Platform | Release Date
360, PS3, PC | November 8, 2011
Developed by Infinity Ward
Published by Activision

The Pitch:

The best-selling first person action series of all-time returns with the epic sequel to multiple “Game of the Year” award winner, Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 2. In the world’s darkest hour, are you willing to do what is necessary? Prepare yourself for a cinematic thrill-ride only Call of Duty can deliver. The definitive Multiplayer experience returns bigger and better than ever, loaded with new maps, modes and features. Co-Op play has evolved with all-new Spec-Ops missions and leaderboards, as well as Survival Mode, an action-packed combat progression unlike any other.

There’s always a possibility that games released on a yearly cycle will struggle to offer anything particularly different from its previous iteration. Some games certainly buck the trend that sets this precedent, the Assassin’s Creed series being particularly impressive year-on-year so far, but plenty of cyclical releases quickly work themselves into the ground. With Call of Duty, Activision have previously managed to avoid this pit by splitting development duties on its billion-dollar franchise among multiple devs. However, what happens when one of those devs goes off the rails?

That seems like a fair description of what happened to Infinity Ward. Stuck in the midst of defections, new studio openings and lawsuits, it’s something of a miracle that the studio has managed to produce a game at all. Newly formed Sledgehammer Games have been drafted to support and long-time Activision stable Raven have been working on some of the maps. So, at least three studios have needed to pull together to make this work. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is like the direct-to-DVD version of Call of Duty. Whether you’ve loved the series or hated it in the past, Infinity Ward and Treyarch have always managed to introduce enough new gimmicks to make the campaign worth investigating. In MW3, the climax of the daft Modern Warfare plot, each level either recycles content or chooses to stick you into yet another corridor. This is a by-the-numbers game, made of the parts of older releases, and like the terrible Universal Soldier sequels, the sum of those ancient parts fails to gel into something worthwhile.

You’ve got an underwater section that feels like it stole movement mechanics from the snow-mobile section of MW2. There’s rappelling, again from MW2, but in a far less exciting context. The levels and settings feel familiar. The turret sections even more so, and if you were expecting to fire down on vehicles from high above in a plane you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be very disappointed, however, if you expected to see anything new.

For a while, I considered this might be an effort to return some credibility to the Call of Duty name; making the series more focused on hard military action. This suspicion was quelled though when I attempted to veer off track and implement genuine military strategy. Level designs offer multiple paths through structures or scenery – an effort I was ready to applaud until I made my first tentative steps towards flanking manoeuvres. MW3 hates flanking. Do it at your peril as the game will, in several areas, spawn enemies if you refuse to walk straight up the nearest street filled with those pesky Russians. This isn’t tactical warfare, it’s just weak set pieces linked by lots of corridor shooting. Never attempt to make it behave otherwise.

If you indulge the game and let it have its way, the experience isn’t exactly unpleasant, it’s just totally uninspiring. The first mission isn’t bad, as is a brief escape on a boat, and the very last part of the game is interesting in terms of its meaning within the franchise, but none of it really gets your heart racing. If Call of Duty is a blockbuster game, it should have blockbuster excitement.

The plot is easier to understand than the nonsense that linked together MW2’s missions. It also does a pretty good job of linking lots of story threads into a pleasing finale for the current arc. In truth though, I suspect that the plot will be quickly forgotten as players move eagerly into the multiplayer arena. Like the single-player game however, this offers just as few reasons to become excited with much the same structure and game types as before. Worst of all, most of the maps are downright awful.

These maps fall into two camps. In the first, they are complicated messes of corridors that feature multiple choke points. Gun fights happen in the same places all the time and camping in corners is often an easy way to boost up to the hugely overpowered killstreak rewards. In the second camp, you have maps with central arena and peripheral zones where most of the action takes place. Tactical play just isn’t going to happen here, as squads will find it nigh-on impossible to find any benefit to playing as a team as opposed to running around like headless chickens. Whatever they do, they are still going to kill or be killed in the same tunnels.

The multiplayer certainly feels the same, and in that way the game is inhabited by the same qualities that have ensured its success over the years. Gamers are still going to flock to Xbox Live to play, but I suspect that they may soon return to the battlegrounds of old. New game modes in the form of Kill Confirmed and Team Domination are welcome, but no map can accommodate all the sheer volume of match types now on offer. In certain combinations of map and game mode you’ll think that the developers realised this, gave in, and so just dumped the objectives in. MW2 and Black Ops both offer a higher standard of online play; MW3 just cashes that consumer faith in and hopes for the best.

Weapons level differently now, and it’s probably in the remodelling of the multiplayer economy that the biggest changes can be seen. Rather than purchasing weapons and upgrades with cash, you now unlock them as you progress and become more familiar with a particular gun. Each of these guns levels the more you use them, and unlocks in the form of visual customisation or equipment add-ons come along with it. It’s different, which given my criticisms elsewhere should be commended, but ultimately feels like change for changes sake rather than improving on a cash based system.

Visually the franchise is looking old, although on console it matches up to Battlefield 3. There are a few pieces of spectacle to enjoy and the voice acting is suitably macho throughout. That’s sort of the best things I have to say about it all really. The series has been refined too many times for a release to outright suck, but it may also have been around too long for any subsequent Call of Duty game to truly excite. Everything here is passable, save the worst of the multiplayer maps, and I guess that might be enough for some. Unfortunately then, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 shows the signs of its assumedly tumultuous development and the signs of a franchise going stale.

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