Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare gameplay

[Zhukov]

It's like seeing the title Resident Evil 4 and assuming, based entirely on that name, that it will be the same exact game as Resident Evil 1.

True enough, but RE4 is well known for being a game that broke from its predecessors. An exception that demonstrates the rule.

We're up to what, CoD game number 13 now? 9 if you discount the WWII ones.

They seem pretty firmly entrenched in their formula. Which is fine. That's their choice and plenty of people clearly enjoy that. However I don't have the time or inclination to bet $60 that this one will be the RE4 equivalent that shakes everything up.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Besides, let's be fair here. How many games actually cut all audio out for their space scenes?

I might be wrong but Dead Space drowns out the soundtrack (minus heavy breathing) when you're in spaaaaace.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Besides, let's be fair here. How many games actually cut all audio out for their space scenes?

I might be wrong but Dead Space drowns out the soundtrack (minus heavy breathing) when you're in spaaaaace.

Don't forget that one scene in Mass Effect 2. You know, the scene that was really cool at first but ended up being annoying as fuck when you realized that your character looked like shit and you wanted to change him. That one.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

*WAY* more excited for the CoD4 remaster.

I'm not. It only has ten (or half) of the original maps and the only improvement according to the Activision support page is new textures.

I don't think that's true, from what I've seen, the remaster actually looks really good.

<youtube=oqe1soJNrn4>

There are a lot of new models, as well as better shadows and physics.

It might not be much, but it's the biggest difference I have seen between a remaster and the original, at least in terms of graphics. That said, fuck Activision and their utter lack of confidence in their "products".

 

[soren7550]

*WAY* more excited for the CoD4 remaster.

I'm not. It only has ten (or half) of the original maps and the only improvement according to the Activision support page is new textures. It's also lame that you can't buy it separately. I'll just settle for the original PC version.

Q: "Can I play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered without buying Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare?"
A: "No, you must own Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare in order to get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered."

https://support.activision.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/Call-of-Duty-Modern-Warfare-Remastered-FAQ

It seems highly unlikely that they'll keep it as such for more than a few months though. They did the same with Call of Duty Classic, and that only took about a month after Modern Warfare 2's release to be sold outside the special editions.

 

[chrissx2]

mmmmm soo much fire and sound in space ... i'm fully immersed!

It's hard to catch, but if you look at the top of the HUD after the player character puts on his flight helmet, you'll see it listing systems it's booting. One of those systems was some sort of Audio Simulator designed to take whatever visual input the pilot and craft are seeing and attempt to 'best guess' what sort of sound it would make.

An absurd idea, to be sure, but it shows they at least acknowledge that there shouldn't be sound out there.

Besides, let's be fair here. How many games actually cut all audio out for their space scenes?

I couldn't stand watching the whole video, so i was skipping some parts of it .. guess I've missed that part.
Still, it looks silly. They could as well use AK-4 in space.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Defintely feels like a spiritual successor to Ghosts, IMO.

So complete and utter shit that based around the premise of a stealth unit that never actually uses stealth.

The premise of Ghosts wasn't stealth, per se, but rather supernatural ferocity. And the only one who was actually supernaturally ferocious was Gabriel "shrugs off a bullet to the chest" Rorke.

As Zhukov noted, we've all seen this shit before. New CoD has a fancy trailer and the game turns out to be rubbish.

Depends how you define rubbish. Arguably the only rubbish CoD in recent years has been Black Ops 3.

The title alone shows exactly how much creativity the devs have, "Infinite Warfare", yet another game trying to ride the "Modern Warfare" bandwagon. The title doesn't even make any sense.

The developer's name is Infinity Ward. And I think it might be a nod to the novel "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

I do like the zero gravity and dogfighting bits, but those are going to be in a couple of missions at most and Star Citizen is already doing something like the latter (and of course, is about the former).

That is the problem, of course. Call of Duty is eating Star Citizen's lunch. When Squadron 42 is released, what will it have to offer? We risk ending up with a Far Cry vs Homefront kind of situation where Squadron 42 is seen as a shiny, performance-intensive, repetitive Call of Duty knock-off by the general public.

 

[Vigormortis]

I might be wrong but Dead Space drowns out the soundtrack (minus heavy breathing) when you're in spaaaaace.

It dulls the sounds, but they're still there.

My point wasn't that there have never been any games that haven't muted all sounds in space, it was that criticizing IW for not doing the same, as if it were some anomaly within the norm, was silly.

Despite my above comments, I will side with Zhukov on the jingoism angle.

Infinite Warfare's backstory is very offputting for me. We have a scenario where Earth is depleted of resources, and is relying on outlying planets/moons to provide it with the resources it needs. That's a scenario that could easily lead to resentment on said planets/moons, and it's one that's been explored in sci-fi before (goes at least as far back as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). Now, that would make for an interesting story with moral ambiguity, and it's arguably even been done in FPS sci-fi (e.g. Killzone) and done not so well (e.g. Section 8). But to quote the developers:

"The story we're trying to tell is that there are sides that need to be drawn, and there are some fights that must be fought," Horton says. In Infinite Warfare's case, that fight is against the Settlement Defense Front, a group of unequivocally evil colonists that attack Earth early on in the story. "They are ultimately human but they are not a sympathetic villain," Horton explains. "They have no qualms taking out innocent civilians and basically betraying any kind of laws of war you'd expect."

So, yeah. "Unequivocally evil." Go figure.

There's still room for a compelling story within that context. The narrative could explore the circumstances that might push a group of people to that extreme.

I doubt they'll actually do that, but the possibility is still there. Having an 'unequivocally evil' antagonist doesn't preclude compelling story telling.

I'm not looking to Call of Duty for a deep, contemplative narrative. I get that from other series or forms of media. I'm not beyond thinking they could have such stories within the series, but I'm not demanding it. What I am looking for is s decent (enough) story that gives structure to and helps string together fun gameplay moments. Preferably, gameplay with a nice variety of mechanics and moments of catharsis. IW is the first COD game in a long time to look like it may just offer that.

Will it? Like I've been saying, I don't know. Hell, it could wind up being one of the most dull entries in the series to date. I won't know until November. But, as I've also been saying, I'm not going to preclude the possibility that it may, just because it bares a certain brand title.

True enough, but RE4 is well known for being a game that broke from its predecessors. An exception that demonstrates the rule.

We're up to what, CoD game number 13 now? 9 if you discount the WWII ones.

They seem pretty firmly entrenched in their formula. Which is fine. That's their choice and plenty of people clearly enjoy that. However I don't have the time or inclination to bet $60 that this one will be the RE4 equivalent that shakes everything up.

I'm not saying we must buy the game to find out. I even said I almost assuredly won't be buying it at launch. I'm rarely interested in the PvP modes (beyond LAN/split-screen play), so I'm not interested in paying full price. All I was saying was that I can't bring myself to just assume the game will be just more of the same, not after seeing what may be in the final game.

It's the same as assuming the game will be good. There's no meaningful evidence to indicate either. And, as we both agree, there are exceptions to the rule of adhering to a formula. Sometimes series undergo drastic switch-ups. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Maybe IW will be that entry in the COD series. Maybe it won't. What they've shown so far at least suggests it offers something new. How much of that is indicative of the game as a whole, and whether those changes are even any good, remains to be seen. Could be a singular moment. Could be the core mechanic for the game.

Which will pan out? We won't know until November. Until then, I remain curious, in the very least.

Either way, this year has given me plenty of options to sate my sci-fi gaming thirst. DOOM already satisfied. Hoping No Man's Sky does the same. Rain World looks quite promising. And Titanfall 2 is just around the corner. If COD:IW turns out to be complete garbage, I'll have plenty of other options.

 

[Vigormortis]

I couldn't stand watching the whole video, so i was skipping some parts of it .. guess I've missed that part.
Still, it looks silly. They could as well use AK-4 in space.

Oh, it's undeniably silly. But, I think, that's part of what is endearing the ideas of this new game to me. It's as if they finally embraced the over-the-top nature of the series and ran with it.

Not quite to the degree of, say, Saint's Row or Bulletstorm, but still more so than the uber, gritty 'realism' of the older entries in the series.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm sort of excited but also sort of apprehensive. CoD's campaigns at least generally are good for a single run through, and they rarely amount to more than an extended, linear, story-drive tutorial for multiplayer. Still, with things like mission selection (which we already knew was a thing before E3) and dogfights, the singleplayer might offer more if they don't screw things up.

Personally, I'm interested in seeing where this takes multiplayer. The grappling hook might give us some unique approaches to the maps and gunfights. A mode with dogfights would be sweet, but I think it will just be relegated to killstreak status, which would be unfortunate. Overall, I really hope it all works out, but CoD has a nasty tendency of looking good in campaign footage but not translating well beyond that.

 

[aba1]

I was actually very surprised it was call of duty and was in general very impressed with the it. I wasn't too too interested in buying it as the gameplay didn't seem like it was something I wanted but if I was ever going to get on the COD train this game would be the one winning me over. It looks fantastic.

 

[JonnyDucker]

It bugs me when people claim that "everyone complains when they keep doing the same thing, but then they complain when they try something new" as if thats a hypocrisy. Sure, if a single person or news outlet does that, then they're being fickly and unsatisfiable. But the audiance for the game isn't a hive-mind that's only allowed to have one opinion.

When the game is too similar to previous versions, one portion of their audiance is pissed they're not innovating. When they innovate, those peope are satisfied and a DIFFERENT portion of their audiance is pissed that they're messing with their beloved formula. It's not hypocrisy or flip-flopping, it's that different people have different preferences. No matter what you do, you're going to piss off some people, but it's different people depending on what you do.

(Except for trolls who just look for an excuse to slam the game, they certainly exist, but hopefully are not the majority, even if they sound like they are sometimes.)

 

[JonnyDucker]

It bugs me when people claim that "everyone complains when they keep doing the same thing, but then they complain when they try something new" as if thats a hypocrisy. Sure, if a single person or news outlet does that, then they're being fickly and unsatisfiable. But the audiance for the game isn't a hive-mind that's only allowed to have one opinion.

When the game is too similar to previous versions, one portion of their audiance is pissed they're not innovating. When they innovate, those peope are satisfied and a DIFFERENT portion of their audiance is pissed that they're messing with their beloved formula. It's not hypocrisy or flip-flopping, it's that different people have different preferences. No matter what you do, you're going to piss off some people, but it's different people depending on what you do.

(Except for trolls who just look for an excuse to slam the game, they certainly exist, but hopefully are not the majority, even if they sound like they are sometimes.)

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm sort of excited but also sort of apprehensive. CoD's campaigns at least generally are good for a single run through, and they rarely amount to more than an extended, linear, story-drive tutorial for multiplayer. Still, with things like mission selection (which we already knew was a thing before E3) and dogfights, the singleplayer might offer more if they don't screw things up.

Personally, I'm interested in seeing where this takes multiplayer. The grappling hook might give us some unique approaches to the maps and gunfights. A mode with dogfights would be sweet, but I think it will just be relegated to killstreak status, which would be unfortunate. Overall, I really hope it all works out, but CoD has a nasty tendency of looking good in campaign footage but not translating well beyond that.

This is where I am. What I've seen and what I've heard has me interested and intrigued, but I'm not beyond thinking it can't all go horribly wrong.

If they can at least deliver on a 'mission select' structure for the campaign, and include a decent variety of dogfights, space battles, on-world battles, and ship breaches, it could still make for a fun game.

And really...that's what I'm after.

 

[Vigormortis]

It bugs me when people claim that "everyone complains when they keep doing the same thing, but then they complain when they try something new" as if thats a hypocrisy. Sure, if a single person or news outlet does that, then they're being fickly and unsatisfiable. But the audiance for the game isn't a hive-mind that's only allowed to have one opinion.

When the game is too similar to previous versions, one portion of their audiance is pissed they're not innovating. When they innovate, those peope are satisfied and a DIFFERENT portion of their audiance is pissed that they're messing with their beloved formula. It's not hypocrisy or flip-flopping, it's that different people have different preferences. No matter what you do, you're going to piss off some people, but it's different people depending on what you do.

(Except for trolls who just look for an excuse to slam the game, they certainly exist, but hopefully are not the majority, even if they sound like they are sometimes.)

Has there been anyone who legitimately means 'everyone' when they say 'everyone complains about '? I don't think they're being literal.

Still, when the trailers for Infinite Warfare are downvoted en-masse, with the comments section filled to the brim with "This isn't COD. This isn't what COD's supposed to be.", and past trailers for more 'standard' COD games are downvoted with comments like, "Another year. Another COD with the same old everything.", is it really that much of a stretch to say people are being hypocritical?

I don't think it is. Certainly not when I've seen people literally change their otherwise positive opinion of the new trailer into a negative one when they learn it's for COD:IW.

"Wow! This game looks incredible! What's it called?"

"It's the new Call of Duty."

"Oh. Well, honestly, it doesn't really look THAT great. In fact, it looks kinda generic and boring. And I'm sick of all this future nonsense. I'm more interested in Battlefield 1."[footnote]Paraphrased version of an actual conversation I had with someone recently.[/footnote]

--edit--
I think this Youtube comment sums up 90% of the complaints so far -
"I never disliked the video. In fact, I liked it as I genuinely believed that it looked good. Because I looked at it as a different game, not as a CoD game, and when you do that it looks like a good game overall. But it looks trash as a CoD game."

So, to these 'fans', Infinite Warfare looks like a legitimately promising, possibly great, game, provided it didn't carry the "Call of Duty" moniker in the front.

Truly baffling.