If you haven’t tried the latest Call of Duty – set in the futuristic wars of space, then perhaps it is time to hop in for free this weekend. Activision is giving Steam users the chance to download the game’s multiplayer client for free and frag their way to prestige until Sunday at 1PM PST. If you hurry it isn’t too late to get 36 hours of free game time in, as long as you don’t mind the substantial 62GB download (and that’s just for Multiplayer, the single player adds an additional 30+ GB).
As of writing Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is sitting at 1,300 players online. According to Steam Charts this is a substantial jump as the game pulled in just an average of 926 players at any given time during the month of June. Multiplayer for 2015’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III appears to be a lot healthier with an average of 1,600 players during June and 3,178 players online at press time.
Alongside the free weekend, Activision also discounted the standard version of Infinite Warfare by 50% and the Digital Legacy Edition that includes Modern Warfare Remastered.
While I cut my teeth on the Call of Duty series with Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has held a special place in my heart since I started playing it back in 2010. Six years later, and numerous iterations of the series afterward, Modern Warfare Remastered brings back all those fun memories thanks to Raven Software and Infinity Ward’s efforts. It’s one hell of an experience and it’s a breath of fresh air with boots-on-ground combat when compared to faced paced future or near-future combat they’ve released recently.
Single Player
For people that haven’t played the original game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare brought the series from it’s World War II roots to current times, giving the player a perspective from multiple soldiers. Starting off as Sergeant John “Soap” MacTavish as the FNG in the British SAS for the game’s tutorial, the game’s story progresses quickly from there to infiltrating a tanker to retrieve information. The action just intensifies from there, with each successive mission ratcheting up the tension. After the assassination of the President of an unnamed Middle-Eastern country, the US 1st Force Recon invades the Middle East to search for the assassin, Al-Assad.
One of my big, and few, gripes about the single player campaign is that it’s short. When this game originally came out, first person shooter’s storylines ran about twice as long as this game’s campaign – with a bit of dedication, Modern Warfare can be cleared in roughly six hours. While there are multiple difficulties along with the ability to unlock an arcade mode, MW helped kick off the trend of shorter story games with a longer-term multiplayer plan in returns replayability It became an unfortunate trend with shooters in the years since, and while there are other games that are bucking that trend, Call of Duty’s developers need to rectify this issue with the franchise as a whole.
Regardless, it’s an amazing story to play, though! From going through door-to-door through the middle east trying to find Al-Assad, to sneaking through Pripyat to assassinate the leader of Ultra-nationalist Russians, to even commanding the guns of an AC-130 on an escort mission to advance the story – there is a lot of action on display here. Tying in the story threads of each perspective, Modern Warfare presents like a movie, and with the improved graphics, effects, and sound design, it has never looked or played better than on current-gen console hardware.
Multiplayer
While the campaign is on the shorter side, the multiplayer makes up for this by adding to the game’s longevity. With being the game that originally introduced the ability to have your level and weapon/perk progress reset for a new icon, aka “Prestige”- being one of the first games to add RPG elements to an online FPS, Modern Warfare Remastered requires quite a bit of time to go through the level progression numerous times. For Call of Duty fare, all of the game modes from the original are included, such as Team Deathmatch, Free For All, Search & Destroy, and old school Free For All. The remaster also brings fan-favorite game mode Kill Confirmed into the foray, with the addition of Hardpoint and Gun Game from the update that happened on December 13th.
In addition to the game modes added to this updated classic, Modern Warfare Remastered now has all 16 maps from the original base game. As an added bonus, the former PC-exclusive map Christmas Crash was also added in, bringing the current total of playable maps to 17. Game matches are quite fast-paced, with either going through a wide open bog in the middle of a war-zone at night, to the tight spaces of a deserted Russian office. When compared to the original game, the matches are just as I remembered it.
The Create-A-Class system, something completely new at the time of the game’s original release, became one of the bread-and-butter experiences of Call of Duty multiplayer – with its’ inclusion in multiple iterations. The player is given a main firearm, a side arm, tactical grenades, lethal grenades, and three perks to give certain advantages though gameplay. Fancy being quiet and sneaking around? Equip a silencer to your main weapon and use Dead Silence perk to mitigate sound from your footsteps. Wanna be a powerhouse that can take hits and keep going? A high-powered rifle with Juggernaut so you can take more damage!
Another staple in Call of Duty multiplayer feature set that was introduced with this game were Killstreaks. Upon successive kills without dying, a player can “call in” a UAV radar, a targeted airstrike, or even a helicopter to wreak havoc on the enemy team. This was done to give rewards to players that could stay alive and brought a trend of people trying to go for higher killstreaks in games afterward. Being on the receiving end of an enemy helicopter is a big annoyance as ever, so it goes to show that some things never change.
With the remastering comes with numerous additions by Raven Software. These improvements took some of my gripes from the original, like limiting gold camo to specific weapons and questionable connection quality at times, and improved on it considerably. In addition to the ability to have gold camouflage for all firearms, new camos were added such as Regal and Exclusion zone, calling cards and emblems were added as well. Taking a note from the recent Call of Duty games, supply drops were added into the game, which adds in player customization, weapon kits, and melee weapons among, other things. While the additions that were put in with the base game were nice, the continuous updates to multiplayer will extend playability for this game far longer than what just a basic remastering could have done.
Conclusion
With all the previews that were going on before Modern Warfare Remastered was released, I expected a visual and audio overhaul to the game and that was it. Upon being able to play it, I was absolutely floored with how Raven Software went above and beyond with remastering and improving the game, especially the multiplayer component. Overall, the game is as I remember it in terms of gameplay, but the improvements and additions really make the game shine. I hope that with future updates that the maps from the Variety Pack are included, along with some nighttime variants of maps that were cut from the original game during development.
If you’re a huge Call of Duty fan and want to pick this up with Infinite Warfare, then go for it. If you’re just looking to really play this game, then please keep in mind that the Infinite Warfare disc or having the Digital Deluxe Edition is required in order to play this game, and it would be a good idea to wait for the edition you want to go on sale again before purchasing it. There’s a rumour going around that Modern Warfare Remastered will eventually be playable without this requirement, so I’m crossing my fingers. If that does eventually happen, then Remastered is definitely worth the purchase by itself.
For the full Infinite Warfare Multiplayer review, head on over to see what Rae has to say on it.
Modern Warfare Remastered is currently only available with the Infinite Warfare Legacy, Digital Deluxe, and Legacy Pro Editions for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
Activision Publishing provided Broken Joysticks two Legacy Edition copies of Call of Duty Infinite Warfare for our consideration, review, and content creation.
Much to the excitement of many Call of Duty fans, Infinite Warfare is just around the corner. As a treat for those who ordered Infinite Warfare for PS4, players have been given access to try the Infinite Warfare Multiplayer Beta this weekend. While it’s just a limited beta, there’s a decent amount of content, and things to expect when Infinite Warfare is released. In addition to that, Activision announced the multiplayer beta has been extended for another day in case people haven’t had the chance to p, or can’t get enough of Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer!Read More
Activision will give players on PlayStation 4 preferential access to the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for those who pre-order the title. Xbox owners will get the multiplayer beta at a later date with PC players completely left out in the cold as the beta is “not available on PC. No mention of the multiplayer beta being open – looks like putting $5 down at a participating retailer is the only way in.
Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer takes the class driven gameplay introduced in last year’s Black Ops III and expands upon it with the concept of “rigs”. Each “rig” is in actuality a combination of three different traits and perks that players can cycle through. Also changing are “payloads” – which are the new name for the powerful ultimate-weapons also introduced in Call of Duty: Blacks Ops III. During the course of a match players can swap between different rig load outs depending on their enemies’ tactics – not unlike how in Overwatch players can swap characters to meet their situational needs.
From those who have played the game at Call of Duty XP – Kill-streaks and staples like UAV / Counter UAV are still present with the parkour gameplay popularized by Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III.
Activision & Infinity Ward have also released a multiplayer reveal trailer so those of us not at the XP event can get a taste of whats coming this October.
Need to check out more Infinite Warfare action? Here’s 30 minutes of gameplay from Fanboy-Attack:
How do you feel about the pre-order requirement for the beta given that previous betas have been open to all?
First released for Playstation 4 on April 19th, with it coming to PC and Xbox One on May 19th, Black Ops 3 Eclipse DLC is what could be either really fun, or possibly some more of the same from Treyarch’s three-lane system that they use for designing multiplayer. Having recently bought this DLC for the PS4, the regular multiplayer maps still have the same design feel while keeping it fun. while the new Zombies map keeps Zetsubou No Shima keeps it interesting. Since there’s a special playlist that has matches only on the new multiplayer maps and I played a bit on them along with zombies, so here’s my thoughts on them.Read More
Well there it is. Space, a new planet, robots, its call of duty, what do you want. I like the way it looks, and I like space fighters, so at least for now I am on board.
so what your looking at there, is the first ever confirmation that humanity is doomed, I MEAN, that much beloved COD 4 is getting a remake for the new Infinite Warfare: Legacy Edition. For at least several days rumor has been circulating that the first ever Modern Warfare, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, would be getting an HD remake in the coming months, now it seems that Activision has officially confirmed it, via emojis, on twitter. I cant believe i just typed that sentence. So there you go, we may get an awesome remake of Crash and Shipment. I for one will probably buy it just for the fun of playing a game where grenade spam and noob tubes kill me before I can ever take a shot.
Final 30 Teams are Determined for Call of Duty World League Pro Division Presented by PlayStation®4
This year over 800 teams competed for a chance to play for more than 3 million dollars in Cash prizes for playing Call of Duty: Black Ops III. After intense days of regional competitions worldwide, 30 teams from around the globe have successfully secured a coveted spot in the first ever Call of Duty™ World League (CWL) Pro Division presented by PlayStation®4. More than 800 professional Call of Duty™ eSports teams across North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand competed last week for the chance to join the premier Call of Duty eSports circuit. These teams will spend the coming year competing for more than $3 million in cash prizes playing Call of Duty®: Black Ops III, culminating with the Call of Duty Championship Presented by PlayStation 4 in the fall of 2016.
In the North American LAN qualifier, sixteen competed live for eight spots in the CWL Pro Division. The teams were seeded into four groups, with the top two performing teams from each group qualifying into the CWL Pro Division. Team EnVyUs was the only team worldwide to sweep every match, finishing with a perfect 6-0 record to lock in its Pro Division spot. Other North American CWL Pro Division qualifying teams include: OpTic Gaming, Apotheon Esports, Rise Nation, Team eLevate, Team Kaliber, FaZe Clan and compLexity Gaming. Once the LAN qualifiers were complete, players from all over North America fought it out online in a week long tournament that included more than 460 teams. After hard fought matches, Counter Logic Gaming, Luminosity Gaming, Dream Team and Question Mark all secured their spots as part of the first stage of the inaugural season. Of the eight European CWL Pro Division teams that competed in the regional finals, the team that finished with the best record hailed from the UK and Ireland, Millenium, who closed with an impressive 6-1 series overall event. Other European Call of Duty World League Pro Division qualifying teams include: Epsilon eSports (UK), Team Infused (UK) and Splyce (UK). In European online competition more than 350 teams across 19 countries battled for the six open spots in the CWL Pro Division. Three French teams, Team Vitality, Team Spartan and PuLse Gaming, UK teams of excel and NGZB and Giants Gaming from Spain each played at least six matches against top European teams to secure their spots in the CWL Pro Division. The action continued in Sydney as teams from the Australia/New Zealand region faced off on LAN. Fan favourites were bested in some early drama in the Australia/New Zealand CWL Pro Division. Newcomer Skyfire topped perennial Call of Duty Championship top placer Mindfreak in an early 3-2 victory with both teams eventually qualifying based on final standings. Other Australia/New Zealand CWL Pro Division qualifying teams include: Tainted Minds and Team Immunity. Four spots were still available in the ANZ online qualifier. Fighting through four rounds of matches, Nv, Fast as boii, OrbitGG and newcomer Pure N3gs all qualified to move on and go for a share of the Stage 1 prize pool.
With incredible Call of Duty: Black Ops III action taking centre stage during the qualifying events and online qualifiers, it is creating a great foundation leading into the CWL Pro Division which will be begin on 5th January.
Please note that this review covers the PS4 version, and some features are not available for the PS3/Xbox 360 versions
Treyarch does an amazing job once more with another installment in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 3. The series has come a long way from the World War II era setting of World at War, to Cold War settings of Black Ops 1, and the more recent near future settings of Black Ops 2 and now 3. Just like Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch tries to keep the Call of Duty fresh and engaging for it’s fans, and I feel that it has succeeded with those objectives.
Upon starting up the game and getting the necessary content downloaded to be able to play single player, I brought up the menu and happened upon the Identity section and was immediately taken aback when I explored further into it. I was taken aback due to the fact of the sheer level of customization that can be done with individual weapon setups. A new feature in the franchise is the ability to customize optics, attachments, camos, and paint jobs. In addition to that, the player can save multiple variants of individual weapon setups and use them across Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies, provided that the weapons and attachments are unlocked though each mode. One thing to note is that similar to the emblems, paint jobs add an individual flair if one wants to take the time to make use of a whopping 64 layers for the left and right sides, and the top of the gun. All of that can be done within Gunsmith or Paintshop sub-menus. Also making returns are unlockable calling cards and customizable emblems, franchise staples introduced in Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops 1, respectively. Expanding upon those two features you are now the abilities to unlock calling cards via Campaign, Zombies, and from Supply Drops found in Multiplayer.
Activision has posted a short video on their YouTube channel outlining some of the tactical abilities and vision modes that will aid combatants in the game’s online multiplayer.
The new two new vision modes include:
Tactical Mode – Allows you to see the distance enemies are away from you as well as the position of snipers and other ordinances on the battlefield. Enhanced Vision – Offers night vision outlining the map and surrounding area. Enemies and Allies will also be highlighted.
Also shown are Tactical Rigs which allow you to enable capabilities beyond that of traditional soldiers. Some examples include ’emergency reserve’ which will revive your solider once they enter bleed out or Copycat (which some of you might remember from Modern Warfare 2) which allows you to clone the load-out of the last player that fragged you.
Some of the Tactical Rigs shown in the below video:
Traversal EMP
Emergency Reserve
Proximity Detonation
Repulsor
Sensory Buffer
Copycat
[youtube id=”u7CyFPJKdrw”]
Call of Duty: Black Ops III will be released on November 6th 2015 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC. The last generation version on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will feature no single player mode and will be $10 USD cheaper.
Activision has announced a series of live streams that will feature never before seen content leading up to the November 6th release of the game on Windows PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PS3 and Xbox 360.
The first live stream will take place today at 3PM on the official Call of Duty YouTube channel. You’ll be able to watch a new stream every Friday from now on until the game hits retail.
If any major news is announced during today’s stream we will bring it to you!
Activision announced the creation of a brand new E-Sports league for competitive Call of Duty called Call of Duty World League which is set kick off just after the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. This new league will be divided into two different divisions – The Pro Division and The Challenge Division. Both of these new divisions will have their own finales at the end of the upcoming season Activision said.
In the fall of 2016 Activision will host the Call of Duty Championship which will showcase talent from both of the divisions mentioned above. With more than 3 million $ (USD) on the line it sounds like the Call of Duty World League could bring some of the best players some really hefty prizes.
Alongside an official Twitter and Facebook supported by developer Tryarch the Call of Duty World League also deliver updates through the Call of Duty Official Website. As we move closer to the January start of its first season we will bring you more coverage!
Activision announced today that the PS4 beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops III that ran from August 19th thru the 23rd enlisted millions of gamers to help stress test Treyarch’s latest FPS. Black Ops III has set the record for the highest number of players playing a beta on the PlayStation Network according to a press release issued by Activison.
Rob Kostich a VP and Call of Duty general manager had this to say about the beta version of COD: Black Ops II:
“Becoming the biggest beta on PS4 speaks to the excitement felt by gamers and the quality of work by Treyarch. And remember, this beta is just a fraction of the overall multiplayer experience and a portion of what’s coming on November 6 when the full game – spanning campaign, multiplayer and Zombies hits worldwide.”
PS4 owners weren’t the only ones enlisted to help test our Black Ops III– PC gamers and Xbox One owners got a chance to try out the same beta version as their Sony counter-parts this past weekend.
The full version of Call of Duty: Black Ops III will ship for PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 6th. New features include specialists in multiplayer – preset characters who each have their own special ability that charges up over time and the inclusion of vertical movement and wall running.
Activistion’s previously closed beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops III is now open to everyone for about the next 24 hours. If you don’t mind the the hefty 13 gigabyte download you can try out three maps and several different game modes ahead of the next COD’s release this November. Other new features for Blops 3 include the inclusion of “specialists” – soldiers who each have their own power weapons that can be earned through kill streaks.
A separate beta for Windows PC and Xbox One will be available from August 26th thru the 30th and both will presumably have some open period available to all.