Since the release of Modern Warfare back in 2007, the Call of Duty series has increasingly flirted with futuristic combat—each new iteration has brought us a little closer towards full-blown sci-fi, adding advanced weaponry, introducing jetpacks, and making wall-running a method of traversal through its many war-torn environments.
With Infinite Warfare that skirting flirtation goes out the window completely. This is a game rife with spaceships, warp drives, and laser weapons, which feel more in line with Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica than Call of Duty. Rather than fight through the cities of Earth, Infinite Warfare sends you to the far reaches of the solar system to battle above planets; instead of ultranationalist radicals you fend off a Martian insurgency, hell-bent on taking your home world for its own.
It makes for a far fresher game, at least in single-player. This is a campaign that not so much shrugs but violently shakes off the lacklustre Ghosts moniker—Infinity Ward’s previous entry in the franchise—which many people (myself included) interpreted as a sign that the developer was out of ideas. While it’s clear that its ideas are still relatively thin on the ground, Infinite Warfare is by far the best campaign the series has seen in years. It’s just a shame that its multiplayer, while robust, is substantially lacking where rivals like Battlefield 1 have excelled.
Going it alone
This large shift in focus is the most surprising thing about Infinite Warfare. For years now, multiplayer has always been the main draw in Call of Duty, but here that’s different, with the seven-hour campaign taking centre stage. It’s the writing that really seals the deal; despite its huge leap into the intergalactic future, Infinite Warfare retains a relatable sense of humanity that grounds its hyper-intense action. You might be fighting against mechanised infantry and skating across the frozen surface of Europa, but developer Infinity Ward delivers the most intelligently scripted Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare, one that avoids absurd ideas like Ghosts’ obsession with VR and strips things back. It focuses on a single band of soldiers, the pressures of leadership, and whether the success of a mission is more important than the lives of the men carrying it out.
WASHINGTON—Political experts are hailing Donald Trump’s historic presidential victory early Wednesday as a resounding declaration that the nation is finally ready to cast off the tyrannical yoke of moderate respect for women that has suffocated the citizens of this country for generations. “Under Trump’s presidency, we can now look ahead to a bold new era in America in which we will no longer suffer under a repressive ideology that demands basic decency and relatively equal treatment toward half the nation’s population,” said Harvard political science professor Gregory Nagle, adding that citizens could now live free from the fear that they would never again be lightly chastised for making derogatory comments about a woman’s appearance or implying that women are less capable or intelligent than men. “For far too long, Americans have been at the mercy of an authoritarian belief system that sometimes presses employers to ...
Enlarge / Eric Trump, son of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, looks at wife Lara Yunaska's voting booth. (credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images News)
Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, tweeted out a picture of his own vote and then deleted it, technically a violation of New York state law. Additionally, both Trump men were captured in photos or video violating the principle of ballot secrecy by seemingly checking out their wives’ ballots.
As Ars reported last week, a federal judge in New York rejected plaintiffs’ attempts to halt an existing state and New York City law that bans the practice of a ballot selfie. The judge wrestled with balancing First Amendment free speech rights against the public policy interest in keeping a secret ballot so that voting is not unduly influenced.
“The absence of recent evidence of this kind of voter bribery or intimidation does not mean that the motivation to engage in such conduct no longer exists,” US District Judge P. Kevin Castel wrote. “Rather, it is consistent with the continued effectiveness of the New York statute.”
NASHVILLE, TN—Complaining that there wasn’t even some sort of button to press, disappointed first-time voter Rob Blackman told reporters Tuesday he thought he was going to get to pull a big lever inside the voting booth. “I was sure there’d be a handle I’d have to really yank down on to officially cast my vote, and then there’d be this satisfying mechanical thunk sound,” said Blackman, 19, adding that quietly filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper was a “complete fucking letdown.” “I always thought you’d open up the curtain, see two big levers, and pull down on the one that corresponded to your candidate. But no, there was just a little table in there and that’s it. This is such bullshit.” Blackman went on to say that he wasn’t sure if he’d participate in another election since there really ...
It’s been quite a campaign, hasn’t it? Just think of all that has happened over the past 16 months. I’ve traveled all over the country, spoken to millions of people, and my campaign has gotten the entire nation talking about illegal immigrants, radical Islamic terror, violent crime, and so much more. Obviously, nothing would make me happier than for Americans to go to the polls and choose me as their next president. But regardless of what our nation decides tomorrow, at least I can say that I had fun.
Whether I win or lose, the bottom line is that this whole thing has been a really, really good time for me. Honestly, I enjoyed every minute of it.
If I don’t get to keep challenging the place of women, minorities, the disabled, people of different faiths, and fact-based journalists in our society after tomorrow, then no ...
WASHINGTON—Growing increasingly panicked while struggling with the safety devices, the nation’s still-undecided voters reportedly shouted for help Friday when they couldn’t get their seatbelts off. “Help me—it’s stuck,” said Westerville, OH resident Daniel Roark, who has yet to determine which presidential candidate he will be voting for after a year and a half of campaigning, primaries, conventions, attack ads, and three nationally televised debates, adding that the lap and shoulder restraint “is really, really tight” and “hurts [his] stomach.” “Ow, ow, ow. I can’t get this part out of the other thing. I’m pulling on it a lot, but it’s not working. It’s squishing me.” At press time, 30 percent of the undecided voters had cut off their oxygen supply after inadvertently tangling their seatbelt around their neck.
Very cool yet pretty creepy stuff. This line from the article is particularly hilarious: ""The threat of letting our government have all this data is not significantly different from all the data we're letting Google (as a private company) have," one business owner speaking under anonymity said."
There are few places better positioned to become a "smart city" than Singapore.
That's an easy statement to justify. Singapore is an island city-state just 30 miles across that has been governed by the same party for decades. Putting the implied dem...
The short video features a range of everyday situations that are painfully unsatisfying, such a a drink getting caught in a vending machine, or a piece of toast falling the wrong way down.
Another election day in the US is rapidly approaching (Tuesday, Nov. 8—mark your calendars!). So for no reason in particular, we're resurfacing our close examination of the Dunning-Kruger effect from May 25, 2012.
Remember the 2008 election campaign? The financial markets were going crazy, and banks that were "too big to fail" were bailed out by the government. Smug EU officials proclaimed that all was well within the EU—even while they were bailing out a number of financial institutions. Fast forward to 2012, and the EU is looking at hard times. Greece can't pay its debt. Italy can, but the markets don't trust it to be able to. Spain and Portugal are teetering around like toddlers just waiting for the market to give them one good push. Members of the public are behaving like teenagers, screaming "F**k you," while flipping the bird. The markets are reacting like drunk parents, and the resulting bruises are going to take a while to heal.
The James Webb Space Telescope, in construction for the past 20 years, is set to launch in 2018, more powerful than Hubble and capable of repairs without human intervention. What do you think?
ATKINSON, NH—Warning supporters that the troubling practice could affect the outcome of the election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed strong concern Friday that members of urban communities were voting more than zero times, sources reported. “I’ve heard stories that some of these people in the inner cities are trying to steal the election by casting over zero ballots—we can’t let this happen, folks,” said Trump, who claimed that hundreds of urban voting precincts across the country often have turnout numbers that are far higher than zero percent of eligible voters. “Very trustworthy sources have told me that in many of these urban neighborhoods, people are voting in excess of zero times by mailing in a ballot under their own name or even just by walking right up to a polling place and voting without a problem—and the poll workers there will just go along ...
Butt Sniffin Pugs, a fun simulator featuring cute pugs exploring New Yorkie City (get it?), rescuing citizens in danger and sniffing food and butts, has conquered crowdfunding pledgers' hearts. It has successfully reached its goal on Kickstarter, and...
CLEVELAND—Having watched in horror as their team crumbled after a 3-1 World Series lead, members of the Cleveland Indians expressed concern Thursday that the organization has been cursed for building their franchise on an incredibly old Native American stereotype. “Everyone always warned us that we shouldn’t build a team on this archaic American Indian caricature, but we didn’t listen,” said Indians part-owner Paul Dolan, adding that using the centuries-old stereotype as the foundation for the franchise’s identity clearly provoked the wrath of some ancient evil, which has caused the team to suffer decades of pain and hardship ever since. “All this bad luck can’t just be a coincidence—if only we’d fully comprehended the consequences of trying to make money off this cheap stereotype. We should move away from this awful Native American misappropriation and never look back.” At press time, Dolan was shrieking ...
"The views were vast and incredible. It was pretty amazing to look over the side into crevasses that are hundreds of feet deep."
—Michelle Sullivan, Facebook
Enlarge / From A to Z, as it were. This was fun. I liked making this. (credit: 20th Century Fox)
Here at Ars, we're always making lists (just like Liam Neeson). Lists of science fiction movies are a common item for discussion on the Ars staff Slack channel—particularly short lists of the best science fiction movies ever made. But "best" is an impossible word to quantify in any broadly applicable way—one person's "best ever" might be another person's worst, especially in a genre of movies as rich and varied as science fiction.
While the Ars staff has some bitter disagreements on which movies are better than others, it's undeniable that some science fiction movies are mandatory viewing for the modern geek. To that end, rather than try to pull together another tired "top ten sci-fi movies" listicle, we've instead polled the Ars staff to try to come up with a definitive "science fiction bucket list"—that is, a list of sci-fi movies that you should absolutely see at least once before you die. They aren't necessarily the "best" movies by any specific set of criteria, but every film on this list is outstanding in some particular way. Some were groundbreaking in their stories or subject matter, some were controversial, and some contained a character or plot twist that went on to become an archetype, referenced in and reused by countless other films. Some films on the list, like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, are pure cinematic poetry; others, like Pacific Rim, are pure popcorn fun. And, as a bonus, we even included a bonus list of a few absolutely terrible stinkers at the very bottom.
Strap in, dear reader, and pick through the Ars Technica sci-fi bucket list. Each staffer contributed a movie or two to the list, so we've captured a pretty broad range of must-see films. We're sure many folks are going to disagree over our choices—this is the Internet, after all, and arguments on the Internet about science fiction have been going on since the 1970s!—so you're welcome to tell us all of the movies we should have included but didn't down in the comments.
The article pulls a plethora of charts and stats to suggest young people are moving away from grocery spending and toward snacking and eating out. It also, however, notes that the shift is not entirely attributed to millennial habits.
While laying out “how winning is done,” Rocky Balboa shrewdly noted that “the world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.” A new study suggests that point is dead on.
Basketball players that were grimly reminded of their own inevitable demise before playing took more shots and scored more points in a study published in an upcoming issue of Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. The researchers behind the experiments hypothesize that the pep-talk tactic fits with the established “terror management theory,” which proposes that humans are motivated to seek self-esteem, meaning, and symbolic immortality—in this case becoming a famous athlete—in order to manage their fear of death.
"We've known from many studies that reminders of death arouse a need for terror management and therefore increase self-esteem striving though performance on relatively simple laboratory tasks,” Jeff Greenberg, a study co-author and psychologist at the University of Arizona, said in a news release. “However, these experiments are the first to show that activating this motivation can influence performance on complex, real-world behaviors.”
THE HEAVENS—Following a 8-7 victory over the Cleveland Indians that clinched the team’s first World Series title since 1908, sources confirmed Wednesday that millions of intoxicated Chicago Cubs fans are currently rioting across Heaven.
Moments after watching the game’s final out from above Earth, massive throngs of intoxicated Cubs fans—most of whom went their entire lives without ever seeing the team win a World Series—poured out all over the eternal city, where they reportedly continued drinking heavily as they cheered, hugged strangers, and loudly played golden harps in celebration of their long-awaited championship.
“Let’s go, Cubbies!” screamed Susan Leitch, who died of cardiac arrest in 1997 at the age of 70, before joining hundreds of fellow deceased Chicago fans as they repeatedly sang the chorus of “Go Cubs, Go!” “World Series champs! Finally!”
“Woo!” continued Leitch as she drunkenly stumbled over her feet and ...
The streets of Microsoft's campus are lined with tall fir trees. A drive through lush, green urban woods reveals dozens of nondescript buildings. Minibuses shuttle employees across the company's 500-acre headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Inside Bu...
Inverted City Beneath Clouds 
There are few places better positioned to become a "smart city" than Singapore.
That's an easy statement to justify. Singapore is an island city-state just 30 miles across that has been governed by the same party for decades. Putting the implied dem...
Butt Sniffin Pugs, a fun simulator featuring cute pugs exploring New Yorkie City (get it?), rescuing citizens in danger and sniffing food and butts, has conquered crowdfunding pledgers' hearts. It has successfully reached its goal on Kickstarter, and...
The streets of Microsoft's campus are lined with tall fir trees. A drive through lush, green urban woods reveals dozens of nondescript buildings. Minibuses shuttle employees across the company's 500-acre headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Inside Bu...