Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare UK release date and news: Trailer wants to remind you the Infinite Warfare Beta is coming this weekend

Thomas McMullan Read more March 31, 2016

Activation has put out a brief trailer, large aimed at getting players excited about the coming multiplayer Beta for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

The Beta starts at 6pm UK time on 14 October and runs up to 24 October. The first few days of this period are only available to PS4 players who have pre-ordered the game. If you’re not in that group, the Beta will become available to both PS4 and Xbox One users who have pre-ordered from 21 October, up until 6pm on 24 October.

Included in the Beta will be three modes and three maps, as well as three of the game’s six Combat Rigs – suits that can be customised for different play styles. These rigs will be the Warfighter, MERC, and SYNAPTIC A C6 Class. The maps will be Frontier, Frost and Throwback, and the modes will be Team Deathmatch, Domination and Kill Confirmed.

Infinity Ward also has some “surprises in store” for players, which are unlikely to be readings of Modernist poetry, but you never know.

Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered need 130GB free space – minimum

If you’re planning to install both Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered, you’ll need to free up a whopping 130GB of free space – over a quarter of a 500GB console hard-drive.

According to the back of a French PS4 version of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition, picked up by Call of Duty leaker Charlie Intel, the combined installation size for both games comes at a minimum of 130GB.

While it makes sense for two games to have a larger storage demand than a single AAA shooter, 130GB is frankly enormous. There’s no details about how these installation size is divvied up between the two games, although Eurogamer has made a stab at deducing the 40GB needed for Modern Warfare Remastered’s Campaign Early Access – currently available on PS4 – leaves 90GB for Infinite Warfare.

Why such a big installation size? It may have something to do with the game’s support for 4K resolution with the PS4 Pro, although Activision have let to confirm or deny this. If this is the case, can we expect massive installation sizes for all games that include amped-up PS4 Pro version? Will that undercut the practicality of the 500GB PS4 Slim? Then again, it may simply be the case that Infinite Warfare is a particularly big game.

Infinite Warfare to have 12 maps on launch

Infinity Ward multiplayer project director Jordan Hirsh has confirmed that upcoming space shooter Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will have 12 maps when it launches.

Speaking to Playstation Lifestyle, Hirsh said he believed the game would have 12 maps, as well as an extra one for those that pre-order the game. Excluding the pre-order the bonus, that amount brings Infinite Warfare even with Black Ops 3, but a step behind Advanced Warfare and Ghost which had 13 and 14 respectively.

Does this matter much? Probably not. Still, it’s nice to know right? 12! Not 11. Not 13… 12!

More exciting is the trailer Activision put out to go alongside the launch of the PS4 Pro. The clip shows footage from the game’s Operation Dark Quarry mission – and features a lot of angry robots. You can watch it below.

“Our developers couldn’t be more excited about what PS4 Pro has to offer,” said Activision’s chief technology officer Andy Hendrickson, who also announced that last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will be available on the PS4 Pro thanks to a patch.

Also, if you’ve missed it, Infinite Warfare is getting a zombies mode. As is custom with Call of Duty games, the zombie mode cuts a very different tone to the main game – this time going full-on camp 80s. Here’s a trailer to give you a feel of things.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – Franchise revitaliser?

In the months after revealing the latest iteration in the annual shooter series, developers Infinity Ward faced little less than a fan revolt – the reveal trailer alone has been downvoted 2.9 million times since it was first aired.

E3 2016 had been an attempt to turn that public perception around, and a large part of that has involved showing exactly what the space-based action will entail. The tides do seem to be turning with the help of critical opinion. Vice’s Mike Diver says Infinite Warfare looks like a “franchise revitaliser”, while Polygon’s Michael McWhertor has said that the game “feels like a World War II game set in another century”.

There’s also been news that Game of Throne’s star Kit Harington will play Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s main villain. “Our story is about an epic showdown of opposing forces, and Kit immersed himself into the role and truly became the embodiment of the enemy, the Settlement Defense Front,” the game’s narrative director, Taylor Kurosaki Kurosaki said in a statement.

You can watch the game in action below, with seven minutes of footage showing protagonist Reyes infiltrating an enemy’s SetDef destroyer.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – Spaced out

After several weeks of leaks and speculation, Activision and Infinity Ward announced in May that 2016’s Call of Duty plans would be a sci-fi set iteration called Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and a HD remaster of the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

First up, Infinite Warfare. The rumours that the series would be moving into sci-fi territory were proved true, with a reveal trailer starting on terra firma before moving up into space, towards fully fledged space battles, all alongside a David Bowie cover.

Comparisons will inevitably be made to Halo, but it’s the hype surrounding the upcoming No Man’s Sky that seems to be fuelling Activision’s direction with Infinite Warfare – that’s if the trailer if anything to go by. The shot with the aircraft breaching the atmosphere will be very familiar to those that saw No Man Sky’s first launch trailer for E3 2014.

With No Man’s Sky coming out, a new Mass Effect slated for early 2017 and yearly Star Wars films fueling the love for all things sci-fi, the decision to push Call of Duty into space hasn’t exactly happened in a vacuum.

You’ll be fighting the Settlement Defense Front this time around, which lead writer Jacob Minkoff has described in an interview with Venture Beat as a “brutal, militaristic, fascist group” that wants to take control of all settlements in the solar system. Aside from space fascists, there will be zero-gravity combat, robots, spaceships and a new zombies co-op mode.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered

Next up is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. Activision won’t be selling the remaster as a stand-alone game – you’ll need to buy the Legacy Edition, Digital Deluxe Edition or Legacy Pro Edition of Infinite Warfare to get hold of it.

The remaster will come with the full single player campaign, and 10 multiplayer maps. Those confirmed by Activision so far are Crash, Overgrown, Crossfire, Backlot and Bog. Five more will be revealed at a later date, ahead of the full multiplayer release on 4 November 2016.

Infinity Ward are developing Infinite Warfare, and developed the original Modern Warfare, but Activision-owned Raven Software will be making the Modern Warfare remaster.

”We wanted to make sure we hit every note as far as audio and the visual quality, and texture density, the visual effects so the whole experience was true to the original, but amplified in a way that was showing the next-generation quality,” Raven Software studio head Brian Raffel told Forbes.

Modern Warfare Remastered seemed to be getting the lion’s share of social attention when it was announced, which isn’t entirely unexpected given that the games community is well known for its love of nostalgia. Whether Infinite Warfare will ignite interest the closer it gets to release remains to be seen.