coming from in terms of the multiplayer. But I'm definitely going to be checking into the campaign for sure, it seems to have some neat ideas and the stuff with space seems cool.

I also dig the 80s appeal of the zombies mode as well.

Giant Bomb's YouTube video is 1080p, but on-site video is still 720p?

I'm a little disappointed Jeff didn't go to the Afterlife Arcade and get to play some of the Atari classics there. He would have loved it.

Call ol' duty

I don't see what everyone else sees in Battlefield 1 single-player. I think it's the worst in the entire series and one of the worst campaigns in recent memory. All you do is move forward and shoot brainless AI, with rarely any unique scenarios or original maps not lifted from multi-player. Other than the sappy cinematics, it's as vanilla as a shooter comes. It's not even mechanically fun like Bad Company or have the occasional set-piece like BF3/4.

No thanks, I think COD is out of my life for yet another year. Jeff I think you're underestimating just how significant the original Nazi Zombies was. Myself and even the most casual of gamers would spend hours and hours every day maximizing their score, I don't know anyone that didn't get down with it. Time for a change now though.

*pops in*

*blathers incoherent commanding mumblings*

*pops out*

Louie Hasselman is my favourite fermula-driver.

Kashima, huh? Homage to Kojima, maybe?

Don't need nothing but that silenced AK.

Looks like a solid game, but to me the biggest hurdle is the knowledge that in a year's time, I'll have to do the whole rigmarole over again. I really think the series needs to switch to a generalized Call of Duty model that allows me to have a single, universal character.

Lol. Landing back at the retribution looked like a universal studios movie ride.

Can't wait for them to release MW4 by itself, but Infinite....Meh....Bought Titanfall 2 instead and boy am I glad I did that!

Played one match of the demo and preceded to delete this game from my ps4, it was sooooo slow and none of the double jumps and wall runs felt necessary.

edit: man that campaign looks pretty good though, wonder why they can't translate that feel to the multiplayer?

I dunno if you're talking about the game's story or the comment section.

Spoiler for infinite warfare campaign everyone dies!

It's my poor attempt at referencing that weird commander that kept popping in briefly, bugging them while they were messing around with the load outs.

Is it just me or does the collision look super jank in zombies? Like the bullet impacts and deaths look like there's some serious lag.

Can't imagine that's something the GB end. Multiplayer and Cod4 looked fine.

@lonelyspacepanda: For me personally, the sappy cut scenes and character connections are what I like about it, and what makes it the best in my opinion.

It's nice to play a battlefield game that isn't just full blow michael bay but actually tries to pay respect to the source material. Very well done, as for multiplayer, meh. It's fun but I've been playing Titanfall 2 WAY more.

The dude taking a chunky bong rip was the best part of this. Never change, CoD community

"One hit melee kills, the way it should be!" One-Hit-Kill melees are the scourge of skill. They compress the skill gap. Black Ops 3 is the first game in the series to get it right. It shouldn't be garbage, Jeff, it should be good.

It's also amusing Jeff complains about the way colorblind mode is handled as just the other day I read an article complaining that games need to handle it the way Infinite Warfare does. As Jeff said, it seems to be a matter of preference.

Did someone call for a PC elitist? BTW, CS:GO and Source are the worst. That's how I know this is a new kiddie elitist. Real gamers know CS 1.4-1.6 were the best and Source and Source 1.5 are pale imitations.

They did, like 7 years ago. It should be available on 360 and PS3 and I thought was backwards compatible but don't quote me on that.

BO3 is the best Call of Duty since Black Ops 1. It's great. It's not a rotten base. The retention rate on BO3 was very high, much higher than the last two. The major cause of backlash is from the move to high movement and a too-futuristic scifi setting that AW, BO3, and IW have all taken place in and the biggest cause of that backlash is that it's been repeated in back to back to back games. People want familiar gameplay but they still want some variety in theme and that's why CoD4's move to a modern setting was a big hit, why the talk of CoD fatigue has been a complaint since BO1, why AW was refreshing at the time and why it gets thrown around as part of the problem now lacking the (stupid) "boots on the ground" mantra people keep harping for. You shouldn't make 3 identical-in-appearance games 3 years in a row. The third will always suffer from tremendous backlash. On top of that Infinite Warfare being utter trash is what has broken the camel's back.

The truth is ever since the Infinite Ward exodus (which, btw, both sides were guilty) that studio has been a chicken with its head cut off. Simply put they need to close the studio or more appropriately bring in fresh new leadership to the studio because their last 3 games have been the worst 3 games in the series to date. If Activision were smart Sledgehammer would be working on a Vietnam era Call of Duty even if it means scrapping whatever they have now if it's AW2 and frantically rush something together. Then they would let Treyarch decide their next game in the series and have the other developers work based off the other two options available. So Treyarch gets their pick between futuristic scifi, modern, or legacy setting and then have the other two work in the setting that's been vacated the longest. So right now IW should already be dictated to as far as what their next title in the series will be based on what the other two are doing even if that means another futuristic scifi setting from them. With that said, I think at this point it might be better off called Ghosts 2 than Infinite Warfare 2.

Everybody needs to send Jeff their extra microwaves now!

Looks kinda generic. But then again i lost the thread on CoD a long time ago.

Modern Warfare looks kind of bad. I guess that's what happens when you re-release a 10 year old FPS.

Infinite Warfare's singleplayer looks awesome, though. Too bad you can't get just the singleplayer for like 20-30 bucks.

The close-up of the microwave should have been the thumbnail for this video.

Wait, what do you even consider a good FPS campaign? The original Doom? Half-Life 1/2? Unreal? Those are all awful by today's standards. Remember Xen? Fucking Xen is the worst.

The Wolfenstein campaign is seriously one of the best I can think of in the FPS genre. The only other series with good singleplayer I can think of are FarCry and STALKER. Maybe Metro, haven't played any of those games.

@reap3r160: If you enjoyed that aspect of it, I highly recommend picking-up Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway on the cheap sometime. It nails that stuff. Very inspired by the excellent Band of Brothers series.

There has never been a better time to play... single player shooter campaigns. I'm pretty excited about what's been coming out this fall.

I've never really cared about this series at all but from what they show of the campaign I'm almost tempted to pick this one up. Looks neat.

Man, I kinda want this just to play some CoD4 now...

Improved FPS campaigns is a trend I would like see continue.

Oh wow, SOOO many memories. I really want to play this again.

What I never understood about FPS space games. Why is the commander, the guy in charge of running the ship, going out into battles himself.

Egh. Yawn.

Really hope MW remastered comes out as it's own thing sooner than later. Really miss that game.

This seems like a game with a lot of solid ideas that is held back by being a Call of Duty game. The single player structure seems solid and if it was fleshed out into a Far Cry length game and had more free form objectives and level design that went beyond a linear shooting gallery it could be something great. The switch up between in ship and on foot missions if definitely a good choice and being able to transition between the 2 at will in big open environments would be a good way to structure several big set piece missions in an open ended campaign. Then there is the underwhelming weapon design. I wish future shooters went further out there with their weapon design. As it stands now we have a bunch of far future FPS games on the market that all give us present day weapons with some extra junk bolted on for future guns. I want to see crazier stuff like sniper bullets that automatically curve around obstacles or cluster rail guns that can wipe out swaths of infantry or Resistance Auger style energy weapons that can fire projectiles through walls. But, at least for this game, the Call of Duty name and intense focus on multiplayer holds back more original weapon design because they have to ensure multiplayer balance and they have to keep the game accessible to the current player base that expects COD to have the standard COD arrangement of weapons and attachments. The concept for this game just seems like it would have been better served if it was its own original thing and wasn't shackled by the COD legacy.

Man they really ruined the multiplayer with that lootcrate stuff. CoD is kind of a zombie at this point.

It is crazy how much game design has stagnated. If you think about the nine year gap between 1998 and 2007 (when COD4: MW first came out) compared to the next nine years between 2007 and 2016, so much happened in that first period and so little has happened since.

Single player looks interesting, I never really play their multiplayer anyways.

CoD4 single player was sort of when shooting campaign actually starting to look good. Wolf3D/Doom, Half life were sort of impressive in a tech demo kind of way. Maze like level design for no reason, reliance on multiple saves due to health and ammo (gun) restrictions are things that we move away from for good reason. Part of the reason why I am still hesitant about the new Doom.

I think shooters have made lots of changes in the years after CoD4, we were in a sea of WWII shooters before that and no one really bats an eye. Vietnam, BF2, and 2142 probably pushed the setting change first, but kept to its battlefield formula. CoD4 with its campaign and multiplayer became a pillar of its own and changed the landscape of how to ship a FPS since then, the years after that become iteration and refinement on the formula, the fatigue probably comes from a yearly schedule. I think the doublejump/wallrun/airdash is the new wave going forward that was established few years back. BO2 did something interesting with its campaign (for a shooter) and I think IW is expanding on that now.

@jeff (or anyone else who might know) - why are the GB guys, usually Jeff specifically, always playing the console version of a game that would certainly be better on their PCs (which they've also stated is their preferred system, all other things being equal)? Especially games that require mouse/keyboard for decent control & competitive play (FPS's mainly) - keep in mind the "top" console shooter players are all now using an adapter that allows them to use mouse/keyboard on the consoles as well now anyway!

I just can't imagine it's very fun to play a competitive shooter, and purposely handicap yourself with inferior graphics, framerate, network latency, and controller - and expect that to be an enjoyable experience.

I know sometimes the games companies send reviewers a review copy - often for whatever random platform they choose... but I would imagine they (especially GB) could say "I'm only gonna play this on PC mainly, aside from seeing how the console versions compare, can I have a PC key to review instead"?

It would drive me nuts to make a bunch of progress in a game that I really enjoy, but have that be on a console version, when I could be playing with 3x better graphics and all the control options on PC...

Plus, doesn't this game have a VR level? Isn't that only on PC, and MAYBE PSVR?

This campaign was fun, whatever the rest of it. It's a bit to tropey and stilted to make way for you to make the mission decisions, but assaulting and destroying a frigate as it hides in the Venusian atmosphere is a pretty good idea for a side op. I think the whole story takes place over a day or so though, which really makes some of the beats of it confusing.

Still, after doing that I messed with the multiplayer for a night. Returned it the next day.