Call of Duty launch time in the past has usually been a pretty exciting time for me because; well because I love Call of Duty and have enjoyed it greatly over the years playing it. Hopefully I can find that enjoyment again sometime in the future. When; I am not sure at this point.

For the last 13 years I have played Call of Duty; quite a bit of Call of Duty – over 8,000 hours of Call of Duty. By the end of this year I will have nearly spent an entire year of my life playing Call of Duty. Call of Duty has been my go to game almost exclusively over these last 13 years. I don’t like change and after I have grown into this semi fast paced shooter with that smooth as silk avatar movement like Call of Duty; I find it hard to comfortably settle into any other shooter and enjoy it as much. For that reason I pretty much stuck with Call of Duty over the years because I haven’t found something to replace that Call of Duty gameplay feeling. Even though nowadays it isn’t the same gameplay that I originally fell in love with, the gameplay is usually still there – just buried a little deeper in these last few releases.

With that said however, the first reason I didn’t purchase Infinite Warfare is because I just didn’t think it looked good. Nothing that I saw leading up to release really excited me – and even now after release I can’t even finish reading reviews of Infinite Warfare before I lose interest. From the space setting of the game, to the latest version of the “advanced movement system”, to the whole futuristic setting and crazy weapons, to another version of Zombies story I don’t care about to a stripped down version of Modern Warfare with no community support and finally to an Infinity Ward game style that I really just haven’t enjoyed for quite a while – this was the first Call of Duty that actually really turned me off before launch.

The second reason I didn’t purchase Infinite Warfare is because I am finally tired of PC releases of Call of Duty. I applaud Treyarch & their PC team for their excellent effort with Black Ops 3 to announce the community support up front and actually follow up on it with releasing mod tools. Unfortunately with the heavy hand of Activision above them (I’m assuming) making those tools release sooo late after launch and after the DLC season – I just don’t see how all that effort to get the tools out will be beneficial. We have a game at the end of it’s support life cycle and the only way to play the excellent community content popping up is on lag-ridden listen servers with clunky controls that really aren’t very enjoyable. If the tools had come sooner and the servers come at all (maybe still coming???) it might be a very different story involving the future of Black Ops 3 and the PC community. However you can’t depend on something that isn’t there so that leads me to purchasing Call of Duty to play what I want to play. The problem with that is that I can’t. I am tired of purchasing Call of Duty titles to only be able to play Team Deathmatch and Domination playlists. I really hate Team Deathmatch and find it incredibly boring so that leaves me with Domination – for the last 3 years. I am now starting to hate Domination. If I purchase a Call of Duty game I want to be able to play the objective game modes that made me love this game over the years and I knew with Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered both releasing at the same time player counts could already be assumed to be cut in half. Understanding this means that from the very start of the release there will be poor player counts and no other game modes to play. These games cost too much to be limited so much on this platform. The old methods worked. The servers worked. The server admins worked. The mappers and modders worked. The community worked. If these things can’t be offered on this platform from the start then I just don’t think Call of Duty works on this platform anymore.

The last reason I didn’t purchase Infinite Warfare – which really is the first reason – but come on; this is a Call of Duty website. In May of 2017 my lovely wife of 9 years and I will be parents for the first time and I am sure that will bring on all kinds of new responsibilities for myself. I have quite a few projects around the house to take care of between now and then – including a nice man cave in the basement – uhhh I mean “play room”. So when I would normally be locked inside over the winter grinding my way through the latest Call of Duty title – I know I am going to be busy over the coming months which would leave little time for that. We have been planning for this for a while but I don’t think you can actually ever be prepared for an event like this. This period of life will definitely be interesting but I think I am ready for something new.