MW III Campaign is secretly amazing!

[QUAKETALLICA]

The story is possibly better than the original MW3. This is a reboot of course, so it does have the advantage of reusing ideas first thought up in the original MW trilogy, but so did the first MW3. That game was also very similar to its predecessor. The chemical attacks in 2011's MW3 was a cheap attempt at recapturing the shock value of the MW2 "No Russian" mission that fell flat, and even the original No Russian mission was always problematic to begin with, having one of the "good guys" (undercover CIA operative) take part in the massacre.

This time, the writing is much, much better, relating events of MW 2019 to a new missile launch (a la CoD 4's finale) of chemical weapons (like MW3) in order to start international war (like MW2). The terrorist attack on the plane is also much more impactful in its delivery, and done in a logical manner to pin the attacks on Farah's people.

Is it perfect? No. The opening sequence gives Makarov painfully bad supervillain cliches, and Farah's friend is barely introduced before immediately disappearing, but once the main plot gets going, I found it rather exciting and genuinely getting into it.

Of course, the story plays second fiddle to what really matters, which is the core gameplay.

The gameplay of these new "open combat missions" is some of the best stuff Call of Duty has made in a campaign...like ever!

After nearly 20 years of predictable, samey missions with heavily linear, corridor shooter segments where you pop out of cover to fight wave after wave, then move forward and repeat, etc. while the on-rails movie plays---here for once we actually have a real singleplayer component.

It's very similar to another now kinda forgotten game I loved: Medal of Honor Airborne.

The best way I can describe it, if you've never played that one, is it's kind of like if Battlefield was a singleplayer game. You're air-dropped into a massive (but not too massive) map with lots of buildings, cover, etc. and given some objectives. The maps are very well designed. It's entirely non-linear how you actually accomplish these objectives.

Along the way, the map is scattered with all sorts of items: different weapons, grenades, explosives, ammo refill, armor, keycards--yes you actually have armor and keycards in a modern first person shooter, as though this were Doom or Quake!-- killstreaks (e.g. SAM turrets, UAV, explosive rounds, etc.) There's even a sort of zip-line like "ascender" tool you can find which lets you quickly ascend buildings by going up and down ropes at specific points. You can use these in conjunction with your infinite supply of parachutes to quickly zip around the map, though at the risk that you're more easily spotted and shot at by enemies. There's even vehicles scattered around the map, from random cars to ATV's, to even more armored trucks with mounted turrets.

When the level starts, you want to play it stealthily for as long as you can, relying on combat knives, throwing knives, and suppressed weapons. Once you inevitably get spotted or are forced to go loud, the game switches to an action phase, and it's a balancing act between getting kills vs. staying alive. You only get saves once you beat an objective.

Achieving objectives results in the enemy forces calling in more challenging reinforcements, air support, and searching the map more aggressively for you. You can either fight till you eliminate the wave, or go into hiding long enough for the enemy threat level to return to a more neutral state--kind of like in GTA or Assassin's Creed.

If you die, you still keep all the items and weapons you've found on the map, so you don't have to re-obtain them. You even get to customize your loadout between all the previously found items before respawning, reminding me of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

All in all, this leads to the same kind of hectic, unique moment-to-moment experiences that hitherto have been considered "only in Battlefield" moments. Some missions feel like 90s shooters, having you hunt for keycards on officers in order to open locked doors; others feel like more developed versions of Far Cry outposts.

And if that wasn't enough to sell you, here's the cherry on top: it even has secrets! Yes, like the classic era of shooters! The game does not tell you about this either. I just happened to be on top of a guard post, and looked down through a broken grate. There was a room beneath me with some items and a red barrel. So I shot the red barrel through the broken grate, realizing it must unlock a previously locked door somewhere beneath me. So I went down there, and sure enough, that's what it was, and I found a CHAINGUN inside, like in Doom! (or the Juggernauts in Modern Warfare 2).

The a.i. in this mode are decent. While not especially bright, their inherent stupidity makes them not too annoying to fight against, at least on lower difficulties. Playing on Veteran I do not recommend, as the a.i. is just bulls**t and you lose health so instantly that armor is near-worthless. But Hardened offers a perfect difficulty setting.

Finally we get a Call of Duty game that offers my wildest dreams, more than I even could have imagined was possible! A huge, non-linear map that uses all the various tools and killstreaks of CoD from over the years, to complete objectives by either stealth or action, leading to Far Cry and Battlefield-like moments, and with armor and secret areas like it's a 90s FPS. You can even parachute into anywhere on the map, like Medal of Honor: Airborne.

Sounds like pretty much the perfect FPS campaign to me.

I haven't seen the critics get a game so wrong since the excellent Wolfenstein: Young Blood got bizarrely hated on.