Review: 'Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare' If any insecurity lurks beneath the steely surfaces of Call of Duty: Infinite Wa...
Review: 'Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare'
If any insecurity lurks beneath the steely surfaces of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the gallons of gloss that publisher Activation has poured over the series since its inception do much to mask it. The faces attached to the dozen-or-so uniforms that make up the game's core cast rarely display anything other than serene jingoism – honor, loyalty, dedication to the mission – even as the impending space apocalypse thunders around them. But while it might just be another day in the office for these fictional comrades, Activation and the small army of studios that produce gaming's thickest annual tent pole ought to pay attention to the racket outside their own windows: it's the sound of the rest of video gaming thundering past them, perhaps at light speed.
Perhaps we should give the CoDcartel credit for at least attempting to shift the ocean liner just a few degrees: on paper, this is the most audacious entry in the series in years. After completing two popular trilogies and politely knocking on sci-fi's door with two separate versions of the "near-future," Activision decided – in true CoDfashion – to kick it in. Yes, by any definition, Infinite Warfare is Call of Duty in space, complete with warp drives and a wisecracking robot sidekick. It only takes a couple of sluggish stop-and-pop gunfights through spaceship corridors to discover that the only discernible difference between Infinite Warfare and 2007's landmark Modern Warfare is that the AK-47 fires lasers instead of bullets.
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The shift from the familiar militarized milieu to a pseudo-space opera – dub it Saving Private Spock – remains one of the game's more baffling blunders. Characters still speak in the same babbling soldier-ese as they did in Modern Warfare, all Oscar Mikes and Semper Fi's, and the familiar strained rivalry between the various branches of armed forces continues to go on strong, despite the implication that the characters belong to a fictional Starfleet-esque organization. The villains are therefore not the expected xenophobic caricature born of
American fear that marked previous incarnations, but a vaguely-sketched regime/terrorist organization/Empire stand-in that might as well raise their arms chest-high and hail Space Hitler. Unfortunately, Space Hitler was presumably deemed too controversial by play testers, and instead we get the perpetually-grimacing Simon Kotch, played by actor Kit Harington, best-known for not dying on that TV show where everyone dies. As for Harington's performance, let's just say it's roughly on the level that the character deserves.
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