Image: Activision
There are four reasons why every geek needs Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
1. The story line grabs you from the start.
The story picks right up where Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 left off. This story brings with it the conclusion of the one of the most epic first-person shooter games of all time. It took me around six hours to complete the entire campaign, but everyone will have different completion times according to their style of play. The campaign is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has 3 acts with a total of 17 missions within. There are seven missions in the first act, six missions in the second, and four missions in the third. Players are teamed up with the old friends of Task Force 141 members Capt. John Price and John “Soap” MacTavish, who at the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was wounded while dispatching renegade U.S. Gen. Hershel Shepherd. There’s still work for Price and Soap to do because the ultra-nationalist Russian force remains on U.S. soil. The game has one main goal: tracking down the leader of the Russian forces, Vladimir Makarov.
I was surprised, towards the conclusion of the game, at how strongly I felt at the ending [spoiler averted]. These are characters we’ve fought with before on the battlefield, smoked a cigar with, shared our bullets with, and swapped war stories with. To have evoked this emotional response in us who have lived in the Modern Warfare story arc is no surprise. I applaud the fact we’ve finished the story line with Modern Warfare 2.5. This game doesn’t need a drastic rewrite of the story. It doesn’t need new characters, as we want to love Price and Soap the way they were. This is a game that rocks your testosterone, adrenaline and endorphins, as you are fighting in a constant state of war chaos. You have one thing only on your mind: find Makarov somewhere in the smoke and fire, and give him what he deserves.
2. The co-op version of Multiplayer rocks!
I played through a few of the maps in Multiplayer with my son. This is a feature introduced with Call of Duty: Black Ops, and one that should be more celebrated. I liked the ability to play through Multiplayer in split-screen with another person. There is a “band of brothers” feeling you have when you’re hiding behind a wall, covering your teammate, and providing cover fire so he can hunt down and destroy your opponents. The maps are large enough to provide several vantage points and cover terrain, giving you plenty of freedom of movement and an expansive gameplay experience. And playing co-op multiplayer is a great way of feeling the Call of Duty love while bonding with your son!
3. A brand-new Multiplayer feel.
The multiplayer experience adds a whole level of gun-on-gun gameplay, with no more AC130s killing you immediately after you spawn onto the map and nukes being launched two minutes into the game — the multiplayer is much more focused on the success of you and your gun. Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games were able to find a very happy medium: balancing killstreaks, weapons, the levelling of your character and the leveling of your gun. The weapon leveling is the newest aspect of Multiplayer, and allows a player to level up a weapon based on the XP obtained using the gun. I found this to be an innovative addition that adds another dimension of challenge and complexity to the game. There is no more boosting for camos. While the weapons themselves are still unlocked through character level progression, camos, attachments and proficiencies are all achieved by levelling up your guns.
4. Spec Ops!
The spec ops has changed in some ways: Along with just having Mission mode in Spec Ops, there’s Survival mode — very simliar to Horde in Gears of War 3 and Firefight in HALO Reach. It’s a wave-based “survival battle” where one to two players combat against increasingly difficult enemies on various multiplayer maps. This is sort of similar to Zombies, but the AI has guns. The waves are generated randomly, but become increasingly difficult, so that in the later stages of the game, players end up facing multiple Juggernauts, dogs strapped with C4 and enemy air support simultaneously. And you can’t win in this game mode, as the waves keep coming until you die.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Hardened Edition comes with a full year of the Call of Duty Elite service, developed by Beachhead Studio. It has a a console component, a PC component, and a soon-to-be-released mobile component. The service has struggled to keep up with the enormous demand from players. Activision has commented on the matter, saying that the services’ infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the volume of demand from both console and web platforms. That serves as a pointed testament to how popular this awesome franchise is and will remain for some time to come.
