Activision is back with another installment in the biggest game franchise in history, Call of Duty, this time with the remake of Modern Warfare 3 that pits everyone’s favorite black ops team, Taskforce 141 against the infamous Vladimir Makarov. I had some gripes in my review of the Modern Warfare 2 reboot, especially about how the levels were laid out. Did things improve? Meh, kind of? Maybe? Let’s talk about it.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has good graphics, sound, and voice acting. The controls are the same as they have always been, so returning COD vets like me will have no issue picking up the sticks. Overall when it comes to the game’s story, players familiar with the originals will be both surprised and not when it comes to the main story. There has been some improvement when it comes to the levels, in MW2 I felt there was no freedom to play as it was pretty scripted and linear, this time the levels felt more like the OG games where you can run around and have a little more FPS fun. The issue this time is the nagging of characters telling you to hurry up and complete objectives every few seconds.
Unfortunately, the blessing and curse of this franchise reared its ugly head once again… Multiplayer. Call of Duty once again sacrificed quality campaign content to appeal to multiplayer gamers. The campaign has mechanics that can be seen in multiplayer modes, which I find stupid honestly as it feels like the game is going, “This is in multiplayer too! Go check it out!”
If you’re thinking I’m being a bit hard on the multiplayer stuff, hear me out. Activision was awesome enough to send me the Vault edition of the game loaded with an AC-130’s cargo hold of content…multiplayer content. It took days, yes days, for me to install this game because of all that extra crap, it ate up so much bandwidth. Thankfully, I got help from Activision (Thanks Christian, you deserve a raise!) and was given instructions on how to download just the campaign without all the multiplayer stuff, and I was able to install the game quickly.
This leads to my next point as I felt the game’s campaign ended abruptly, clearly hinting there’s going to be an MW4, so now go play eight million hours worth of multiplayer, which from store reviews I’ve seen is a whole issue of its own as the new cross-platform matchmaking is upsetting a lot of players.
I know I’m screaming into the void here, but Activision really needs to start making Call of Duty multiplayer its own thing separately from single-player. Have one team focusing on content for a solo campaign game with massive levels and hours of storyline, and have another team focus on making a standalone multiplayer game. Will this ever happen… probably not but at least I’m putting that out there.
Overall, when it comes to the main story of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, it’s OK and a bit fun but there’s nothing to bring you back to play again once you finish it, for the price you’re paying for that, I think you should wait for this game to go on sale (which may take a few years) so that way you won’t feel cheated. On my scale of 1-10 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a 6.
