Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Beta Hands-On

The Call of Duty series is a hot topic every year. Millions love the games, but then again, millions hate them too. After playing the beta over the weekend we have no doubt that this year's edition will lead to very the same discussions that we see every year as the launch of the next CoD edges closer.

Let's start with the Combat Rigs, Infinite Warfare's version of the Specialists system from the previous games. Each rig is meant to suit specific kinds of players, as they'll let you customise it with different payloads and traits. It's essentially a combination of the classic create-a-class mechanics and Destiny's Guardians system. Most of the payloads we were able to chose from in the beta were basically abilities that we played around with in last year's Call of Duty. One rig has a gun that kills enemies in one shot, which is similar to the Annihilator in Black Ops 3. Another rig has the ability to rewind time, so that it pretty much warps back to where it was a few seconds ago with regained health and ammunition. Kind of sounds like BO3's Glitch doesn't it? It's a nice evolution of the Pick 10 and Specialists system. The traits system does an okay job of making things a bit more interesting, and so some of you might be satisfied with the few changes they've made.

The moment to moment experience is, as usual, great. Most of the guns feel and sound decent, but there's obviously some balancing issues. With enemies now having a health bar over their head it's easy to see just how effective your weapons are. That some weapons are overpowered is to be expected in a beta, so we're not going to criticise them for that... yet. Wall-running and dashing feels somewhat similar to before, though we felt that the former was a bit less responsive this time around. Not a big problem as the vast majority of maps give you plenty of room to keep your boots/mechanised legs on the ground. This means that it was mostly our own fault when losing a fight, except for the return of a very controversial feature: quick scoping with insane traction. We've studied multiple killcams, and the fact that your aim snaps right on to enemies when you're actually aiming 4-5 yards to the side is outrageous. This has be to toned down for the final release if Infinity Ward don't want 90 percent of players running around with sniper rifles.

The maps we got to try in the beta were very varied. Our favourite was definitely Frontier, a space station focused on closed quarters combat. If you're a sniper we advise you to stay near the centre of the map, as there's a long corridor with just a few rooms to escape into for potential victims. Others can explore the underground section that connects the two teams' bases on the station. This makes it a map that suits most kind of players. It's also interesting visually, as the corpses of your enemies will float up into the air when killed. Every map feels and plays differently. Some will even barely let you use wall-running and boost-jump, so if you're a fan of the classic Call of Duty maps you'll probably find something to your liking.

Modes-wise we mostly played the classic variants, but also got to try the new Defender mode. This is essentially Halo's Oddball in CoD form. It's fairly simple: two teams duke it out while a drone charges in a centralised area on the map. Once the drone is fully charged, anyone can pick it up and earn points for their team while having it in their possession. Teamwork is alpha and omega in this mode, as you're only able to use a simple melee while carrying the drone, and therefore you'll need help to defend yourself. That makes it a nice inclusion to supplement the otherwise "only think about yourself" gameplay you'll find elsewhere.

Infinity Ward has also implemented weapon crafting, a fairly misleading term in our opinion. You save up "salvage" that you earn by playing the game, and use it to craft better versions of the base weapons. But there's no real crafting. You just save up a type of currency and buy (or get them from supply boxes bought with currency you earn by doing well) the modified weapon you want, with fairly few customisation options. We thought we'd get to choose the perks assigned to the rarest weapons ourselves, but this is not an option. Do you remember when we learned that rare weapons would earn us a tactical nuke if we got a killstreak of 25? That's only for certain weapons, which means that you might have to use weapons you don't like if you dream of obtaining that.

Infinite Warfare is all about rewarding players. You'll earn new payloads, traits, weapons, perks, calling cards, emblems, customisable armour parts, supply drops and more for doing well. As if that wasn't enough you'll also earn specialised versions of these by completing challenges for your Mission Team. Each team will reward players with unique items, and with four teams to choose from (we only got two in the beta) completionists will have their hands full. Extra challenges and rewards are always nice so we're not complaining about this feature.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is definitely a Call of Duty, love it or hate it. Infinity Ward has made a few tweaks to the well-known formula. The Combat Rigs mixes a bit of Destiny into the create a class system, while the gunplay is still top-notch. Our main concern is that it feels like we've played this before, but given the history of the series that's hardly surprising. Still, we hope that this is because of the beta's limited content, and that there's going to be more to the final game. If it's not, we think the demands for innovation will really start to heat up.