Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review

I'll start off by saying that if you liked the direction Infinity Ward went in with 2009's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, don't fear, Modern Warfare 3 will likely provide you with hours of fun. This is because Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 acts like last year's excellent Black Ops never happened. The great economy system, the return of dedicated servers for ranked play, and slightly slower pace that marked last year's entry into this monolithic franchise are sadly absent from Modern Warfare 3, although thankfully so are the technical issues. Whether or not Modern Warfare 3 is better than its spiritual predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, is more a matter of opinion as very few meaningful changes have been made from this title, save for the addition of a survival mode within spec ops.

Oh my, New York is under attack! Again.

The four and a half hour campaign of Modern Warfare 3 picks up where MW 2 leaves off, with many familiar faces including the moustachioed Captain Price and slick Soap playing central roles. The Tyrant Makarov is again the main antagonist, but this time the story that began with Modern Warfare 1 is finally brought to a conclusion. The crazed action movie pace with constant epic set pieces introduced in Modern Warfare 2 returns, but it feels much more focused, and the campaign is consistently entertaining for its 4-5 hour duration. Many levels still see you fighting up debris strewn streets, and these are the low points of the campaign as enemies seem to respawn if you don't move forward. Enemies also seem to die in one or two shots from a fully automatic weapon and since most guns have extremely little recoil, no bullet drop and very weak sound effects, the gunplay in MW 3's campaign is actually quite bland.

Thankfully, there are often other factors at play that make the campaign very exciting to play for the most part. Fighting across an African town in the face on an oncoming sandstorm, creeping through a city at night during a rainstorm, and infiltrating a submarine in New York harbor are just a few of the thrilling moments that punctuate the all-too-brief campaign. The story and pacing of the campaign feels closer to a James Bond movie than a modern military shooter, but it's highly entertaining regardless.

I'm not sure if that brimmed hat will help you here Mr. Price

The Spec Ops mode introduced in Modern Warfare 2 returns here, and can be played both in singleplayer and with a partner in co-op. This mode is definitely more fun with a friend, since most levels seem designed with two players in mind. Each level is only a few minutes long, and they are often very fast paced and intense, similar to the final airplane level in Modern Warfare 1's campaign. Many of these levels are derivations of what is found in the singleplayer campaign, for instance in one campaign mission you are trying to rescue and defend a hostage while the spec ops equivalent sees you trying to capture the hostage. I encountered a few bugs in Spec Ops, including getting stuck in the terrain. You will also level up in spec ops in a different branch than in the competitive multiplayer, and this comes in to play in the only new mode introduced in Modern Warfare 3: Survival.

Survival mode is Sledgehammers answer to the Nazi Zombie mode found in World at War and Black Ops. It takes place in any of the 16 multiplayer maps, and you and a partner have to fend off waves of enemies. This mode can be pretty fun as the levels and experience earned in the spec ops missions or in survival mode give you access to new weapons and equipment you can buy with money you earn as you kill enemies. You also have the chance to purchase things like air support and explosives to help fight off your foes. Early waves consist mostly of foot soldiers, but as you progress you will encounter helicopters, suicide bombers, and attack dogs amongst other enemy types. Survival gets repetitive after a few rounds, but it's still a good diversion from the more substantial modes.

A sniper mission at night is incredibly cinematic

Sadly, it is the competitive multiplayer where Sledgehammer drops the ball. This component of Modern Warfare 3 is the weakest of any Call of Duty game on the PC, including the pre-Modern Warfare entries. It is unbalanced, laggy, prone to host migration failures, and caters to a very narrow breadth of play style. The designers of this game must have had a crippling fear of campers, since the maps, perks and weapons all seem to encourage running and gunning. Playing tactically and trying to flank your enemies is also impossible due to the frenzied pace of the matches. It feels like more emphasis is being placed on levelling up and unlocking new stuff than on actually playing the game. There are two new features that are introduced here, one works reasonably well while the other is ill conceived.

The first new feature is the inclusion of 'strike packages.' These represent a further evolution of the killstreak system, and are definitely an improvement over previous games. If you like, you can still use the standard 'assault' package where stacking kills without dying gives you offensive rewards such as attack helicopters and air strikes. This is still an inherently unbalanced concept since the players that are already doing well are rewarded with even more powerful weapons, and those at the bottom of the leader board get killed even more, but there is no use in hoping this system will be removed. However, you now have the option to choose the support or specialist strike package instead. With the Homefront-inspired support package, scoring streaks carry over when you die, and you are rewarded with support items such as UAV's, booby-trapped care packages, and ballistic vests for your team. The specialist package gives you perks over the course of a match that can give you an edge over opponents on the ground. So now at least you have some options here if you struggle to go on high scoring killstreaks.

What's that saying about not drinking on the job again?

The other 'innovation' found in Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer is the weapon levelling system. Now each individual weapon gains levels as you get kills, and with each new level you will gain an unlock. These include standard things such as weapon attachments and skins, but they also include weapon perks, the main reason that the multiplayer feels so imbalanced. Weapon perks represent direct improvements to any given weapon such as reduced kick or recoil. The problem is, you don't gain access to these until you level up your weapon. This means that those who have levelled weapons and are using these perks have a direct advantage over those who have not. Weapon customization in the Call of Duty games has always been about different options rather than direct improvements, but weapon perks represent just this: direct improvements given to higher level weapons.

The problems with MW 3's multiplayer don't end here. There are 16 new maps, none of which are particularly interesting. The maps in MW 3 are small and full of corridors, meaning there are very few opportunities for ranged duels, which I always found to be the most fun in Call of Duty games. Gone are the thrilling sniper duels of World at War. Many perks also seem to enhance your movement speed, meaning that you are being gently pushed into running and gunning, a playstyle that simply doesn't suit everyone, including myself. The typical match of MW 3 involves sprinting in circles, and dueling with higher levels opponents with objectively better guns in very close quarters. The new modes introduced, Kill Confirmed and Team Defender, further support this play style. Kill Confirmed has you grabbing the dog tags of the enemies you have killed, meaning that if you are across the map you won't get any points towards helping you're team win. Team Defender sees both teams fighting for control over a single flag which is carried around with the person who has it. To get the flag, you need to be right next to the person who has it when you kill them.

When the elevator goes out, the stairs just won't cut it

Further harming the multiplayer is the return of the peer to peer matchmaking system present in Modern Warfare 2. The host has a significant advantage over other players, and if the host has a bad connection the game will be extremely laggy. If the host leaves in the middle of a match, there will be a host migration, which seems to fail more often than work, resulting in a long wait and eventual return to the main menu with no option to bail, or even alt-tab out of the game. There are also a surprising number of hackers present, and since there are no admins in P2P matchmaking, no one can make them leave. A vote kick system could go a long way here. There are dedicated servers in the game, but they only work in unranked matches, meaning that only a handful are populated. If you enjoyed running and gunning in Modern Warfare 2, you might get some joy out of Modern Warfare 3's competitive multiplayer, but overall it is a big step back from last year's Black Ops, and easily the weakest of any PC CoD to date from a gameplay perspective.

The long-standing engine powering the Call of Duty games since MW 1 is still here, and it is really starting to show its age. The set pieces of the campaign still look good due to careful composition, but close examination of almost everything apart from character models reveal ugly low resolution textures, blocky shadows and static lighting effects. However, if you don't look closely it still looks fine, and the game runs at a blazing frame rate even on modest hardware. The sound design is also quite poor with explosions sounding flat, guns sounding weak, squeaky and similar to each other, while environmental sound effects are static and bland. The same can't be said for the voice acting, which is Hollywood quality. It is held back, however, by a B-movie script drenched in testosterone. The music, while highly forgettable, works well enough with the content.

It is clear that Sledgehammer studios have combined the philosophy of not fixing what ain't broken with that of quantity over quality. Except they didn't fix what was broken, and proceeded to break other things as well. The flashy singleplayer campaign is an improvement over Modern Warfare 2's, but lacks the cohesion and narrative drive of the cold war thriller tale of Black Ops. The Spec ops and survival modes are both fun in co-op, and prove to be a better multiplayer experience than the borderline broken competitive multiplayer that is the weakest in the series. Die hard Call of Duty fans will probably get a lot of joy out of this game, but everyone else should at least think before they make the $60 leap.