Completely unbiased Modern Warfare 3 overview
I’m going to skip the obvious jokes and foreplay: this is pretty much a minorly tweaked version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And in my opinion, it’s absolutely terrible.
Let’s start with the single player campaign. As in previous games, for most segments you’ll be fighting enemies that respawn infinitely until you move up – a tired, boring design.*
It reminds me immediately of the first Modern Warfare when you were supposedly fighting a small band of terrorists, and yet you would literally have to fight thousands of them.
The thing that really gets me about this game is it’s linearity. I’m ok with linear progression to tell a cinematic story. But for christ’s sake, let me play the god damn game how I want to. There’s a segment early on where you follow a boat in your own watercraft. I decided to go right around a naval cruiser for a little shortcut.
GAME OVER: YOU HAVE TO GO LEFT.
There’s also an underwater segment where you follow your buddies to a two-foot pipe. I tried to go over it, and there was a fucking invisible wall. And before I realized I had to go under the pipe instead, I got “Game over, you fell too far behind.” This was especially ironic because the NPCs just stopped on the other side of the pipe, waiting for me.
As if that wasn’t enough though, all of the most “badass” sequences don’t even present you with real danger! There are so many segments (particularly the on-rails ones) where you can simply choose to not fire your gun. Any time you’re waiting for a chopper to arrive, or you’re the gunner on a tank, or anything where the the devs want to you glaze over while enduring a “cinematic” experience, you can just sit back and relax and nothing will happen even remotely differently. Sure, you can cause some superfluous explosions, but they’re just that.
Listen Infinity Ward, if you want to make a shitty action movie, by all means go right ahead. I might even see it. But if you’re going to make a video game, make it a fucking video game. Believe it or not, I’m intelligent enough to win by playing if you let me.
Multiplayer all over again
There’s not a whole lot to be said about the multiplayer. If you like Modern Warfare 2, and you want to spend $60 on a patch and get called “fag” by 12 year olds, knock yourself out. I’d personally recommend Battlefield 3, but I’m not here to start a flame war.** As for MW3, you’ll find some minor tweaks made, some good some bad.
The biggest one is a change to how killstreaks work: you now pick one of three types. Assault works just like killstreaks in MW2, and all the unlocks are focused on killing (enemy) dudes. Support gives you killstreaks that help your team instead of hurting the bad guys, plus your killstreak doesn’t get reset when you die. And Spec Ops unlocks additional perks as you rack up kills. In addition, everything that gives you points counts towards your killstreak. The intent was to help prevent players from forgoing teamwork in favor of the almighty KDR. It didn’t work.
I know I can’t possibly be the only one who feels so strongly against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The disparity between metacritic scores and user scores certainly paints an odd picture. Yes, score inflation is part of it, and I’ll be writing a much more humorous article on that soon (Why is 7/10 considered a bad score?). But I think a big part of it is PR between reviewers and publishers. Anyone else notice on G4’s review of MW3 they talk about how bad the story and multiplayer were in MW2, but in the same breath applaud MW3 for being more of the same? Not to mention that they lauded both as best of the best in their MW2 review…
I’ll admit, I haven’t logged as many hours into this game to review it as I could have. For all I know the third act of the single player and gameplay after your first prestige in multiplayer are 100x better. But to be honest, I had so little fun during those few hours that I have no desire to ever play this game again. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to delay this review into time I could be spending playing Skyrim. You see, dear reader, I wasted $60 on this game so you don’t have to. This month alone we’ve got Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and Skyward Sword coming out. There’s no reason you need to spend money on this crap. And if you do, they might even *shudder* make another one.
* To be fair, I wasn’t a fan of BF3’s campaign either.
** Feel free to start one in the comments
Summary: MW3 sucks, don’t buy it, it’s just Mw2 2.0.
Its pretty much just a map pack. An expensive, map pack. If there’s ever a MW4 I’m jumping off a bridge.
Buy skyrim, or if you’re too poor, walk down to the local video game store, put baskets over everyones heads, and loot everything.
I think the takeaway was “buy Battlefield 3,” haha.
I wouldn’t mind seeing an explanation about why 7/10 is basically the new 0/10. I never managed to wrap my head around it and it seems some other people failed to see that when a website gave Halo: Reach an 8 and internet people raged even more than usual.
Also, I approve of Guy923’s suggestion, might not loot literally everything though, I heard the Kinect, Move and Wii games were quite below average.
I believe the next caw of duty was already confirmed, yes?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/new-call-of-duty-confirmed-for-2012-6344525?sid=6344525
…Yep. Gird your loins for more thrilling, AAA shooter action in 2012.
HUGE PLOT TWIST!
NOBODY EXPECTED THAT ONE!!!
I’m glad to have been sensible enough to never buy a CoD title in my life. I don’t fancy a bland multiplayer experience that is surpassed by most open source and freeware titles, nor a single player experience ripped straight out of the most appropriate action movie.
Looking forward to BF3 once my fancy new computer arrives in the mail in a couple days.
SYKRIM!
You remember those times when CoD was good?
They did exist.
But now it just sucks.
And that I say as someone who sees both CoD and BF players as whiny little kids who argue with no more arguments than “I say so, so mine is better!”
Sucking is directly proportional to time under Kotick’s influence.
Sadly, that applies for all games.
Fortunately, WoW somehow manages to NOT COMPLETELY SUCK.
Maybe they noticed that whoring it out in WotLK didn’t quite work, tied up Kotick and replaced him with a clone that understands a tiny bit about making players happy (and that is how to earn money with a game that brings most of its cost from the monthly fees!)
Blizzard isn’t under Kotick’s control. It was a financial merger, but Activision more or less stays out of Blizzard’s business.
They said. Did they do it? nope.fuckkotick
What about Blizzard’s recent actions in any way says to you that Kotick is meddling?
All of WotLK says it.
…How?
At least Battlefield never had dual-wielding shotguns and the ability to stab from 20 feet away. But now BF3 now has what I call the “epilepsy attack”. Can’t kill a person? Blind the fucker.
That actually is a tactic used by swat teams in real life. Although they use specialized strobe lights at a specific frequency designed to disorient.
I see. But they’re gonna nerf the flashlights due to vision complaints. I saw the comparison pics.
Link?
It’s true, but the nerf isn’t that huge. I think primarily the lights won’t be as powerful in broad daylight.
HA! Those guys can have their unbalanced fag-calling contests. I just bought the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (because I fucking love Peace Walker) and I’m gonna sneak around and hide in boxes and kidnap people with balloons. LIKE A REAL MAN!
Oh look that makes 2 remakes.
+1 for Skyrim. That will keep you busy until COD 6 or whenever they decide to make a good game.
Don’t hold your breath. It’s been 4 years since the last good or original one.
Mmm. Pity. I had (and will continue to have) a lot of fun with this game. Yes, the multiplayer is the same bland rigmarole, but I didn’t buy it for the multiplayer. I sort of bought it for the campaign (which was a lot more varied and visually interesting than the previous game), and I thought it held up okay. Maybe it was excessively linear, but I don’t really mind linearity. The gameplay was more of the same, but who expected anything different? And the bits that deviated from the standard formula (such as the section in which you pilot a miniature tank) gave me a ragdoll-flinging good time. But the part of the game that really made it worth buying for me is the survival. The strategy fascinates me, I get a good laugh out of playing with friends. I think I’ll be playing it for a long time. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s my favorite part of the game, since I only like Black Ops for the zombies, and I only liked MW2 for the Spec Ops. Anyway, just my 2 cents. I just thought I’d let you know that some people don’t consider it a massive failure.
> “but who expected anything different?”
Well if a man says he’s going to take a shit on my head when I go to sleep, I’ll be expecting to wake up with shit on my face. Expecting something doesn’t make it ok.
> “I just thought I’d let you know that some people don’t consider it a massive failure.”
It sold 3.4 million copies in one week. I’m fully aware that some people don’t consider it a massive failure. However I’d like to think that people would be more willing to vote with their wallet towards innovation instead of getting the same game over and over again.
“Expecting something doesn’t make it okay.” True enough, but it’s an entirely different story if you paid a man to shit on your face. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that you only bought the game in order to write this review. But people who dislike the type of gameplay the games offer would have stopped buying them about four games ago. I bought the game because I enjoyed MW2, and I’m not bored easily by repetition.
All in all, I’m willing to forgive CoD for not innovating because I imagine very few people bought the game expecting to like it and were disappointed. Yeah, it’s basically an expansion pack. But I thought MW2 was fun enough to warrant expanding. $60 may be a little excessive, but hell! It’s my money, and I decided it was worth it.
Ok I think you missed my point. If you like MW2, that’s all well and good. My point is that it is wrong for Activision to be releasing the same game with what could easily be mistaken for a patch or DLC as a full $60 title.
I don’t love it. But I did buy it.
I have RL friends who don’t live near me anymore so gaming onling is the only way we can hang out. They don’t buy any games other than CoDs and NCAA Football so I reluctantly play it.
Introduce them to some better games. If they can force you to play one, you can do the same.
You are not alone at all. Its a pathetic verison of a modern game. So arcade-ish in every fashion.
Your style is unique in comparison to other people I have read stuff from.
Many thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess I will just book mark this site.