Aiming High, With A Shallow Clip
HIGH Call of Duty has never been more player-driven, and I’m here for it.
LOW A grindy zombies mode with permadeath and ridiculous internet speed demands!
WTF People complaining about a campaign being replayable?!
None of us anticipated the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot turning the Call of Duty franchise into an Marvel-esque interconnected patchwork universe. Developer Treyarch sticks to the past, Infinity Ward to the present, and Sledgehammer — once again — are left to pick up the pieces while hoping that at some point they’ll stop being crunched to fill the release schedule.
A game’s merits should stand on their own no matter what, but the sheer battle of ambition versus limited time and resources is increasingly apparent here. Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Modern Warfare 3, much like Sledgehammer’s very first game… Modern Warfare 3 (2011). Except this time they’re not finishing a trilogy, but updating a live service juggernaut. This is a title that clearly wants to be bigger, bolder, and better than its predecessor in every way — if only it’d had the time to deliver on everything.
The story of this first-person shooter picks up directly after the events of Modern Warfare 2’s… err… multiplayer story events. Sadly, just like its predecessor, the insistence that the narrative has to be woven into Warzone and other modes is going to leave some utterly baffled. Why is Graves still alive? It’s all explained in a cutscene players have to look up online! What’s the significance of Yuri and Makarov’s new roles in this continuity? Great question! Despite solid presentation and Makarov’s plot being smaller ins scale than literally starting World War III, it’s still a baffling time. No story should require this much homework.
It’s a shame because this is easily one of the most replayable campaigns in series history thanks to the room players have to improvise, and there’s incentive to dive back in thanks to a wealth of hidden gear and perks players can use on repeat playthroughs. It’s not a full-on immersive sim, but there’s clear potential for Call of Duty’s future campaigns to learn from this design. For example, my favorite moment in the campaign was when I managed to use a parachute to glide past an entire onslaught of enemies and quickly extract from an enemy-occupied dam, completely unscripted.
That same mission throws a curveball where one of the four bombs that need defusing is on a moving truck that, if not intercepted, ends up behind heavily-armed enemies. However, there’s the option of dropping in behind all of them to disable the bomb and sneak away into the nearby water. This freedom of choice is made all the more enjoyable thanks to the ability to customize a loadout, or even bring in one-use killstreaks on repeat runs.
So many missions are flexible in ways that allow for creativity that they kept me coming back to find more permutations in how each mini-sandbox can play out. There are no protracted car chases nor any “defeat a soldier as a child” nonsense missions like we’ve gotten in the past. Instead, this new approach captures the freedom seen in Battlefield 1 & V’s campaigns.
Better yet, this campaign truly feels balanced for Hardened difficulty in a way Infinity Ward’s last two entries struggled to justify because it demands more improvisation. When playing on Easy or Normal, players can shrug off bullets and plow through missions. Most people I’ve seen complaining about the campaign did just this, opting for the least interesting options. Hardened makes equipping armor plates important, every one-time killstreak counts, and all of the assets become that much more vital and no amount of pre-existing knowledge will offset that. It feels designed for it.
As for multiplayer, the return of fan-favorite maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 is great, with some wonderful tune-ups that keep classics like Terminal and Rust as relevant as ever. Also, not only are the large-scale, Battlefield-style Ground War and Invasion modes back, but War mode’s more cinematic, scripted missions makes its way here from Vanguard. These modes are typically more forgiving moshpits, offering guided objectives that aren’t over in ten seconds — Invasion even offers bot enemies alongside human opponents. Meanwhile, the more intimate 2 v 2, 6 v 6, and 10 v 10 modes from Modern Warfare 2 return intact for faster action. Whether it’s a big bombastic fight or tense up close fighting, Modern Warfare 3 delivers in spades.
While customizing multiplayer loadouts is a series staple at this point, things like finetuning everything from gun handling to ability perks are made more welcoming. I particularly appreciate how I can unlock equipment early by doing daily challenges. Want a certain scorestreak, weapon attachment, or grenade? Complete some dailies or score some victories, and it’s unlocked! While players can also unlock gear by exfiltrating with it in the new Zombies mode, I personally found the daily challenges far more reliable. Sadly, the lobby UI is as terrible as ever, but once I finally got the lay of the land, the extent of playstyle personalization proved staggering.
Besides that, the amount of accessibility features here are worth celebrating. While not quite on the level of Sony and Microsoft’s first-party games, Modern Warfare III has a dense suite of options for all kinds of players, whether one wants to adjust keybindings or improve visual clarity to compensate for an inability to rely on audio cues. While it’s unfortunate that certain accessibility perks require unlocking (such as high-contrast footprints from enemies who just passed by) these options are quite welcome.
Movement has also been greatly improved. The slightly longer time to kill isn’t quite as meaningful an improvement – even going up against higher skill players, it rarely tipped the scales for either opponent. That said, the diving, sliding, and mid-range aiming are all wonderful additions that amp up the versatility of each map. It’s become second nature for me to dive out of incoming fire, slide in like a John Woo hero with my P9 blazing, or even sneak up on snipers to shank them from behind. It’s incredible how even fairly condensed maps capture the jungle gym feeling the series has lacked since Black Ops 3.
On the other hand, war against the undead has been turned into a chore. Despite still being helmed by Treyarch, the Zombies mode is now generic extraction with the PvP aspect removed, and the result is that it’s as soulless as the vacant-eyed shamblers waiting to be slaughtered.
All I did for eighteen hours was drop in, fight zombies while playing the same handful of “Contract” missions in a single sandbox map, and eventually bug out when the timer expired. It’s a shame, because there are story missions — they’re just locked behind absurd challenges to grind through. Those wanting to see the story bits will have to rinse and repeat for three “acts” told primarily through audiologs.
Even in the mere months since release, I’m seeing fewer and fewer players bothering with it, and I can’t blame them. This mode reeks of being rushed, made worse because it’s permadeath if someone quits mid-match or gets killed without extracting via helicopter. In fact, one time I was downed while aboard the helicopter, and it still refused to count my extraction as a success! Such stringency actively disincentivizes playing unless someone has a guaranteed uninterrupted hour, which not everyone has on a regular basis.
With Modern Warfare 3, Sledgehammer has tried to offer something both for fans of the classics and those who want to see this series evolve, and like Ghosts, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare before it, I suspect this will be an entry that people will be calling underrated five years from now. I’m not waiting that long to show it some love, though. I’ve had a blast playing Modern Warfare 3, both in the campaign and in multiplayer. The Zombies mode may be lacking, but I can live with that. My only real concern is that I hope Sledgehammer and Treyarch aren’t forced to crunch like this again for the sake of annual release deadlines.
Final Score: 8 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch and published by Activision-Blizzard. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X. This copy was obtained via commercial purchase and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10+ hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was completed twice. Approximately 18 hours were dedicated to the zombies campaign, and it was not completed. It also features an extensive suite of competitive multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs. It’s a modern military shooter with graphic violence, swearing, morally ambiguous characters, and vividly depicts a terrorist attack from the first person perspective of a victim with a bomb vest forced upon them. Despite marketing depicting a thirteen year-old ‘squadding up’, parents should be very hesitant to let anyone under seventeen from playing the campaign or zombies mode. The more traditional multiplayer modes downplay the more serious tone, but still feature gore and viscera when explosive weapons are used. There are Microtransactions.
Colorblind modes: There are colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, as well as indicating incoming fire and being in enemy line of sight with an orange flash in the direction of enemies. Multiple settings can be adjusted, from stick sensitivity for those with motor function limitations, to heightened visual contrast in the campaign that highlights allies in blue and enemies in red. Every relevant piece of information is transmitted visually. However, in competitive multiplayer, there is still somewhat of a disadvantage until you unlock a perk that shows enemy footprints when they’ve recently passed through. This is distinctly less of an issue in the zombies mode, as there are few ranged enemies. Regardless, it’s a reasonable experience to play without sound.
Remappable controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
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