Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review [PC]

Campaign

Most people don’t play Call of Duty games for their single player campaigns, but I do, and I actually enjoy them..

Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is just as over the top and cinematic as its predecessors.

So the story follows up directly where you left off in MW2, instead of having a 2 year gap like Modern Warfare 2 had from Call of Duty 4. You start out lifting Soap to safety and arriving at some Loyalist compound, where you get attacked.

Now you’re back in America as a Delta Force Team, lead by ‘Sandman’, you’re first mission is to destroy a radio tower then take over a submarine to disrupt the Russians in some way.

This one of the many quick time events, they aren’t really QTE’s but it’s the overdone PRESS E AT THE SAME TIME TO ACTIVATE sequences.

You get to play as a Yuri in the next mission, he’s a Russian guy who hates Makarov, I wonder why…..It’s because Makarov pushed him over this waterfall.

After playing a bit as the new character ‘Yuri'(Who actually speaks) you take on the role of a Russian Presidential Guard briefly.

You find Makarov and he does something bad to you with his gun(I’ll let you figure it out)

After getting shot, you get back to playing as Yuri, along side Price and, somehow perfectly recovered, Soap(I’ve heard a good bar of soap heals quickly). This time you’re in Somolia, trying to find the link to Markovs weapons.

Now I don’t want to spoil the whole campaign, this was just the first few missions. The rest is basically the same formula of switching characters every 2 missions or so.

Though I would like to point out there is a fun mission where you get to play as SAS Operatives in London.

A little girl gets blown up too.

Multiplayer

If you’ve played Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer, you’ve played Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer.

It plays the same, it feels the same, it looks the same. It does have a few new game modes but it still contains the standard Search and Destroy, TDM, Domination and more. Most with their Hardcore counterparts.
You need to be level 17 to unlock Hardcore, you’re not hardcore enough until you reach level 17.

Cool guys don’t look at explosions…but they do play Hardcore mode!

Killstreaks and Perks have been redone, they nerfed some of the more annoying ones such as Last Stand, and tried to add in some new ones attempting to implement team work. It doesn’t really work, at all.

Regardless of the game mode, MW3 Multiplayer basically consists of frantically and aimlessly running around the map, killing anything you see. This is much more simple than the usually difficult objectives of the single player campaign.

This is one of the more difficult objectives.

I could elaborate more on the Multiplayer but there isn’t much to say, if you’ve played Modern Warfare 2 or Call of Duty 4, which I’m sure you have, you’ll know what to expect from Modern Warfare 3.

Let’s move on to Gameplay.

Gameplay

Here’s a surprise, Modern Warfare 3’s gameplay is very similar to Modern Warfare 2’s gameplay….It may even be identical!

Whether you’re in the Campaign, Survival Mode, Spec Ops, or Multiplayer the gameplay remains the same. It’s your most basic run and gun FPS system.

AI like to run and gun too, it’s like they….don’t have a mind!
Like I said above, AI don’t have much of an AI. They’ve actually gotten worse since Call of Duty 4.
AI will run into battle, disregarding their safety or accuracy.

Just like any other Call of Duty game it contains your basic FPS Moments…Such as…

A Crawling Scene

A Swimming Scene

A Big Explosion Scene

And even a scene where you aren’t holding a weapon!

Also, Soap gets hurt again.

Those are the highlights of Modern Warfare 3’s exciting gameplay elements.

We’ll move onto Audio and Visuals..

Audio and Visuals

Modern Warfare 3 has slightly improved the visuals over Modern Warfare 2. For the most part it looks the same, but Character Models/Textures and Weapon Models/Textures have been improved quite a bit, as well as lighting.

The overall graphical fidelity and texture quality is still poor and lacking. This hasn’t been improved since Call of Duty 4. Though MW3 does support Ambient Occlusion, which really does improve the look of the game.

Atleast the sound has improved, greatly improved actually.
Sound in Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops and World at War has always been extremely underwhelming and dull. Modern Warfare 3 changes that and gives most weapons a totally redone sound with a kick.

While first person sounds have improved a lot, third person sounds are still very clicky. They don’t sound very powerful in other words.

The soundtrack isn’t anything special. It’s actually more annoying than anything. It seems out of place, when no combat is happening, loud patriotic music is playing. I just want to make it stop.

Overall, Modern Warfare 3 is not the best looking game, nor the best sounding game. But it looks decent enough and the improvement of the gun sounds was a nice change.

Let’s get this done with, onto the conclusion.

Conclusion

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3….Some call it the best game ever, some call it a Modern Warfare 2 map pack…others call it an expansion to a Call of Duty 4 Map Pack. I’d go with the latter. Though it’s not all bad. MW3 offers a climatic end to the Modern Warfare series with a few improvements to the overall game quality.

Now for the score…
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• Presentation: Thankfully MW3 uses Steamworks so installation is easy. Menu is well designed and flows well. Many graphical options. No bugs to be reported. Spawn points in MP are as horrible as always. 4/5
• Storyline: While it may be fun, it’s a pretty shallow and over the top story. There’s not much story to follow actually, some more development and thought could of done good for the whole Modern Warfare series. 2.5/5
• Gameplay: As basic as it gets. The Run and Gun strategy is used throughout MW3’s Multiplayer and Singleplayer. Good luck trying something else. 3/5
• Visuals/Sound: Visuals are lacking but still can pass for good. Driver supported SSAO helps with increasing visual quality. Performance is obviously fine, most users should be able to run this on medium range systems. Audio is much better than the past games, but still doesn’t go ahead of any other recent titles. 3/5
• Lasting Appeal: I guess this depends on the person but the Multiplayer is incredibly boring and I couldn’t make it to the highest level before being bored. Campaign is fun but short. Offers some replayability just for the sake of replaying. 2/5
• Overall: 58