Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - PS4 Legacy Edition

TL;DR - Infinite Warfare is very familiar and has little innovation over Black Ops 3, but nonetheless I find it enjoyable, which is exactly what video games are supposed to be. If you have already played or disliked recent installments in the COD series or other futuristic games like Halo or Titanfall, then there might not be much for you in Infinite Warfare. However, just because it's similar to the aforementioned games doesn't automatically mean that the quality of the game itself is bad. Also, Modern Warfare Remastered is incredible and everything I could have wished for.Long version:I've played every COD game since COD 3, excluding Ghosts and Advanced Warfare, so I've had a pretty good taste of Call of Duty's take on WWII, the Cold War, modern warfare, and future warfare. I didn't buy all those games because I'm a fanboy who stops at nothing to defend the series, but simply because I liked them. The Modern Warfare series has always been my favorite, with Black Ops a close second. I didn't buy Ghosts or AW because when they came out, I was starting to get involved/catch up in some other game series (namely Battlefield and Assassin's Creed) and needed a break from COD. When Black Ops III came out, I jumped back on the train -- mostly for the zombies. Nobody does zombies like Treyarch. BO3 was a lot different from the last COD game I played (BO2), but since the Dead Space games were really the only other futuristic games I had played, I thought it was a nice change.I seem to remember lots of people complaining back when MW3 came out, griping about how COD games were just the same old thing over and over, and that the series needed to change. Well, the series did change. And now, here we are, everyone goes back to complaining about COD games being same old thing over and over, but this time they say that the series needs to go back to what it used to be. So what's a developer to do? If you keep the setting the same, people get tired of it and want a new one. If you change the setting, people want to go back to the old one. I don't waste my time railing against a developer if I'm not interested in their games; I just don't buy from them. When Infinite Warfare was announced, I wasn't terribly interested and accordingly I didn't plan on buying it. But when the beta came out, I figured it'd be worth a shot, since it had been 5 years since I last played an Infiniti Ward game. Well, turns out I liked the beta, so decided I would probably buy the game. And also, let me make this abundantly clear: I DO NOT like the fact that you can't get MWR separate from IW. In fact I think it's stupid and greedy on Activision's part. They'd do much better financially and reputation wise if they just separated the games, and I'm not mindless enough to throw $80 at them just because I want a remastered game. As such, MWR was not the sole factor (though it was an important one) in my decision to buy IW, and it's also worth mentioning that I bought it on Black Friday for $23 off. I wouldn't have dumped even $57 on a game that I would never play just so I could have MWR. I bought it because I genuinely wanted both games.So, what about the game itself? It's pretty much Black Ops 3 with (sort of) new weapons, new specialists, new maps, and Infiniti Ward graphics/physics. If the quality of a game hinges on originality alone, then sure. IW sucks. But if it hinges on how the game works and what its contents are, I really don't see how IW that bad. It looks good, it plays smoothly, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a COD game as far as map size and the flow of multiplayer. If you like that sort of fast paced, claustrophobic combat set in the future, then get it. If you don't and prefer wide open maps and more tactical combat, then get Battlefield 1 (which, by the way, I have also purchased). I've had no problems with IW that aren't common to all multiplayer games. I gave it 5 stars because I think the game is fun, and games are supposed to be fun. Different people have different ideas of what is and isn't fun. Obviously, not everyone finds this game fun, which is fine. But sure seems like a lot of people knew they would hate the game, yet they got it anyway and played it for 5 minutes just to write a review about how terrible it is without giving any reason other than "I don't like it". I'm not saying that fanbases shouldn't be giving feedback to developers. I'm just saying that there are more intelligent ways to do it than just calling a series trash and boasting, "I'm never going to buy a Call of Duty game again."Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Modern Warfare Remastered. It really is fantastic. The graphics are about as good as they can get, and even though it's been many years, it still feels like yesterday when I last played through the missions and maps. How much money you consider to be worth spending on a remastered game is your choice, but whatever you spend, you'll be getting a beautifully and faithfully redone classic.

I've enjoyed Call of Duty for many years now. I've gone max prestige on several including Advanced Warfare where I got to Grand Master Prestige.Weirdly though, while a lot of gamers seem to get so excited about Black Ops, I've always hated them and have never played them extensively.For me I've been pretty impressed with Infinite Warfare; the graphics are amazing. There is a fluidity of movement that is pretty spectacular. I don't think the maps are great and do seem fairly restrictive, however, there will be many more maps to come, and we'll see how that goes. It seems like they are working on balancing some of the weapons, fixing bugs, and making some good improvements to the game with their many massive patches they are putting out. So I think those who tried the original release for 30 minutes and wrote the whole thing off are being a bit unnecessarily harsh.Unlike many people I found the movement in Advanced Warfare with its jumping just fine. And I have grown to like the different jumping and wall running of Infinite Warfare. Takes a bit of getting used to, but pretty cool once you do.Some people object to the future setting, and if that's you, and you want to simulate actually fighting in a war without all that pesky being killed, maimed, deafened, capture, torture, PTSD, and then being long term unemployed and abandoned by the very government that sent you to war, then this game is certainly not for you. There are far more realistic playing a soldier game out there you should be looking at.As for a first person shooter, I still like it. I like that there are so many weapons you can unlock and rank up. I like that there are six different styles of soldier you can use, each with unique characteristics, traits and skills. I like that there are four different teams you can join, that come with unique challenges and rewards.As is so often the case, Infinite Warfare expects you to buy the game at the typical retail price. Then they try and entice you to buy a more expensive version of the game with some extra add ons. Then they want you to buy a subscription to get new maps. Then they offer you in game purchases on top of that. I'm not sure why it is that modern game manufacturers think we are willing to spend a few hundred bucks on playing a single game. I think it is a disturbing trend and nothing but a money grab. But hey, seems like that's how it is going with all of them. I guess someone has to pay the outrageous development costs of these modern games.All in all there is a lot to like about this game, I think the main engine is pretty impressive. And I think that as they continue to put out new weapons and maps, there is plenty here to keep a first person shooter fan occupied for many days of game play. I also think that some of the one star reviews and whining by some gamers is criticism far beyond what the game deserves.I tend to play one shooter for quite a while, and I really expect to continue to grow and improve over the next few months. They have some genuinely good ideas in this game, and great movement and setup. So with more maps and weapons to come. Perhaps some more old-school maps brought back but much enhanced like Terminal that they just put out, I think this game has some legs, and I'm going to keep playing.But if you are a hard core ultra realistic non-futuristic shooter fan, you think Black Ops or Ghost is the bomb, and you hate sci-fi in all forms, then this one might be a solid miss for you.