Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

As sure as winter follows fall, the final quarter of the year sees another in the Call of Duty franchise pop onto shelves giving fans more of what they want but with new maps, weapons, story and so on. Having been badly burnt with MW2 (where I found myself a paying beta tester for the massive problems with that game) I was wary but was able to get it cheap as supermarkets tried to lowball each other to get volume in place of profits. Part of the reason for this was that, although short, I do enjoy the MW campaigns and, wary of spoilers, this is where I started.

The campaign continues the OTT plot and takes the same model of playing several characters across various global settings. OK the device of making Makarov all-powerful and central doesn't totally work but what does work is the delivery. The game play allows for some flexibility within the "rails" on which you're on; I found I could rush direct or flank and the layout of the levels. It is gloriously over the top and it is like being in an action movie. The voice action is manly and urgent, the soundtrack is loud and dramatic and the overall effect is that you really feel you're in the middle of a Michael Bay action movie. It is very short if you're only buying the game for the campaign, but I found it enjoyable and very satisfying as a game. It manages to be incredibly cinematic but yet I never felt like I was a tiny part of something bigger (like I did with the World at War campaign) and instead it was focused, with skirmishes having global meaning and urgency but yet being tight and contained. It doesn't all work in terms of plots and events but I enjoyed it a great deal and the ending was a great build-up to a really satisfying conclusion.

The Spec Ops part of the game remains a little stuck on in terms of the missions – on hardest setting some are near impossible without 2 players but mostly you'll get through them easily enough and their standalone nature means they are not that engaging. Massively better though is the addition of the Survival mode wherein you try and hang on through waves of increasingly difficult enemies. I enjoyed this mode a great deal and it was the one I played most – the supernatural force of the zombies in the Treyarch games (which Infinity Ward have ripped off here) never appealed to me because it felt like just battling the tide. However here the "human" foes armed with guns and moving tactically (as opposed to rushing mindlessly) made me feel I could outsmart and out play them. I'd have loved the fun of 4 players in a party doing it but it does work best with 2 players in terms of the challenge and gameplay.

This leaves the multiplayer – a game mode that has eaten so many days of my time on COD4 that I would be embarrassed to write it down! I have noticed that over the consecutive games I have put less and less time into it, to the point now that the game is social for me – I play it with friends but never alone. Even with friends though MW3 is a weirdly frustrating experience. The spawns are terrible and even in domination (a very stable game mode) you'll appear in front and behind of people all the time – I guess it balances out but it is still annoying. The game play is frantic but not in a good way, streaks are difficult and (with the spawns) deaths are often random. I liked some of the changes to the pointstreaks but too much felt like a step-back from Black Ops – the theatre mode is terrible, the lack of caps/defs for objective games is poor, but these are all details, it is the gameplay that matters. Sadly it is too frantic, too random and too lacking in tactics to be fun. I used to love the mode Domination and "understood" the flows of the game so well I could even "feel" when the other team sort of gave up trying to win. With MW3 there is no "flow" to feel, no tactics to read – no point in trying to flank to the far side of the map when you'll probably spawn there in a second or two! For my money MW3 was worth it because the campaign gave me about 15 hours of fun (a few playthroughs) and the Survival mode alone saw me clock over 35 hours (and enjoy them all) but I must say I'm tiring of it all. The multiplayer is uninspired and too frantic to be fun. Infinity Ward always talk about capturing the COD4 magic, but I don't think they can – they just keep "adding" stuff and the overall effect is to detract from the multiplayer, which is a real shame. A decent game that is worth getting but neither as bad as the haters suggest nor as good as the fanboys proclaim.

Quick summary: Modern Warfare 3 starts off with Captain Price and Nikolai getting Soap, whose still injured from the ending of Modern Warfare 2, to a safehouse in India. Meanwhile, NYC is under attack by the Russians and Makarov is still at large.

The campaign was awesome, just awesome. There was so much action in those levels, a few characters return, I loved some of the plot twists, and also fighting in France, Germany, on an airplane, etc. was cool. I will say that there were times where a few levels seem to have gone by really quick. The multiplayer was similar to the first 2 games, but this time it has new killstreaks and game modes. Also Spec Ops is pretty cool, just like in MW2.

Overall, MW3 is epic and whoever played the first 2 games or the Call of Duty series in general will love this game.

Call of Duty Modern warfare 3 is the newest in the Call of Duty sequel selling an amazing 6.5 million on day release setting a new record. Let's start of with the campaign where you continue your hunt for villain Makarov battling through all sorts of new areas and enemies. You are hit with a lot of new features through this new campaign such as mortar towers, Juggernaught suits and assault drones. Also unlike Modern Warfare 2 history you get to play as the man himself Captain Price and hopefully end Makarov's run once and for all. While playing through the campaign you play as two new characters Frost from delta force and Yuri working along side Soap and Captain Price. The Main problem with the campaign is not the graphics or ideas but the length I believe it stops people overplaying the online game play as if the campaign was long you could mix and match between campaign and online. However anyone looking to buy the game should be prepared for new never been seen before features and new areas which have never been explored it is a definitely improved campaign from previous Call of Duty's.

The online game play has been frowned upon more being too much like Modern Warfare 2. I can assure you this isn't true. The game play modes, classes, maps and kill streaks are all new. Firstly the classes are certainly not the same as Mw2 as in these game they are more personal to your Game play style. As well as the new perks which keep upgrading for points after turning pro you get extra things added to make it that much more special. Firstly proficiency adds a wide range of mini perks such as kick, impact and many more to suit close and long range gunners or stealth like players. Also your gun now has it's own level making you test out all of the different attachments to gain points for your gun to level up and get the top gold cameo. This stops people staying with one gun class like Modern Warfare 2's Ump45 as once your gun is max level this implies to you that you have master it and need to move on. The assault and support kill streaks suits is completely new to call of duty and you can have a separate set of kill streaks for each class meaning you don't have to change around your classes for different game modes. Firstly the support point streaks they are now called suit objective type players who gain experience capping objectives and supporting their team . These point streaks are mostly defence type streaks like radar, advanced radar and EMP to help your team defend objectives and support people using assault point streaks. Assault point streaks suit the kill whoring type players as are things such as chopper gunner, assault drone and ah6 over watch these take time to shoot down and help these types of players maintain a good kill to death ratio. Finally the nuke on Modern Warfare 2 I believe was way to easy to get so making it so you have to get 25 kills in a row no kill streaks count takes a lot more skill to do. Another good thing about the online is the new game play modes such as kill confirmed perfect for people who hate camping.

Now there are problems with the online for example no stopping power sometimes results in people taking unbelievable amount of bullets and you die from two bullets sometimes showing the game can be unfair at times. Also what would be good of any Call of Duty is to have their own server as although host migration is more than often successful it can get annoying when it happens a lot. Looking at Call of Duty's sales they surely have enough to splash out on their own server like games such as MAG which uses Sony as a server rather than a player host. Finally one of the main problems for the online is the hit detection, this is where if you are near an enemy your character moves slightly without your control as you can sense them. Sometimes online this can happen from quite far distances resulting in enemies being able to preliminary fire at you as they know you are coming.

Private matches differ from any other game in the franchise as they have their own custom game modes which are not playable online. Some examples are infected, Juggernaught and team Juggernaught. Also due to popularity last year wager matches one in the chamber and gun game have returned yet they are specific to private matches. The difference this time is in wager type matches the host can choose what classes will be used to go in favour of your parties preferences. Also the final thing about private matches is that you weapon custom classes in private matches are different to your online custom classes so you can have specific classes for private and specific classes for online. The game did bring back special ops missions like on Modern Warfare 2 but as well as this you can play survival mode which is basically Modern Warfare's version of zombies. Survival see's you battling off all sorts of different kinds of enemies to achieve the highest wave (round) possible. The missions are pretty similar objective wise to Modern Warfare 2 such as time trials, defending and planting objectives which is a bit of a let down. Also the fact that it is only two player isn't as fun to play in parties or even finding a match online as there is only one other person with you so it can get boring. The most noticeable change to special ops is you have a rank so you can level up and unlock new things to help you in the missions and survival making it that little bit easier.

I am one of those people who is judging this based on the campaign alone. The online is good as always. The story modes in the MW series have always been interesting, and the backdrops are breathtaking. Some of the scenes with the the US Marines and Army are really cool, and the whole nuclear war, conspiracy theory thing is enough to make you think. While this campaign was a bit longer than MW2's, it still felt kinda short (I probably beat it in around 13 hours).It also isn't the great ending and climax that one may want. There are also the same old endless waves of enemies, who will completely disregard their own safety to try and kill you. But overall, its a great ride, and if they made it into a movie it would be amazing (as well as cost near a billion dollars)...

MW3 is probably the weakest game in the trilogy, but is still a pretty good game. After the first two MW games. expectations for this game were through the roof and that was probably one of the reasons people overreacted a bit when it came out, admittedly this game isn't as strong as it's predecessors but is still a good game, the campaign is short and unfortunately it doesn't have as many memorable set pieces as the previous games, with only two of them being stand outs for me, the score is good but again not as good as the previous ones, gameplay is the standard stuff, not many changes from MW2, the story is actually better than MW2 in my opinion, with the stakes actually feeling pretty high and the game has a pretty satisfying conclusion. Even though MW3 was weaker than what came before, I would still recommend this game solely to see how this particular storyline is concluded.