Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare from 2016 took the series into orbit and open space – Infinity Ward built the campaign around the command deck of the starship Retribution, from which the player heads out on individual ground and shipboard missions, interspersed with fighter dogfights between planets and combat against the Settlement Defense Front faction. The game launched simultaneously for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, offering the same content on all platforms: the campaign, competitive multiplayer with the Combat Rig specialist system, and the cooperative Zombies in Spaceland mode, styled after 1980s retro aesthetics and set in a shopping mall.

The core of the game was identical across all versions – the same missions, the same maps, and the same weapon and specialist unlock progression in multiplayer, so the choice of platform was mainly a matter of preferred controller and available hardware. The differences showed up mainly on the technical side: the console versions targeted around 60 frames per second at native resolutions matching that generation's capabilities, while the PC version allowed unlimited frame rates, higher texture resolution, longer draw distance, and more precise mouse aiming, which many competitive multiplayer players preferred. The campaign also included free-roaming sections aboard the mothership between missions, where you could talk to the crew and track the campaign's progress on the map, which was handled identically across all platforms.

At launch, PlayStation 4 was the primary platform in terms of marketing and additional content – Activision and Sony had a long-standing agreement at the time for timed exclusivity on map pack DLC, which therefore arrived on PS4 first, while other platforms received it later. As on Xbox One, the pricier editions on PS4 also included the remastered Modern Warfare Remastered from day one, letting players enjoy both the new sci-fi campaign and a return to the original 2007 game in a single package. For a large part of the player community, the PlayStation 4 version was the natural choice at launch.

Why play it: Thanks to timed map pack exclusivity and the remastered Modern Warfare included in the pricier editions, this was the natural choice for most of the player community in its launch year.