YMMV / Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

• Anticlimax Boss:
  • While some of those Settlement Defense Front officers in the Most Wanted list do put up quite a fight (such as the ones who are Ace Pilots), many of them are no tougher than regular enemies. Players probably don't notice Lieutenant Andrew Hawryluk and Captain Radoslav Barkov among the Mooks killed, despite the latter having a speaking role in a side mission. However, the worst example goes to Vice-Admiral Caleb Thies, who turns into a Red Shirt.
  • Players never actually fight Admiral Salen Kotch himself, not even as a cinematic Quick Time Event. Players must hack a bot to bash his head into a console a few times, and Kotch will die of his injuries a few minutes later if the player doesn't stab him in the throat. This may have been intentional, though, considering the game's overall Subversion of the classic CoD campaign.
• Awesome Music: Sarah Schachner's score for the game. All of it.
• Broken Base:
  • The game's outer space setting - some fans were excited about the focus on space combat and the potential new game-play modes while others have grown burnt-out with the science-fiction aesthetic of the past several entries in the series and would rather see the franchise return to its original World War II setting (which hasn't been visited in nearly seven years, excluding the Bastogne virtual sequence from Call of Duty: Black Ops III) and something they would eventually do, similar conflicts like Battlefield 1 or, to a far lesser extent, being set in the modern era. Of course with the new game being released, this has been quelled a slight bit.
  • The ending can be seen as a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as many soldiers didn't live to see the end of a war, or a Mass Effect 3 style Writer Cop Out after realizing how the game's reception will be.
• Complete Monster:
  • Main campaign: Admiral Salen Kotch is the ruthless and single-minded leader of the SDF, and is devoted to the conquest of the Solar System, and the eradication of Earth-born bloodlines, which he sees as inferior and unworthy. Kotch introduces himself confronting wounded UNSA soldiers, briefly feigning sympathy before ordering their brutal execution. In that same scene, he casually shoots one of his own soldiers to demonstrate that by not caring, he has what it takes to win the war. He would go on to orchestrate a terror attack on a city, causing wanton destruction and thousands of deliberate civilian casualties, before going on to destroy Tigris and killing all its personnel. Throughout the campaign, Kotch sends out broadcasts to the UNSA that their cause will fail and that they should accept surrender and execution. He also sent a spy on a suicide mission to activate a beacon to signal a full SDF invasion of Earth. When the invasion begins, Kotch has his flagship Olympus Mons destroy the UNSA headquarters, killing Admiral Raines. When Reyes and his team board Olympus Mons, Kotch orders its self-destruction to wipe them out and to destroy the city beneath them in the process. Unscrupulous and fanatical to the bitter end, Kotch is willing to sacrifice civilians, his own men and ultimately his own life to the cause of Earth's devastation and further the power of SDF.
  • Zombies: Mephistopheles is a demon who manipulated Willard Wyler into accepting a deal, giving Wyler the power to trap people in his horror films and have zombies and butchers slaughter them while Mephistopheles would devour their souls; among the dozens of people killed were Wyler's pregnant daughter. When the four actors defeat Wyler, Mephistopheles himself battles them so that he may enslave them and force them to collect more souls for him to devour.
• Cult Classic: Neither the most commercially or critically successful game in the series, but it has a solid fanbase who hold it up as an underrated gem that didn't deserve to be dismissed on its first impression.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: In a curious inversion of how Call of Duty games are usually treated, most of the praise for Infinite Warfare is directed at its Campaign for having a surprisingly detailed and immersive setting alongside a solid story and likeable cast of characters. By contrast, the Multiplayer and Zombies modes are usually held as being So Okay, It's Average.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Robot Buddy squadmate "ETH.3n" has gained quite a few fans; similar to Riley from Call of Duty: Ghosts.
  • Kotch, largely due to his portrayal by Kit Harington.
• Fan Nickname: Call of Duty: Universal Century, Call of Duty: Gundam Warfare or Mobile Suit Gundam: Infinite Warfare, due to fans pointing out the similarities between this game's setting and the Earth Federation/Principality of Zeon "One Year War" in the Universal Century timeline of the Gundam franchise. To further the reference, players point out the ending of the campaign is essentially what Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino would have done himself if asked to pen the story for a Call of Duty game.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The "NV4" assault rifle: Its Epic variant does full damage at all ranges, and is among the most commonly used weapons - especially in Hardcore, where it's a one-shot kill. The base variant is no slouch either, boasting a fast reload, excellent accuracy and damage.
  • The "Volk" assault rifle: while it doesn't have the fastest rate of fire, it deals a lot of damage and, like all energy weapons, has an unwritten side effect of shots bouncing off of walls. With the right attachments, it becomes the best assault rifle in the game; additionally, the Volk can be acquired at the start of the first firefight of the second level of the campaign, doubling as a Disc-One Nuke.
  • The "R.A.W." light machine gun, with the right attachments, is a devastating weapon: thanks to the "Man At Arms" trait, which grants maximum ammunition and allows for fast movement, it becomes very powerful for campaign and multiplayer.
  • The "Ghost" perk returns with almost the same functionality as it did in Call of Duty: Black Ops: players utilizing Ghost do not appear on the enemy mini-map when enemy UAVs are active or radar pings are used, provided they are sprinting, using a Scorestreak or defusing/planting a bomb. However, Ghost becomes invaluable in multiplayer when its effects are stronger than the other perks in its "Blue" category, particularly the "Recon" perk^note Gain a greater mini-map and vision from enemy UAVs, because a Ghost-equipped player calling in a friendly UAV remains invisible to Recon-equipped enemy players.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Infinite Warfare sold surprisingly well in Japan, having reached #1 in its first week of launch.
  • Gains an extra bit of humor when you realize that David Hasselhoff is actually in the game.
• Goddamned Bats: Skelters. They're small, lightly armed, and easy to shoot down if you can catch up to them. They tend to appear in swarms, have AI ranging from good to good enough to be bad (in the case of Aces, who likely for this reason only appear one at a time), and are as fast as or faster than you. Individually they're harmless. If there are even two or three, though, they can draw attention away from a Destroyer the size of a city block.
• Good Bad Bugs: The "Flying Dog" glitch during the multiplayer beta allowed players using the "Reaper" ability on the Synaptic combat rig to stay airborne by triggering the transformation ability and cancelling it repeatedly. Developer Infinity Ward patched it out upon the full game's release.
• Ho Yay: Due to Reyes's relationship with the rest of his comrades (including Salter) being purely platonic and professional, the strikingly close camaraderie and Undying Loyalty between Reyes and ETH.3n the robot (to the point that the former call the latter his brother at one point) comes across as this.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Quite a few fans expressed getting Infinite Warfare simply for Modern Warfare Remastered, which accompanies the special editions; even publisher Activision banked on this trope by not releasing Remastered as a standalone. Naturally, just as many fans were unhappy about this.
  • There's a group of players who were only interested in seeing Infinity Ward's version of "Zombie" mode in comparison to fellow Call of Duty developers Treyarch's and Sledgehammer's versions.
  • In a departure from the norm for this series, many players feel that the campaign is the star of the show this time around, with its departure from the usual Call of Duty formula and surprisingly good setting, storyline, and cast of characters.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Beginning with the beta and into its release, multiplayer is contested due for its hybrid-recycling of game mechanics and systems from prior installments - killstreak/strike package rewards, map designs, spawning locations and time-to-kill from Ghosts, supply drops and weapon variants of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III with its hit detection, movement, payloads/specialist abilities and weapons and specialist loadouts (combat rigs being an off-shoot of them). Furthermore, aside from the constant military, science-fiction theme reused from previous entries since Call of Duty: Black Ops II, multiplayer for Infinite Warfare is decried as bland and generic; Infinity Ward's last Call of Duty game Ghosts was similarly criticized.
• Memetic Mutation: The Quartermaster's lines in general, especially after the launch of the first Quartermaster Update Trailer. In the opening minutes of the trailer, he gives us this gem:
  "Good day, fleshy mammals!"
• Narm: The SDF are just so... cartoonishly evil, with every line of dialogue from Kotch and his people being all the horrible, monstrous things they plan on doing to the earth. Whatever reasons they have for wanting this are glossed over at best, and there's not a single hint of anyone in the vastness of the SDF being even mildly sympathetic. Even their very name sounds ridiculous, as not only it is ironic in context (they have "Defense" in their name, but act as aggressors), but out of context, brings the mind of "Another settlement needs your help".
• Overshadowed by Controversy: This game was largely overshadowed by the strongly negative reaction it received upon its announcement. The reveal trailer became the most disliked video in the history of YouTube at the time, driven mostly by fans who were sick of the series' futuristic entries. In hindsight, it's generally agreed that this reaction to was massively overblown, and the game's setting would eventually receive praise for its surprising level of detail and immersion, but the cloud of "it's that game set in space that everyone immediately hated" still hangs above it to some extent.
• Polished Port: In terms of performance, Infinite Warfare is far more stable than Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III at launch, the latter of which was criticized for poor PC optimization, even after several patches.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version - on top of having the same bloated 130GB install size as other versions, it used peer-to-peer connections — a major security risk to users — as the primary servers for multiplayer. Following the game's launch, it was discovered that, for some bizarre reason, the server's populace was segregated into separate servers for the Steam version and the physical/Windows Store versions (the former version's numbers were severely lower compared to earlier Call of Duty installments). To top it off, the arrow keys are borderline unusable due to some weird input lag bug that has yet to be patched even several months post-launch, a problem which has plagued left-handed players.
• So Okay, It's Average: Many critics and fans agree the campaign largely redeems Infinite Warfare from its otherwise derivative, lackluster multiplayer to make it an average Call of Duty game. It's certainly not terrible, but it's nowhere near the quality of prior iterations in the franchise such as Modern Warfare and Black Ops.
• Tainted by the Preview: The reveal trailer reached a monumental three million dislikes, giving it the dubious honor of being both the video to reach two million dislikes the fastest (in a little over two weeks) and the second most disliked video on YouTube^note Irony ensues when it's also the most liked trailer for the franchise. This backlash seemed to be caused by fanbase becoming tired of how this the third futuristic game in a row.
• Tear Jerker: The messages to family members from the major crew members of the UNSA Retribution that can be heard during the credits - they were recorded in the event of that character's deaths. Given that nearly all of them are Killed Off for Real, listening to their last words to each of their loved ones is very much intended to be a Player Punch.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some felt Vice-Admiral Caleb Thies, who was featured in the teaser for Infinite Warfare and voiced by Peter Weller, should have been given more screen time (as well as Weller fans who wanted to see more of his acting in the game) than just as a Red Shirt target to assassinate in an early side-mission.
  • Some feel like Admiral Kotch himself is an example too. Despite initially seeming very promising, his screen time is very limited (8 minutes, compared to the 30-40 minutes for Jonathan Irons), largely restricted to videos where he gives speeches, and doesn't interact much with the players directly that much. His Anticlimax Boss status only makes the situation worse.
  • The unnamed female crew member who occupies the shooting range every time Reyes is going to the bridge, made to sound like an authority on the in-game weapons.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the story is generally considered better than some of the previous Call of Duty games, some feel that the Central Theme of compassion could have been far more interesting if it was actually explored instead of just saying "COMPASSION IS WEAKNESS" over and over again. The positive aspects of compassion- such as building up trust between a commander and their men, or even just the view that compassion is inherently valuable as a concept- are never given any focus.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The game's iron man difficulty level is named "#YOLO", an early-2010s slang term that is now seen as being dated specifically to that era.
• Vindicated by History: The game upon announcement received instant derision for being yet another futuristic Call of Duty game at a time when people had gotten sick of that theme, and as a result it received relatively little attention by the standards of the series, especially as many shooter fans were more interested in the unique premise of Battlefield 1, or the unashamed throwback style of Doom (2016). However, like fellow rival Titanfall 2, fans would eventually reevaluate Infinite Warfare for having an excellent, character-driven single player campaign, with many holding it up as the most underrated entry in the series.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Judging by the like/dislike ratio, the "Ship Assault" trailer, showcasing the first footage of space combat (on-foot and piloting a Cool Plane).
  • The "Long Live the Captain" cinematic has been lauded for its crisp, film-like visuals by a lot of people; likewise, those who originally detested the game had a second opinion of Infinite Warfare when the "Story Trailer" was released.

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