Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Retribution Review

"Not Great"

Multiplayer

This might actually be the worst DLC pack from any Call of Duty game and I've played my fair share over the years. This pack features three all new maps and one remastered map from Ghosts. It also provides a somewhat smaller and less interesting zombie map with "The Beast from Beyond". The first of the new maps is "Altitude", a mall that floats above Earth. This is a very basic map featuring a symmetrical style and a very plain white clean viewing. It's mostly just land based with a couple odd tower points that stick out for better views of certain lanes. Comes across as awkward for the most part and lacks any unique complexity. "Depot 22" is the next map and one that's oddly scattered. It's completely random in the sense that it follows three cores lanes of sporadic close combat. It's not terrible, but nothing that really flows well providing a sense of combat that I didn't feel fit the movement system.

The final brand new map is "Carnage" which is a post-apocalyptic styled race track that features borderline claustrophobic lanes and not a lot of room for creativity. The design is neat here, but I didn't find that it played very well to objectives. This is from a combination of no side room to move and awkward invisible blocks when trying to boost up onto different lanes. The final map in this pack is "Heartland" an oddly chosen remake of Warhawk from Ghosts, I thought the map was horrible then and there's no difference here for it. It's basically the exact same thing but now you can boost onto ledges that once gave a slightly vertical advantage.


Zombies: The Beast From Beyond
After moving through the fairly solid selection of zombies map the team is sent into the far future and space itself. This is an odd map that features a futuristic space base that feels like it's from an Alien map and then a weird theater area once you jump through a teleporter/wormhole. It's a difficult map so I can't imagine any new players will be able to jump in here and this is due to the bizarre choice of adding Cryptids from Extinction, a Call of Duty: Ghosts mode in. They dominate a couple rounds by themselves and it was just the weirdest choice, it's a zombies mode! I came to shoot zombies! Anyways, the layout of the map is smaller and it generally feels all recycled borrowing zombies and portions of the map from other past levels. It feels like a lazy send-off that lacks the complexity and fresh design each map before it provided.

The Conclusion

I guess you could say this isn't broken to any extent, but it's just a poor map selection and a bad ending to the Infinite Warfare season pass. The four multiplayer maps didn't really have any highlights as usually they're a mix of solid and alright maps. The "Carnage" map was neat in design, but not fantastic in functionality. If you liked Warhawk from Ghosts for whatever reason it's the exact same thing here. I thought Depot 22 seemed too random as a level though I do like to see them do something different with non-symmetrical levels and finally I just found Altitude boring honestly. The Beast From Beyond felt like a lazy rehash of content we've seen from other zombie levels and while some might find this as a nice tie in, it came across as underwhelming to me. They've done a great job with zombies thus far so I was thoroughly disappointed.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Retribution Review on Xbox One

Rating Overall: 5.0