Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review *SPOILERS*

Alright before I get down to actually reviewing the game let me just express my overall opinion of the series. I´ve seen many people fight over which FPS is better, Halo, COD or Battlefield. Now im no big fan of FPS´s but in my opinion these games are different from each other for good reasons. Each is meant to be different from the others and thus, judging each one by the standards of the other seems rather pointless and dumb. A lot of Battlefield fans criticize COD for focusing mostly on kills and no actual teamwork is necessary to finish games. That in my honest opinion is like saying I don’t like playing Super Mario World because he doesn’t use sword like Link does in The Legend of Zelda. And in fact, that is why I love COD. Much like Halo, COD is a run and gun type of game, as far as I remember in Halo all you ever did was pick up guns as you run across the map trying to kill as many people as possible, of course all I ever played was team death match and slayer so I can’t speak for the rest of the games types. Anyway, since COD 4, the game series has reinforced this idea of the lone soldier. Sure you´re fighting alongside a team, but when you look at the scores at the end the match, regardless of whether you´re playing demolition or domination, the player with the most kills ultimately gets the highest score. I never minded that because that´s what I looked for in a FPS, nothing but bad ass, crazy fun. Call of Duty Black Ops, despite not being made from Infinity Ward, also enforces this. Adding new customizations to your weapons and even allowing face paint, as well as your player card, which you could customize with any image you want. This is mostly because the game enforces individuality more than team work, and these customizations allow you to stand out from the rest. When you kill someone your player card would appear and players would easily recognize who is killing them.

Another criticism, and the most popular, is that each COD sequel is basically the “same crap as the last game, only with new weapons, kill streaks and perks.” This, to me, is the most idiotic of the criticisms because EVERY GAME SEQUEL IS THE SAME CRAP AS THE FIRST. Halo 3 is the same as Halo 2 only with enhanced graphics, new weapons and maps etc. The Nintendo company has gotten away with for years, every super Mario bros game that comes out is the same thing as the last, only with new elements, Super Mario bros ds, Super Mario bros Wii, etc. it’s always the same, Peach or some princess gets captured by browser or bowser jr. and Mario has to jumps over goombas, koopas, gets stars, mushrooms to save the princess, that´s it, and there some that do change the story, but in terms of gameplay it’s pretty much the same. So why whine so much about it? Every game sequel is the same gameplay only new elements. Now with that being said I will admit that Modern Warfare 3 almost proves these guys right.

Campaign: Unlike most people, the main reason I wanted to buy this game, apart from the multiplayer, is the story. I wanted to see how all this would unfold, who would live? Who would die and how? Would Makarov succeed? There are some things I do dislike about the story, for instance I do wish that the Rangers from MW2 would´ve returned. These new American soldiers never clicked with me, I even heard Toby McGuire was supposed to play a role, but I never heard his voice once. I also think Yuri is a completely unnecessary character, so he used to work for Makarov and we see flashbacks of how he caused the explosion that killed the 30,000 American soldiers (Shepherd must be rolling in his grave right now) how he helped Zakaeh during the assassination attempt, etc. So we´re basically told that Makarov is a Zakaeh Worshiping terrorist… like we didn’t know that before. And finally im not sure how I feel about Soap´s death, mainly cause his final words were “Makarov… knows… Yuri.” I will paraphrase what another fan said, I actually think it would have been better if price had been the one to die, holding Soap close he hands him the gun (the same one Price gave Soap to kill Zakaeh and the one he gave back to Price.) and his final words being “Finish this.” At least cause it seems more meaningful than what Soap said. Now I know the story isn’t that big of a deal, after all, Infinity Ward didn’t focus on the story because they knew the main attraction of the games was the online multiplayer. But forgetting the story, my problem with the mechanics is that it’s so repetitive from MW2. When MW2 came out the mechanics felt new because the previous game didn’t have these elements; shooting while driving, climbing a mountain, being dragged while injured, etc. Now MW3 game has these things but they look too much like in the previous game, hell during the New York battle, the guy sitting in front of me in the raft moves exactly like Price does during the final part of MW2 and ultimately the campaign feels like a test run so that we can check out the new kill streaks like the assault drone. In fact, I´m even a little sad to say that out of all the COD games, MW3´s campaign is the only one I haven’t re-played.

Multiplayer: Maybe it’s a little unfair that my opinion on this game comes from comparing it to Black Ops; after all, they are made from two distinct developers. But MW3 borrows too many ideas from it, that comparing it almost seems inevitable. What I do like is how it changes the Survival Mode, it isn’t exactly like zombies and I´m glad that it changes the idea and makes it more of its own. In the Multiplayer my problem comes from its lack of customizing, I´ll admit that maybe I overhyped this in my head, but I just couldn’t help but imagine what Modern Warfare 3 would take from Black Ops´ idea. I thought we´d be able to customize our avatars, giving them beards, caps, glasses tattoos, etc. if we wanted to. Maybe I was alone in that thought, but regardless of it, this game even borrows the wager matches idea, so why cant it borrow this simple thing? Hell while you´re at it, add bots in the splitscreen multiplayer. I´m still wondering who´s bright idea was it to have us level up offline. This idea was lame in MW2 and its still lame. But regardless of these complaints there changes in the multiplayer that I have to admit are great. First is the addition of the new game Kill Confirmed, this particular game is basically team deathmatch except that you have to grab a corpse´s tag´s to confirm the kills and thus win the game. This adds a level of team work that previous COD´s didn’t have, while some players kill, others mostly confirm the kills and help win the match. Same goes with the game Team Defender, in here a player from one team grabs the flag, as they kills the enemy, which ever team is holding the flag while killing get double the points. Another element I do like is the strike packages, now instead of one specific kill streak count for every class, each gun class can have one of 3 different strike packages.
*Assault: Basically the same thing from previous games, they reset after you die and most of them are made to get kills
*Support: This one is different because even if you do die the kill streak count wont reset and most of the kill streaks are made to help your team (UAV´s, EMP, SAM turrets, etc.)
*Specialist: I especially like this one because it, again, enforces the whole lone soldier idea, with this one instead of kill streaks you get 3 extra perks as your kill count goes up, until you achieve the Specialist bonus, giving you every perk in you´ve unlocked, making you an unstoppable killing machine… until you get killed and have to start over like with Assault.

I don’t know, maybe I overhyped it so much in my head that maybe the multiplayer seems too simple, despite how much fun it is.

Ultimately I still find the multiplayer enjoyable and I´m glad the campaign, despite its flaws, finishes off the story of the trilogy. I don’t hate Modern Warfare 3, in fact, I enjoy every day, but it borrows too many things and leaves me with a feeling that it could have been better so I think my overall consensus is that Modern Warfare 3 is an awesome game, with a fun multiplayer, but it’s a disappointing one.