Texan Mosaic

by RILEY GOLDEN//Entertainment Editor

Space is infinite.

And that’s exactly where “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” takes players. Available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, “Infinite Warfare” is a first-person shooter with single player and multiplayer modes.

The single-player campaign takes the player to a war-torn future in which humanity has outgrown Earth and expanded throughout the solar system. The governments of the world have formed the United Nations Space Alliance, or UNSA, to handle everything related to space colonization.

Before the events of “Infinite Warfare,” a group of insurgents broke away from the UNSA and formed the Settlement Defense Front, or SDF.

The campaign begins with the player taking control of Commander Nick Reyes of the UNSA and walking the surface of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa, to take the base back from the SDF.

At the end of the mission, Reyes is called back to Earth because it has been attacked by the SDF. This is when the player meets the antagonist of the game, Admiral Kotch. This moment feels so much like a “Call of Duty” cutscene, which is something developer Infinity Ward deserves credit for. They’re able to tell different stories in different settings every other year, with an extremely consistent tone and vibe in each campaign, and this one is no different.

The player is introduced to Kotch after capturing him and listening to his vague remarks about his evil plan that could easily be halted if he were just shot on the spot. Any player returning to the series will already see the parallels in the plot, but the whole story hasn’t been regurgitated. If it had been, the player would not be going on a dog-fighting mission in space.

After capturing Kotch, the player jumps in what looks like a plane, to leave Earth and go straight into orbit. The process of blasting off into space was chilling and stomach-churning. After I finished shooting all of the enemy ships into the vacuum of space, I had to stop and look at Earth. Even in the midst of a futuristic war, it looked so peaceful and beautiful, and that’s where I was for the 60 seconds or so I took to do that. I was transported to orbit, just looking at the Earth, and the line between imagination and reality was completely lost in the distance.

The next time my boots are on the ground is in the multiplayer mode. If I’m not getting my butt kicked, I am experiencing pure joy somewhere other than Earth for a short amount of time.

Before jumping into an online match, though, the player must select a Combat Rig and create at least one weapon loadout.

The Combat Rig is basically the type of soldier the player wants to play as. There are six different Combat Rigs, with each having three different payloads and three different traits to choose from. For example, I like to play with the FTL Combat Rig.

One of the FTL payloads is the Eraser, an energy-based handgun that essentially disintegrates victims. The other two payload options are FTL Jump and Phase Shift. The FTL Jump propels the user forward several feet and Phase Shift briefly places the user in another dimension, avoiding damage and being invisible to everyone except someone else who has also used Phase Shift.

The coolest trait that the FTL has access to is perception, which makes the player’s screen pulse yellow when enemy players that are out of your view are targeting you. The other two traits are Supercharge and Power Slide. When using Supercharge, if you kill an enemy, it will drop an item that helps your teammate’s payloads cool down faster. Power Slide gives the player the ability to slide faster and farther.

The other Combat Rigs are Warfighter, Merc, Synaptic, Stryker, and Phantom. They all look different and have different unlockable helmets and body suits. After the player picks a Rig, they then need to find the gun or guns of their liking. It may take a couple matches to experiment with different guns, but there are several ballistic and energy weapons that I am a fan of.

My two favorite ballistic weapons are the NV4 and the Reaver. The NV4 is a pretty standard, fully automatic, military assault rifle with a similar design to today’s AR15. I like to attach a Variable Magnification Compensator sight, a Foregrip for reduced recoil, and a Suppressor. The Reaver is a semi-automatic shotgun that also has various attachments available, but I usually don’t use any.

My favorite energy weapon is called the Type-2. It is a medium-range, flat and sleek-looking assault rifle that can also be turned into two fully automatic, energy pistols, which makes the Type-2 a super fun and futuristic gun to take into a match.

There are a ton of different match types you can play, such as Team Deathmatch, Free-For-All, Domination, Search & Destroy, and many more. Team Deathmatch and Free-For-All are game types, with the only goal of killing as many enemies as possible and dying as little as possible to win the game.

Other, objective driven match types, such as Domination and Search & Destroy, give the players an objective to reach the score limit instead of getting kills to reach the score limit.

And, of course, there always has to be Zombies on “Call of Duty.” In “Infinite Warfare,” the zombie apocalypse goes back to a carnival in the 1980s and pits high school kids against the endless hordes of zombies. I’m not a huge fan of the Zombies mode, but it is entertaining to play with friends.

For someone who loves the idea of the future and the space age, “Infinite Warfare” did a great job of bringing “Call of Duty” to the final frontier. I give “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” 4.5 out of 5 stars.