Infinite Warfare at the funfair

I enjoyed Call of Duty Infinite Warfare. Yes, I’m being serious. Put your pitchforks down people I know that Call of Duty Infinite Warfare wasn’t received well when it was announced. The game’s reveal trailer is one of the most disliked videos on YouTube and hell, even I poked fun at it at the time.

However, I will not make fun of it anymore. I played the Infinite Warfare campaign recently and holy moly is it good. Some of you may be asking the question, “why did you play Infinite Warfare in 2019”? The answer to that question is rather simple.

I went on a Call of Duty campaign binge after Modern Warfare Remastered was a PS Plus game last month. Modern Warfare is my favourite Call of Duty and is one of my favourite games of all time, so completing it again got me in a CoD mood. I decided I wanted to play through the campaigns of recent Call of Duty games that I didn’t play and Infinite Warfare was one of them.

I bought a copy of Infinite Warfare for £1.99 from Cash Converters, which was weird as other copies of the game were priced at £8.99. With me being a Scrooge and money conscious, I went with the cheaper option. The game worked and it didn’t have a scratch on the disc.

Anyway, going into Infinite Warfare I had low expectations because of the massive negative fan feedback towards the game. However, I wasn’t going to be too pissed if it was bad because I only paid 2 quid for it.

I played the game and my initial thoughts were that it was good, nothing amazing but it definitely isn’t as bad as some people made it out to be. I carried on with it and then it clicked with me. I was playing as a captain of a massive spaceship called the Retribution, I had my crew around me, it felt like Star Trek. I had to sit back and take a moment as I was nerding out big time.

I loved the Retribution and I loved how you selected missions. If you want to start a mission in Infinite Warfare, you need to go to star command and select your mission. There are several planets in the game as it’s set in our Solar System and you can go to all of them via missions. It felt as though I was in charge of the USS Enterprise and I couldn’t get enough of it.

The gameplay is solid, which you’d expect from the folks at Infinity Ward but they went above and beyond here. Ground combat is near perfect, space combat is a bit different but awesome and sweet mother of Mary, there are dogfights. Space combat is slower than on the ground as you’re floating in space. What I enjoyed most about fighting in space was that when you killed an enemy, was that they floated away into the vast emptiness of deep space. I realise that this sounds a bit sadistic but it was a cool detail.

I have to dedicate at least one paragraph of this piece to talk about the dogfighting gameplay. Holy smokes it’s good. You hop into your ship called the Jackal, to go out and do a mission you have to engage your thrusters. It’s as simple as moving the analogue stick but you feel as though you yourself have just taken off into space and damn it feels good.

Dogfighting in Infinite Warfare is fast and tense. There are small spacecraft which are around the same size as yours but there are also bigger spaceships which in order to take down, you’ll need to destroy multiple parts of it before it eventually blows up.

You can customise your spacecraft cosmetically and gameplay wise. As you do missions throughout the campaign, you will unlock decals for your vessel and they look pretty damn cool. Weapons can be changed as well, those that are fed up with firing missiles can fire a laser if they want to. You can also decide if you want your ship to focus on defence, manoeuvrability or more damage. It’s little things like being able to decide how to use your Jackal that make me happy.

The story for Infinite Warfare is good, not as memorable as Modern Warfare 1 and 2 but still enjoyable. Infinite Warfare takes place in the distant future, humanity has expanded across the Solar System due to the depletion of Earth’s resources. A rogue faction called SDF (Settlement Defense Front) emerged and caused conflict with the UNSA (United Nations Space Alliance). The game starts with tensions between the two at its highest and the SDF attack Earth.

There are several main missions in Infinite Warfare that make up the main story but there are also several side missions. These side missions are pretty cool, some are short and some are surprisingly long. Some of them will require you to use the Jackal and others will have you fighting enemies on the ground. One side mission in particular tasks you with infiltrating an SDF vessel so you can eliminate some of the higher ups. It’s a slow unfolding mission but it adds to the game overall, as you can feel the tension throughout.

A great cast makes a good story and Infinite Warfare does just that. You play as Captain Reyes, a bold man who looks out for his team. There’s his second-in-command Lieutenant Salter who is a strong-minded soldier and she kicks ass. Ethan (E3N) is a robot that is programmed to be a soldier and he’s pretty damn cool and tells a couple of good jokes here and there.

There are several other key people that you meet throughout the campaign and all of them are interesting. Do you want to know the best thing about them? I cared for every single main character in the game. Infinite Warfare does a good job at introducing each character and building them up in such a way, that you actually feel emotion towards them. It almost felt like I was getting to know a group of soldiers that I would eventually consider them family and Modern Warfare did that perfectly. The fact that Infinity Ward pulled that off again is bloody commendable and is a job well done.

I thought Call of Duty Infinite Warfare would be a good game but nothing special, nothing amazing like Modern Warfare. Whilst it isn’t near the lofty heights of that game, I had a lot of fun and it was memorable. The gameplay is great, the story is good and the main cast is wonderful.

Infinite Warfare also repaired some of the damage Black Ops 3 did. The BLOPS 3 campaign is the worst one in the series in my opinion. It makes zero sense and it goes on for way too long. That’s also not to mention that main cast for the game was pretty bad, I didn’t care for any of them.

BLOPS 3 left a sour taste in my mouth and gave me the impression that Call of Duty couldn’t do awesome campaigns anymore, I was wrong, dead wrong. Infinite Warfare made me happy not only to play Call of Duty but also to talk about it.

Thank you, Infinity Ward, for making me care for Call of Duty again. I salute you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to play the other CoD games I missed (Ghosts and Advanced Warfare) and see if they’ll make me feel the same way Infinite Warfare did.