Review - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Review – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Pros: Fantastic Graphics, Excellent multiplayer, polished gameplay.

Cons: Nothing new innovations from the last two Modern Warfare titles. The quest for an epic conclusion to the saga goes over the top and campy.

Final Judgement: Heavily slanted towards multiplayer, a must for online shooter players.

 

www.callofduty.com/mw3

Available for PC, PS3, Xbox, Wii

Oh Boy…

Where do I begin? Let me start by saying that I’m not a real fan of Military shooter sims, specifically the ones in the Battlefield and Call of Duty vein.  Although I enjoy the relentless explosions and noise, the developers invariably rely on you playing the multiplayer aspects in order to flesh out your gaming experience. They’re like a full course meal. They give you a single player campaign appetizer to get your mouth watering, hoping that you’ll then fill up to bursting on capture the flag and king of the hill and death match. As a result, the single player campaigns are, as a wise man once said: Nasty, brutish and short. Now I play video games to escape from people.  A game which requires me to play with others in order to gain the full gaming experience is not my cup of tea.  This is not to say that I have never thoroughly enjoyed multiplayer games, but those are always under the right circumstances with the right people. Getting repeatedly shot in the face by a pimple faced, overweight, basement dwelling, mouth breather half a world away while he decries the sexual promiscuity of my mother and his extra marital relations with her is not my idea of a good time. I simply don’t have the patience to sit there and get as they say “pwned” for days on end while I build the rudimentary skills to not be called “noob”.  Now I don’t necessarily dislike Battlefield and Call of Duty, I just don’t want to pay full retail price for a game that I’m only buying for twenty to thirty percent of the game that makes up the single player experience. That being said, I went out and bought Modern Warfare 3 at full retail price because I’m committed to you dear reader and to bringing you timely and insightful rants about video games.

Because I’m cool like that.

Let me start by saying, I am all for fantastical tales of adventure, magic and danger. I`ll suspend my disbelief to the point where I`ll allow you to say that Yanni is fucking metal provided you give me a framework to deal with. That being said, Modern Warfare 3`s plot is like a bad Nicholas Cage movie. It’s like Infinityward`s writers gave up on trying to come up with a plausible story for a world war, broke out the jack daniels and started throwing plot hooks at the wall to see what would stick.

Actual photo from theLead Writer's Office

As you may or may not recall, in the previous game, Russia invaded The Eastern Seaboard of the United States after the villain, Vladimir Makarov, engineered a slaughter at a Russian Airport in which an undercover CIA agent took part and then was killed at and left at the scene to implicate the United States.

You know, I'm for the most part against censorship in games, but even I thought this level was a bit much.

Well, in Modern Warfare 3, the first part of the game focuses on the US Army repelling the Russian invasion of New York. After you succeed in halting their advance and forcing them to retreat from America`s shores. The game switches to the Russian President on his private jet with his daughter flying to meet the US President for peace negotiations… Peace negotiations. Hang on a second, didn`t he just declare war on the USA because of the actions of one, possibly rouge agent? Now, Modern Warfare didn’t mention any elections or regime change in Russia, So this is the same guy that just declared war literally days before, and now he’s all “We must make NATO our friend, so that we may have peace.” I don’t know how receptive the USA or NATO are going to be to that olive branch considering I saw a lot of dead civilians in Manhattan.

It will be like 9/11 times 2356!

But before he can get to the peace talks he’s kidnapped by Makarov.

Russia’s response to this is then to invade Europe. All of it, at the same time, in one day and no one saw them coming. Didn’t anyone notice the legions of soldiers and companies of tanks parked at their city limits grunting and gunning their engines? This is where I really call bullshit. How does Russia have so many resources that it can attack America and then invade all of Europe the next day? How did they manage to attack London, Paris, Prague, Berlin and others at the same time? Like shouldn’t it take them at least a few days to get across the continent?

It seems like every movie and game lately in France features the Eiffel Tower getting all fucked up.

The only concession to the story line I can make is the way in which Russia kicked off operation “invade everywhere right the hell now”. They start their master plan by detonating trucks full of chemical weapons in all of the major cities of Europe, terrorist style.  I’ll give them this one because this was an actual Russian plan during the cold war that was to be implemented by the Vympel unit of the cold war Spetsnaz (Russian Special Forces). You see the Vympel were created by the KGB for deep penetration, espionage and covert action. Operatives spoke foreign languages and were intended to act in countries, deep behind enemy lines. They were also trained in special and improvised explosives and used terrorist style attacks as part of their operations. So I suppose a bunch of Special Forces guys detonating chemical weapons in city centers is crazy but plausible.

Anyway, the story goes on and the war escalates.  Just when humanity seems doomed the Special Forces Task force, that you play, determines the location where Makarov is holding the Russian president.  You then engage in a climactic battle underground in a diamond mine. The prez is rescued at the expense of most of the US Special Forces… And then World War 3 abruptly ends. All is forgiven, the invasion of North America, the unprovoked attack on Europe and the use of Chemical Weapons on non-combatant civilians. You think that would all make for a fairly awkward first round of peace talks, but no it’s all Vodka under the bridge and the world goes back to normal. It’s a bit too perfect of a wrap up I was half expecting one of the main characters waking up and realizing it was all a dream. I really don’t know what happened to the writing in this game, the first story was great, the seconds was a bit more fantastical and James Bond-ish but still very good, this… this was just out of hand, I was half expecting Russia to invade the internet so that they could destroy the moon or some shit.

They're getting to it... its on their list.

Any who, let’s talk a bit about gameplay. Now let me see if I can properly crystalize the experience of playing the game for you in a written format; it goes a little something like this:

AHH! SHITS ON FIRE! AHH! SOME DUDES ARE SHOOTING AT YOU! AHH! THAT BUILDING JUST EXPLODED! AHH! LOOK OUT GRENADE! AHH-aww you died, here’s a quote about war. Its ok though because you re-spawned so look out because- SHITS ON FIRE!…

The above is literally how the entire single player campaign plays out. Is it exciting? Definitely.  Repetitive?  Yeah, a little bit. Almost every mission follows the exact same formula:

·         Your character enters the battlefield and things go sideways fairly quick. 

·        Just as things start to go your way your character gets hit by an explosion or other catastrophe and is knocked senseless.  You are then rescued by a squad mate, allowing you to pick up a gun and finish the battle all Rambo style.

The above would be great if it wasn’t the norm. Modern Warfare 1 and 2 both used this formula, however it was used sparingly, which made it exciting when it happened. It made the battle feel that much more pitched and reminded me of some of the great war movies like Blackhawk Down and We were Soldiers.  However, when it happens in every mission like it does in MW3, the formula loses its effect and becomes more of a sign post for how far through the battle you are.

"Get up! Big finale time!"



There really is nothing new or revolutionary about Modern Warfare 3’s gameplay elements.  You still switch between different characters and some missions break away from the action to allow you to command Predator Drones, Gun Ships or air strikes. Which is still fun but MW3 has lost some of the novelty and wow factor that the original AC-130 mission had back in Modern Warfare 1. I`m sure Infinityward would argue that they`re just giving people more of what they like and I would tend to agree. I still enjoyed raining down fire and brimstone on my hapless foes from a gunship, however it would be nice to see them pull out an event or mission that we hadn`t experienced at least three or four times prior.

Repetition aside any veteran of the Modern Warfare Series can tell you that one of the games signatures are the details. The graphics are incredible, the visuals, the environmental effects and the character models are all top notch. As well, Infinityward takes pride in putting out a technically accurate package; they’re like the Gran Turismo of Military shooters. All of the firearms and equipment that you can pick up and use in the game exist in the real world more or less exactly as they are depicted in the video game world.

Credit where credit is due, this game looks awesome.



The game’s AI Is also very polished. Your foes use cover techniques effectively and will attempt to flank you or flush you out with grenades if they notice you camping behind cover for too long. The enemy also has some unique behaviors that add flare to the combat. They’ll react to injury and battle damage, limping or laying on the ground and firing at you with a pistol while crawling to cover. They’ll also pick up specialty weapons that their fallen comrades drop which can make a threat that you thought was neutralized reappear rather suddenly and pick you off when you turn your attention elsewhere.

So overall the game play is great.  You`ll enjoy the battles, the graphics, the vehicle sections and the authenticity of the gear you use. You will not however, experience anything new or see anything that you haven`t seen at least a couple of times before in the previous modern warfare games

Although I haven’t played the multiplayer aspect of the game, several of my associates have and they all swear by it stating that it’s the best multiplayer experience going at the moment. As for the single player campaign, it’s pretty, it’s exciting, it’s fun, but the plot is a bit on the crazy side. Shut your brain off, don’t think too hard about it and you’ll have a good time. Do I recommend Modern Warfare 3? For the online gamers, you already have it by this point I’m sure and don’t need my opinion. For the casual or single players, think of it like a campy summer action flick. You aren’t there for the story, you’re there for the explosions and action. Modern Warfare has both in spades.