Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Like Graham, I ve always felt bad for the Brothers In Arms series of games. The WWII shooter was well into its fatigue stage by the time these games got around to doing something intelligent with it. Rocking up to the beaches of Normandy in Medal of Honor or storming the streets of Stalingrad in Call of Duty were excellent set pieces at the time. But neither game came close to making you think about anything that was going on, it was run and/or gun. That’s it. Brothers In Arms introduced a tactical element – and it was simple too. You just had to point at things.

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Although Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [official site] is sadly not the procedurally-generated Escherian Nightmare we might’ve hoped for, Activision’s latest war-torn FPS is set in space and you’ll be pleased to know its single-player campaign looks to be shaping up nicely. Don’t take my word for it, though – cast your eyes over six new minutes of gameplay highlights below.

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Activision today announced Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare [official site], the latest in their long-running mega-hit military FPS series, and I am sorely disappointed. Firstly, today is a holiday in the UK, so I’m not even supposed to be here. Secondly, Infinite Warfare is about futurewar with spaceships and everything, not the Escherian nightmare that we were assured it would be. This ‘real’ Infinite Warfare does sound exciting, but I can only assume we were deceived as someone’s idea of a ‘joke’.

Activision also announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, a revamp of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – the game which defined the next nine years of CoD.

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This morning I have been documenting a fruit and vegetable market in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I think I was supposed to be rescuing a president or something but the shiny fruit looked more interesting. I don’t mean that as a sick burn or anything. I just got distracted by some nice fruit.

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Gosh! Is it time for the annual “Activision have confirmed Call of Duty [official site] still exists and is still getting its annual instalment” post already? But it was only just Christmas! Where does the time go?

Anyhoodle: Activision have confirmed Infinity Ward are working on Call of Duty 2016 and it will be released in Q4 (it’s usually during the first half of November if you haven’t been keeping track).

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Fail Forward is series of videos all about the bits of games which don t quite work and why. In this episode, Marsh Davies discusses how Black Ops’ segue into sci-fi marks new mechanical innovation in the military shooter – and suggests how it could go even further.

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I am a very Modern Woman. And by that I mean I have only played Call of Duty [official site] campaigns from Modern Warfare 2 onwards. But this year, instead of picking up Black Ops 3 and despairing over the sheer number of gadgets and grenades I must remember, I went back to the very beginning (a very good place to start). I am working my way through the original Call of Duty.

Well, original-ish, it’s whatever the version of the 2003 game is on Steam right now.

I’m over halfway through the American campaign, having just taken out the German artillery at Br court Manor and couldn’t help remembering how Adam put that level as one of the best the franchise has ever managed:

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I am a very Modern Woman. And by that I mean I have only played Call of Duty [official site] campaigns from Modern Warfare 2 onwards. But this year, instead of picking up Black Ops 3 and despairing over the sheer number of gadgets and grenades I must remember, I went back to the very beginning (a very good place to start). I am working my way through the original Call of Duty.

Well, original-ish, it’s whatever the version of the 2003 game is on Steam right now.

I’m over halfway through the American campaign, having just taken out the German artillery at Br court Manor and couldn’t help remembering how Adam put that level as one of the best the franchise has ever managed:

… [visit site to read more]

Call of Duty: Black Ops III [official site] takes place in a future setting not quite close enough to describe as “near-future”. It’s somewhere in the middle distance, and while the concerns of military and intelligence organisations don’t appear to have changed very much, the cyber-modifications available to soldiers promise to make the battlefield a place of superpowered clashes between robots, humans, and operatives caught somewhere between the two. With an arm full of not-plasmids and a sniper scope at the ready, I plunged into the campaign.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops III [official site] looks just about weird enough to be interesting. Whether it’s Jeff Goldblum’s zombie-splatting magician, the introduction of full-on Chaos powers or the general rocket-powered leap into a robo-soldier sci-fi future, BLOPS the Third does not appear to be constrained by reason. Of course, it may still be restrained by corridors but on the server and modding side we can expect some freedom. Treyarch have announced that modding and map-making will be coming to the game sometime next year.

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