Review: 'Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare' Reaches for the Stars But Never Gets off the Ground

Once more, we're drowning in a season of shooters: the jazzy robo-parkour of Titanfall 2, the eco-pocalyptic hustle of Gears of War 4, the anthologized toil of Battlefield 1. It's the thirteenth installment in Activision's granddaddy projectile-chucker that's been nipping at Pokémon's fourth place heels in the battle for all-time bestselling franchise bragging rights. If last year's cyberpunk Black Ops III by alt-subsidiary Treyarch dared to broach protocol by disappearing down quasi-existential rabbit holes, studio Infinity Ward's sci-fi shooter rights course by acid-washing any nuance from its galloping potboiler. It's a tale of one-dimensional interplanetary insurgents reduced to no-dimensional quarry -- blockades of human or robotic militants jammed into moon base corridors or crowding orbital arenas, meat-or-metal-bags of variable lethality interposed between you and the next achievement unlock. It's also the story of your battle with Rear Admiral Salen Kotch (played by Game of Thrones' Kit Harington), a disaffected Martian radical about which those four words are all the game ever gives you.