Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review

Well, it’s that time of the year again and another Call of Duty game is upon us. No matter what your opinion is on the series, no one can deny the impact it is having on the gaming world. It’s all but guaranteed that every year whatever the Call of Duty game is will be the top selling game of the year. Activision has also been on a roll the past several years with each new game outselling the previous years edition. So how does Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stack up?

Activion has set up the Call of Duty franchise to have yearly releases that are alternately put out by 2 different studios. The benefit of this is that it would seem like the studio would get about 2 years to work on each game. A couple years ago massive problems arose at Infinity Ward, the makers of Modern Warfare 2. Without rehashing all the nitty gritty, West and Zampella, the leaders of Infinity Ward, ended up leaving/fired. About half of Infinity Ward followed them out. There is now massive legal action between everyone with West and Zampella claiming substantial unpaid royalties for Modern Warfare 2 and Activision making claims of insubnordination and some other random stuff. Anyways, it seems like a lot of the talent at Infinity Ward ended up at West and Zampella’s new studio Respawn. So Activision brings in Sledgehammer games in to help the remaining Infinity Ward staff make Modern Warfare 3.

So as usual I started things out by running through the single player campaign. The decision was made to have this game be a continuation of Modern Warfare 2. This was a terrible decision. Games that are very plot and story heavy are able to span multiple games because that’s what people pay attention to. I honestly did not remember much of what happened in Modern Warfare 2 and I felt a little bit lost at the beginning. The benefits for doing this were twofold. The first major benefit was that a massive plot has already been largely fleshed out and it is much easier for the developer to simply continue on. The other major benefit is that since the game starts in the middle of a massive war, it is able to start out fast with a bang.

The story arc in Modern Warfare 3 is just plain poor. You don’t really get any type of attachments to any characters because there isn’t really any character development. The campaign seems like a perfect example of the developer coming up with a list of cool levels and then just trying to throw some random plot to connect everything. ‘Let’s do something in Paris.’ Check. ‘Berlin?’ Check. ‘Hey shouldn’t we have the obligitory 3rd world Aftrica levels?’ Yep. ‘And what about the obligatory Siberia missions?’ Check. The fact that levels had no real importance was proven by the fact that many levels accomplished absolutely nothing. You get through the level and move on without having anything accomplished.

One thing that was very annoying was pretty much everything that happened in between levels. All of the super cheap looking animated graphics with someone narrarating what’s happening were just terrible. The looked like they were pulled straight from a Saturday morning cartoon – the type that airs at 6am. It just further magnified the idea that there really wasn’t anything connecting the levels and so they needed just random crap to try and bridge the gaps.

The levels themselves aren’t actually all bad. The game is designed to be constant action excitement. There are some pretty cool parts like the fight on the plane while in freefall. However, overall the levels just got tiring. The maps are all extremely linear and look that way too. Games really have gotten to the point now where even if a map is highly linear, it should be designed to not look so. Modern Warfare 3 is like running through a tunnel while almost constantly mowing down hordes of brainless enemies.

The graphical quality and overall visual appeal are definitely lacking. We’ve all heard the jokes about the developers just using the copy and paste button, but this game just felt like it had gone downhill. I can’t imagine that it would actually look worse and the more likely reason is probably that everything else has just gotten better looking the past couple years while this has stagnated.

Multiplayer and the other modes are a bit better than the single player campaign. The biggest advantage is that the game actually supports split-screen on the various modes. Traditional multiplayer is just that . . . traditional. There is zero deviation from the previous formulas which they’ve made a ton of money from. You can see how Activision will be pumping out endless DLC map packs. It’s just that the formula just seems to be getting stale. It feels exactly like previous Call of Duty games. It seems like if you’re going to leave the formula the same, then other improvements should be made such as with graphical quality. The survival mode is fun and all but it is a straight rip from how things work in Halo on firefight mode. I honestly miss killing the zombies from Black Ops.

You always get an akward feeling when something you affiliate yourself with is terrible. While not exactly terrible, Modern Warfare 3 is definitely not a great game. The fact that it will be the highest earning game of the year is sad. For some reason there are enough gamers out there who will continue to gobble up trash just because of the name associated with it.

I’m not sure exactly where all the blame should rest but Modern Warfare 3 is lackluster at best. At this point I think people need to start seriously asking about when will Activision decide to actually make substantial improvements in the game?

If you need a military fps to play online with your friends you might as well pick up Modern Warfare 3. If you’re looking for anything else, you’d probably be better passing.

Gameplay: 7

Not original but still fun and different game modes keep you entertained.

Story: 5

Pretty bad. Not many redeming qualities.

Graphics: 2

Outdated. Poor animations. Highly linear game.

Audio: 3

Nothing groundbreaking but adequate.

overall: 57

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Review

22 December 2011

Developer: Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games

Publisher: Activision

Release: November 8, 2011