Modern Warfare 3 Review

Intro

Wow. Even by my abysmally low expectations for a Call of Duty title, Modern Warfare 3 still manages to disappoint. There is nothing new about this entry that hasn't already been done in the previous two. The only thing going for MW3 is that it does a good job in the story mode of resolving the plot in a satisfying manner. Even then, almost all the campaign levels, save the last 4 or 5 missions in the final act of the movie, are recycled ideas from a very similar parallel in one of the first two Modern Warfares.

Campaign

Just as an example, in MW2 you fight through the guerilla forces in the favela in South America. In MW3 you fight through similar looking huts against local militia only this time it's in Africa. MW1 has a mission where you try to snipe the main villain, MW3 has a mission where you try to snipe the main villain. MW2 has a shocking twist about one of the main characters; MW3 does that. In all three games you have friendly characters you like and care about die somewhere near the end to stir up emotions. MW2 has you storming the remains of the Russian Gulag; MW3 has a similar mission inside an English castle. MW2 has famous historical landmarks destroyed; ditto for MW3. MW1 has you as gunner of an AC-130; ditto for MW3. MW2 has the chase sequence on a raft; MW3 does that too. One of the coolest moments in MW3 is practically identical to the post-credits bonus level in MW1. What I'm trying to say is this: If you've played either previous Modern Warfare or really any Call of Duty game period, you've already played this game. It hasn't any new, original ideas to play through. But at least it does a good job with the story. It's so gripping that once I started the campaign, I could not put it down until the end, which was about 7-8 hours on Veteran difficulty.

Gameplay

Of course, the gameplay itself is literally untouched since Modern Warfare 1. The same heavily-restricted, completely linear levels that punish any user choice. The same brainless a.i. which follow robotic pathings to their doom (no matter how many others died right in front of them), and stand out in the open happy to eat your bullets. The same bullsh*t on higher difficulties with enemies shooting you from a million miles away with perfect accuracy and instant reflexes with a machine gun, before you can waste 'em with a sniper rifle, even though there are friendly a.i. right next to them. Same vehicle segments which are downright near impossible on Veteran. Good god, these are problems that have been there back since Infinity Ward devs were still working at 2015 on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault! This is the THIRD Modern Warfare title, and the FIFTH Call of Duty since CoD 4, yet still not a modicum of improvement though much is clearly needed? You'd think, in the words of that random Stormtrooper from Star Wars Battlefront II, "Blowing stuff up never gets old," but honestly, in MW3, shooting everything on screen while everything on screen is shooting at you for 8 straight hours DOES get tiresome, especially when it's no different from what you already did in MW2 and MW1.

What about once you beat the campaign?

Well there's Spec Ops, like last time in MW2, which is effectively just replaying the campaign levels, usually from back to front with some side objectives. You've already seen these levels in the main game, and the core combat and weapons are of course the same tired combat you've done to death.

This time there's also an endless wave mode in Spec Ops, basically the equivalent of Treyarch's Zombies side mode. Another recycled idea it stole from a previous entry.

Okay, well what about the multiplayer, I mean, that's the main "game" aspect most people care for, right?

I think you've noticed a common theme by now. IT'S THE SAME F**KING THING as the last game. As it is, Modern Warfare 2 did nothing to fix the glaring issues with Modern Warfare 1's broken online multiplayer, i.e. no spawn protection and terrible spawns, low time to kill, random lag, constant unfair deaths, assault rifles and LMGs dominating everything, etc. It really just expanded on it with customizable killstreak rewards that were ridiculously over the top. Modern Warfare 3 does EVEN LESS for the series' now static formula. Essentially, the multiplayer in MW3 is identical to MW2, but with minute tweaks that the developers thought would improve balancing.

What this means is:
--No Martyrdom, Last Stand, Juggernaut, Stopping Power, One Man Army or Commando Perks
--Kills gained from Killstreaks no longer count towards your next killstreak reward, making the end-game killstreaks impossibly difficult to obtain, even in matches against all bots, let alone real players.
--Semtex (sticky grenade) no longer detonates on impact/proximity, but it is somehow much more effective now than it was in MW2
--Killstreaks now come in 3 classes: your usual ones which get kills for you, but reset on death; a new class of more passive killstreak rewards that aid your team but don't reset on death; and a third one which rewards you with perks for killstreaks.
--Nukes are now MOABs, which are the same thing but they just don't end the map anymore.
--Time to Kill is EVEN SHORTER than it was before, and it was already way too quick in previous entries.

Long story short, what this effectively means is all the crazy, over-the-top sh*t MW2 was known for is now gone. So it's basically the same game as MW2, but with more emphasis on gunplay to get killstreaks rather than killstreaks to get other killstreaks. You'll still be dying like crazy from random annoying bullsh*t, but it just won't be from a chopper gunner raining endless death on your team's spawns. Is it better now? Yes...and no. I do believe that on the whole, those small adjustments do make for a more balanced experience than MW2's, and some of the issues like bad spawn system and other annoying bugs have been ameliorated.

[EDIT:
Regardless, the core formula of the multiplayer is the greater concern. It was not really fun before--more infuriating to play--and that is still the case now. It's just a little less over-the-top is all. A typical match of Call of Duty goes down like this: You spawn, run around for a few seconds, get a kill maybe once every few lives, then die because a "sniper" used the auto-lock aimbot to kill you without ever actually looking down the scope of the gun...at point blank range even though you had an assault rifle. All that talk about "aim down your sights" in the campaign is nonsense online, where guns have such little recoil and such great accuracy that hip fire is 9 times out of 10 more effective. The core progression system designed to give you dopamine hits every time you reach some arbitrary number of kills and unlock an "achievement" is the same thing that completely unbalances the gameplay in favor of whoever has been playing longest, and therefore has objectively better weapons to use. At least in CoD 4 the default classes were still viable against a high level player's custom class. Not so anymore in MW3. Even the killstreaks--sorry, "scorestreaks" now, which are the only thing that really set Call of Duty multiplayer apart from any other online shooter, actually do more to disrupt a fair deathmatch experience, with cheap free kills or UAV giving you the enemy positions. Every mechanic that would be considered a "cheat" or "hack" in a normal multiplayer experience is actually *part of the game* as a feature in Call of Duty. It was intentionally designed to be a broken, unplayable mess.]

There's also a new gamemode called "Kill Confirmed," which is basically just TDM, but you have to pick up the dogtags of the player you killed for your team to get a point. If they pick it up, your kill is denied. This mode, I imagine, was intended to curb camping by requiring players to leave their camp spot in order to pick up the dogtags. In reality, it just made camping way worse. Campers do not give a sh*t whether or not their team gets points. Even if the kill is denied, they still get a kill on their K/D and towards their killstreaks. So what happens is suckers like me who actually enjoy playing the objective run up to pick up a dogtag, only to get wasted by campers who were hiding next to the dogtags, using them as bait. TL;DR version: it's same old TDM, but worse.

Since the core gameplay is so similar, MW3 multiplayer is practically a $60 map pack for MW2...which ironically comes with its own $60 season pass.

So...how are the maps?

Middle of the road. In my personal opinion, Black Ops 1 had some of my favorite multiplayer map design in the series. MW2 had a lot of iconic and fun maps, but a lot of room for camping. MW3 is less camp-friendly, but I don't think the maps are quite as iconic or memorable either as MW2's maps. The most memorable map is probably the one set in a European shopping mall (Arkaden I believe), followed by Seatown, and the close-quarters Dome. There's less color variety and just a lot more grey in general, since several locations of the game tend to center around broken concrete rubble in urban settings. However the maps all look and feel pretty good in general. TL;DR Not the best, but certainly not the worst. Still pretty good.

Finally, how does it hold up today? Is it still populated?

Well if you try vanilla matchmaking, then it's dead. If you install the Plutonium mod which adds a server browser, it is very much alive. Since it is slightly newer compared to MW2, it is easier to find populated servers with good ping for MW3 that actually play the base game maps and modes. Most servers in MW2 tend to just be 24/7 Terminal or Rust servers; or man vs bot servers; or the annoying "Sniper Only 360 Quick Scoping" crap. Luckily MW3 has servers running that actually play different game modes on a variety of base game and DLC maps. So maybe if you're nostalgic for one of the original Modern Warfare titles, then MW3 is good because people still play it in a mostly vanilla way (most servers still disable grenade launchers/rockets sadly).

The other key difference is that the Plutonium mod enables controller support, as well as aim assist...which means if you like playing like a man and disabling the training wheels, prepare to get f**ked by everyone else online who will inevitably have aim assist on. As a PC gamer first, I got to say it is ZERO fun having aim assist do pretty much all the work for you. I'd rather die and have an awful K/D then have the game play itself for me.

But playing with aim-assist off is hardly a good alternative, because it feels like the entire enemy team has aimbot cheats...but that's actually a part of the game! Yes, the core gameplay is so unbelievably broken that the way it is meant to be played feels like using hacks/cheats.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are not very impressive. They're still quite good, and sure, they're moderately better than MW2, but they pale in comparison to Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 which came out the same year, or even Battlefield Bad Company 2 which was a year prior. The audio for gunshots is similarly a step down from Battlefield's legendary war tapes. I think this is a fair comparison to make, since BF3 and MW3 were definitely direct competitors when this was coming out. The thing that bothers me the most though is that the M16 gun model is actually slightly lower quality (though nearly identical) than the one in MW2! How do you make a new gun model that is worse than what the previous game had? I guess that speaks more to just how nice MW2 looks (for its time) than anything else.

Conclusion

TL;DR Modern Warfare 3, if viewed in isolation, is a very good FPS, as Call of Duty games tend to always be. However, given just how many of these games are out there, you must ask how does it keep things fresh? What does it do differently compared to all the others? The answer, disappointingly, is very, very little.

Be it the same stale gameplay in the singleplayer; the campaign movie full of recycled ideas, set pieces, and story beats from previous games; the multiplayer offering roughly the same experience MW2 did but just slightly more balanced; or the spec ops mode first seen in MW2 and Treyarch's Zombies (and not as interesting as Zombies either, I might add)---just about every element of this game is uninteresting. Not because it isn't good, but because it's all been done.

Derivative is the game in a word, and this is a series already known for delivering the same formula year after year, and knowing that full well, it still feels like there is absolutely nothing new here.

Now, in Infinity Ward's defense, they had a grueling work schedule to get this game together and out on shelves in 2 years, despite the creative heads of the company being unceremoniously fired early on in that process, and most of the staff quitting and following them in protest. Then-newcomers Sledgehammer Games had to come in and save the day, and help deliver an experience fans would recognize and like, despite the new development team.

I don't mention this as a valid excuse for the game's major fault--Activision chose to make the mistake of only giving developers 2 years, which quickly became insufficient, and they paid the price for that mistake with the disaster that was Ghosts, which is why every dev team got 3 years to work on a title afterwards. MW3 was still hugely successful, unlike Ghosts, but the cracks from this rough development are definitely beginning to show, as is series fatigue and general burnout on a formula that's been done too many times.

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But let's face it, despite me saying how mediocre the experience is and how not worth it it is, you're going to buy it anyway, for the sole reason that MW2 ended on a cliffhanger, and you got to know how it ends. That's what got me to buy it. Were it not for that though, there would be pretty much no reason to play what is otherwise one of the weaker entries in the series.