Modern Warfare 3 – Review
Enjoy global conflict in the comfort of your own home!
Yes indeed, it’s that time of year again when every topic you hear school children (or, more accurately, school boys) talking about at the bus stop revolves around the latest Call of Duty title.
Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have teamed up, after some high-profile staffing issues which even the aforementioned school children are aware of, and brought us the concluding part of the Modern Warfare series.
Unlike Treyarch’s Call of Duty games whose storylines were self-contained explorations of 20th century conflicts and historical events, Infinity Ward have set up an ongoing entirely fictional saga of covert operations, arms dealers, crooked generals, and fundamentalism. And, while the plot is convoluted and overblown enough to be labelled preposterous, the sheer scale of spectacle throughout the series has overshadowed most of its narrative shortcomings.
Modern Warfare 3 picks up where its predecessor left us with a cliff-hanger.
The Russian ultranationalist Makarov is still at large and his goal to bring destruction to the Western powers is all but assured. The East Coast of the U.S.A. is under occupation by Russian forces. Europe is poised on the verge of panic between the two warring superpowers. For Captains Price and MacTavish, the only surviving soldiers from General Shepherd’s disavowed Task Force 141, the hunt for Makarov is on.
For years now gamers have come to expect nothing but the best in first-person shooters from Infinity Ward and we’re happy to say that, from the moment you load that first clip in your M4A1 assault rifle, you will know they’ve hit the mark once again.
Modern Warfare 3 contains every ounce of responsiveness that was present in its forebears. The control scheme is, if anything, much tighter and more intuitive as the situation dictates, with a fluidity of transition that most developers just can’t quite match. Switching from your perspective as a soldier on the ground to a gunner aboard an AC-130 Spectre, or deploying an assault drone to mow down an enemy defensive perimeter, is as seamless an experience as you could ever hope to ask for.
With every mission the game wants you to enjoy a new location. Your journey through the perspectives of not just one but several military personnel is at once a mechanic which keeps the gameplay fresh and a great method of storytelling.
Watch the elite U.S. Delta Force take on the Russian Navy against the backdrop of a crippled New York, then zip across the world to Africa where a squad of mismatched veterans are after a corrupt warlord, then zip back again to Germany and attempt to help their special forces push back the Russian occupiers. It’s riveting stuff and gives the overall sense of watching an action movie with an unlimited budget, where entire buildings could be blown to pieces or collapse at any second.
The gameplay tilts between all-out fire fights, vehicle sections, and covert action, so there’s rarely a length of time when players will be doing exactly the same thing.
There’s an argument that the campaigns throughout the Call of Duty franchise have done a little too much ‘hand-holding’. You’re certainly assisted by your A.I. friends when it comes to things like vehicles and they will prompt you to press X to do this, that, or the other, but the chances are you’ll be so absorbed that you won’t care. Yes, it’s hand-holding without question, but why should we complain when the game does it this well?
For all its splendour and self-satisfaction, however, there are points at which the storytelling aspects will get on your nerves.
Let’s see if there’s a way we can explain without spoiling anything…
Remember the “No Russian” mission in MW2, that massacre scene at Zakhaev International Airport? Well, MW3 has its own little moment when the gamer is supposed to feel uncomfortable or emotionally involved, and the scene in question is played out from the perspective of an American tourist filming their family. Suffice to say, the developers’ ploy to top their previous work falls over and kisses the concrete with its teeth.
The campaign won’t take long to complete on a normal difficulty setting, maybe a few hours at most.
What’s going to absorb a lot of gamers’ lives for the next few months is the competitive multiplayer. Built across no less than sixteen on-disc maps, MW3 offers up the kind of fast-paced gun-on-gun gameplay that Call of Duty fans complained was missing from MW2 and Black Ops in favour of overpowered kill streak rewards. The results are a refined spawn system, flatter landscapes, and a perk list which isn’t too exotic.
You have a veritable armoury of firearms with which to equip yourself and each gun can now be ‘levelled-up’ the more you use it, unlocking attachments and weapon-specific perks to utilise in your battle for supremacy.
Infinity Ward have helpfully included a friendlier rewards earning system and renamed kill streaks as ‘point streaks’. The bare essentials of this layout mean that, while you’re charging around the battlefield laying waste to all who dare to cross your path, you have the option to choose how you earn your point streak rewards and what kind of rewards they are.
For the moment it seems like the perfect setup, but we must bear in mind the opinion polls have a tendency to shift when it comes to how good a Call of Duty game is after a few months post-release.
What we can state with absolute certainty is that the cooperative multiplayer modes on MW3 have taken a big step forwards from the ‘Spec Ops’ mode that was in MW2, though perhaps it wasn’t as big a step as it should have been.
You still have missions that can be completed with one or two players, but nothing which caters for more than that. This comes across as being a little half-hearted and you get the sense that Infinity Ward spent far more time sculpting their ‘perfect’ competitive experience. Still, the range of challenges on offer stands comfortably by themselves as the ultimate test of human brain versus A.I. and anyone who can grab every star in Spec Ops deserves the achievements, their choice of trophy, and free coffee for a month.
Survival Mode is the new kid on the block and it’s a strictly one- or two-player affair.
Unlike the supernatural / sci-fi twist Treyarch made of the franchise with their ‘Nazi Zombies’ in CoD: World at War and continued in Black Ops, the Modern Warfare approach likes to make things as upfront as possible. Waves of enemies will appear on the map and your job is to get rid of them using a combination of weapons you can either purchase or pick up.
The complexity comes into it with a levelling system which is entirely separate from that of the competitive multiplayer. When you first enter survival mode you have nothing to hand except the equipment you can salvage from dead enemies and some explosive munitions (ammo for which can be obtained from points around the map). Gain some experience and you unlock more gear, more weapons, more air support, more tools with which you can surmount the odds which only get tougher as the waves go on.
However you cut it, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have built a hell of a lot of content for MW3 and, despite the campaign being a little too short, the other modes make up for it.
At the time of writing, the Call of Duty Elite network was not functioning correctly. When it is corrected by the developers, we’ll have more news to release about how well it works in tandem with the rest of the game.
Visually you will have all the colours of the dirt spectrum squeezed into your eye sockets with explosive set pieces, toppling skyscrapers, gunships spinning out of control, and aerial views from support drones and attack craft. It’s gritty muck, but it’s the kind of gritty muck that’s presented with relish and verve, and pretty soon you’ll be eager to shed your dignity and roll around in it with all the other naughty children because it’s just so damned fun.
When you’re not living the life of an action movie hero in the campaign or multiplayer modes, you’ll be sneaking around fortified castles and picturesque European towns in the dead of night, collaborating with saboteurs and resistance fighters alike.
Modern Warfare 3 does not suffer from a lack of atmosphere, although the music is the same generic military-themed rubbish you’ll have heard a thousand times before.
Something you may very well miss from Black Ops is the well-organised player stats and emblem customisation, which were a lot of fun to peruse while you waited for a game to start. They gave you an idea of what players you were up against or playing with, and it’s a pity they won’t make a return for this game just because it happens to have been built by a different developer.
Still, MW3 makes a convincing argument for why Call of Duty is still so popular among gamers. If you’re an FPS fan and you like a bit of fun, don’t take things too seriously, and don’t mind pissing off your spouse or girlfriend, there’s no reason not to be part of this almost literal global conflict.
Pick your choice of weapon. We’ll see each other soon…
Successes:
- Fast, fluid, and crisp realisation.
- Never a dull moment.
- Multiplayer is immensely fun.
- Emphasis on gunplay is refreshing.
- Survival mode.
Failures:
- Call of Duty Elite not quite functional yet.
- Where have all the player stats gone?
- Multiplayer maps aren’t as memorable.
- Campaign is too short.
- No more than two players in Special Ops.
Score: 9/10
Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich
I am a genuine gamer, a ‘Silver Surfer’ actually, but since paying out good money in good faith for MW3 and then finding out that it will not load, all I get is the following error message ” Game Unavailable. try again later “, I am not going to buy any more games from this company, because as far as I can see, the sell the product and then it is useless because one cannot play it, or load it for that matter. Another Rip Off!