@secondhands: nice!! Thanks for the heads up - I'll see if I might be able to jump on later this evening, but honestly BF1's operations has it's hooks in me deep

I can see why people would make the comparison to BO3 - the movement, the supply drops, the rigs. But to me, the similarities are only skin deep. For one, the movement is greatly toned down from BO3 and at best only about 70% or so. It's much more about precise jumps to gain a tactical advantage than yo I'm going to traverse this whole map in 2 seconds and outflank the enemy. Rigs are not a 1:1 with specialists - it seems that there are more tactical decisions that would go into picking your trait this time around. Overall, the gunplay just feels way different. In IW, the guns have a "sameness" to them whereas in BO3 they feel more distinct. I haven't really decided if I like IW or not yet, but it hasn't really enticed me to want to put down BO3 just yet.

XBone Codes! Enjoy!

T7RFV-HVM32-97TFK-3JTQX-W9C3Z

DG36H-FYHHV-QXKHC-3FYYX-29HDZ

Xbone Codes!

DG36H-FYHHV-QXKHC-3FYYX-29HDZ

T7RFV-HVM32-97TFK-3JTQX-W9C3Z

I never picked up Ghosts, and I ended up hating Advanced Warfare multiplayer, so it took the Black Ops III beta to sell me on another COD game. Just as the Black Ops III beta convinced me to pick up a copy of that game, the Infinite Warfare beta has pushed me away from picking up this game. You only need to watch the first minute or so of this video to understand why.

Goodbye Call of Duty, hello Titanfall.

Yeah I have to agree this iteration is wow... a complete mess? I don't even know where to get started. There isn't any breathing room in the maps since the spawns just seem to randomly decide where you and your team mates will go. Other people's movement just seems way too fast and they don't even have the jump pack abilities from AW... The best thing of all is how useless every gun feels in this game. Literally every gun just feels like a hunk of junk that shoots out garbage because all it takes is someone to quick scope you down with a sniper rifle from any range and shoot in your general direction to get a kill. I have yet to see someone get a kill with the 1st lethal grenade because it feels like you're lobbing a brick that is a fire cracker, the other lethal grenades feel like little volcano death machines, but they're more for setup rather than flushing out it feels. Tactical equipment is pretty useless too... that ice/cryo mine does nothing and I don't think you unlock flash/stun grenades until way later in the progression, which really sucks... that should be a staple and bread and butter rather than the first "body heat detector" bullshit that you get off the bat, what a gimmick.

Advanced Warfare was pretty fun, but once all the other developers started on this wild future ride, it just never seemed to end and now it's just all a big gimmick it seems. Glad I got to play this so I know to save my money for BF1 season pass or anything else really.

Just a quick bump to say a few things.

1) As a reminder, the Infinite Warfare beta is now open to all PS4 players. No beta code needed.

2) If you have even a slight interest in the multiplayer of Infinite Warfare, you should absolutely try the beta.

3) If you dislike the beta as much as I do, then I suggest going in a different direction with your multiplayer shooter this year.

That re-cut trailer is fucking amazing. Good post.

As far is this beta -- check it out everybody, more problems! More daft oversights from NO ONE's favorite CoD developer! Who'd have thunk?

They just raised the level cap and allowed players to unlock some new weapons... But it turns out you can't even use them in-game after creating a class with them!

I was excited to try the Volk assault rifle and the Rack-9 shotgun, but when I spawn with those weapons, I get the "starter assault rifle" in my hands instead. Almost as if this update wasn't tested/QA'd at all.

Cool.

Man, this game really feels bad. It's so slow and all the movement just feels tacked on. I remember liking the beta for Black ops 3 but man this just feels bad, titanfall 2 beta felt way better and i didn't even like that as much as titanfall 1 lol. Deleted that 19gb beta off my shit quick. Could be all the shadow warrior 2 i've been playing, but this game felt real bad.

@whitestripes09: @oursin_360: @secondhands:

You know you screwed up when one of the top COD channels--one devoted to a balanced presentation of positive vs negative game discussion--tells you bluntly that your game isn't any fun.

This is someone who makes his living from covering this series. He's frequently invited by Activision to COD events, he gets to play each game long before release or even a beta, he has over a million subscribers on You Tube, and he's basically saying that COD4 Remastered is the only COD that is going to see very much coverage on his channel this year.

If you're a developer at Infinite Ward, or even in PR at Activsion, that has to hurt.

Anyone disagree, though? For those who've spent some time with the beta, what do you think of the game?

@spaceinsomniac: I haven't played the beta, but the videos you've posted in this thread are not encouraging at all. I know the comment sections of every video says that it is a bad game, but they always do that. Having a guy that makes a living off of Call of Duty videos say this is a huge PR hit. This game will sell millions, but I wonder if the players will stay with it. Could they make another map pack for Black Ops 3 (I'm assuming Black Ops 3 was generally well liked). I guess I'll stick to Titanfall 2 and whenever they decided to release COD 4 remastered.

@spaceinsomniac: To the Drift0r video, a lot of his arguments came from him complaining about the variants being unfair/unbalanced which I just didn't see from my experience with the beta. A main point of his was that you couldn't tell what variant someone had until you were killed by it to which I immediately thought; it shows the weapon and its rarity in the kill feed.

His point on lag is spot on. When the game worked connection-wise, I had a blast, but when it lagged, it was miserable.

I didn't find any rigs to be game-breakingly overpowered in the beta and nothing appeared so inherently unfair that if it turns out to be a problem it couldn't be patched.

As a counter-point:

I've only just started watching Call of Duty YouTubers despite being with the franchise for over a decade but I like TheXclusiveAce for similar reasons I like Drift0r. They're both very analytical and passionate about the games.

Now that the beta is over and the game is upon us, I'm still excited. The issues behind the game are definitely present and I won't deny that some are straight up bad but (if the connection and lag can be sorted out and be at least as good as Black Ops 3's servers) I can see myself enjoying another year of CoD.

All this has got me thinking a lot about myself and what the franchise means to me, though. Sometimes I think that I've spent so much time with the series that I need it to be good for my own sake and I overlook a lot of real problems. Maybe I'm finding shelter in this series as a constant in my life that isn't going to challenge me to change and I can always hop on and have a good time. Some of my best online memories is having a huge group of friends that I would play CoD with daily. That group of a dozen or so real life friends has dwindled to two. A lot of times I feel like I'm pressuring them each year to buy in again because I don't want to lose that experience.

So a part of me is thinking, "Am I forcing myself to like Infinite Warfare?" because everywhere I look I'm seeing people whose opinions I respect like Drift0r, Jeff Gerstmann, and Jeff Bakalar, all saying they don't like IW. I don't want to be another negative voice rallying against Call of Duty. There are so many of those people everywhere you look and I think the series doesn't get as much credit as it deserves these days so I want to champion it a bit.

I was listening to this week's bombcast earlier and after hearing what Jeff was saying about Titanfall 2 and how it compares to what he's played of IW I just started doubting myself constantly. Maybe it's because this has been the most negative lead-up to a Call of Duty release ever but I'm having a sort of personal crisis about the series right now and I needed to vent a bit. I think the game just needs to come out so I can either play it and enjoy myself and forget about all this or realize everyone's been right all along and I've been wasting my time.

Oh, that's a load of crap. Everyone isn't "right" about anything. It's all subjective, and I enjoyed every COD I've ever purchased at least enough to be worth the cost of the game. IW brought quick-scoping back, has very unbalanced rig abilities--for example, the ghostbusters gun is garbage compared to the instant kill laser pistol--has some lag issues, variants and gun balance seem like they're going to be a problem, ghost doesn't require you to move anymore to stay of the radar, etc.

Despite all that, I still had some fun with the beta, but I ultimately decided that I'd be happy to skip the game this year in favor of Titanfall 2. Any other year, and the addition of COD4 remastered would probably have been enough to get me to pick up the 80 dollar version at launch. COD is still fun, but this game has too much about it that I personally don't like. Even when you look at a quick-scoper's K/D and they're at 9 and 12 or something, it still still feels completely unfair to be on the receiving end of that 9. To round a corner, get three bullets into someone, and then have them kill you point blank with what is supposed to be a ranged weapon. I don't like that, and I'm happy to avoid the game for that reason alone.

But if you enjoy the game, then you enjoy the game. You aren't "wrong" for the fun you have with something that others don't enjoy.

I'm happy that Jeff gave Titanfall 2 a five out of five. I think that it should help the game find an audience, and I think it should help it gather more attention on the forums. I'm loving the game so far. But Jeff still preferred Advanced Warfare to Black Ops 3. You don't have to agree with Jeff, and his opinion isn't somehow more valuable than your own. Well, to EA or Activision I'm sure it is, but not to you.

And Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is a very good game.

[edit] Also, for anyone who doesn't know, Drfit0r already has backed off his idea of IW not getting much coverage this year. He's announced that he will be doing an "Infinite Warfare in-depth" video series. I think he realizes it would be a huge mistake for a COD-focused channel like his to not cover the new COD.

@whitestripes09: @secondhands: @colonel_pockets: @jjbsterling:

Okay, wow. I get that betas are for testing your game and making changes, but this seems downright crazy. At least on paper, it sounds like Infinity Ward is nerfing snipers into the ground. From the sound of things, they could end up being even worse than in Black Ops III. While I love that idea, I can still understand that many fans of sniping will not.

It's also crazy that not only did I not get to try the proper game as it will be at release, but snipers got their dream game until it was taken away from them.

There really was no winning this one after that beta. Some group of players was going to be disappointed. The beta should never have had snipers as powerful as it did. That would have been the only right way to go about this.

I still don't plan to buy the game at launch, but I'm much more likely to pick it up sometime now. Perhaps I'll wait and see how they handle weapon DLC. If it's as bad as Black Ops III, I still might skip it. BO3 went from the best COD since the original Black Ops at launch, to completely frustrating once you were getting killed with weapons that you didn't have, and that were incredibly rare drops.

@spaceinsomniac: One of the things that is giving me pause is the loot in the newer Call of Duty games. I know they're trying to sell those boxes, but it just makes the whole game seem unbalanced. I'd rather it be like the older Call of Duty games where the guns were the guns. Why not just make all of the boxes cosmetic like Overwatch? Titanfall 2 doesn't have any microtransactions and no season pass. COD is in such a weird situation now. Seems like they're always going to piss off someone.