Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is, depending on how you're counting, either the eighth game in the Call of Duty series or the third game in the Modern Warfare subseries. It's the standard modern military game, with realistic weapons, relatively frail (i.e., not able to absorb dozens of bullets like an action hero) main characters, and intrigue involving terrorism and special forces. It offers the action formula we've been enjoying since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out in 2007, with a very few tweaks. It stands against Battlefield 3 and matches it in features and content. The two games have a few significant differences, but they're a matter of taste rather than either game being better than the other.

Modern Warfare 3 picks up where Modern Warfare 2 left off. I mean, exactly where it left off. Russia is at war with America, Makarov is at large, Soap's injured, and everything is blowing up. If you didn't play Modern Warfare 2, which served as a decent starting point and didn't require the first game to understand it, you won't have any idea about what's going on, and the game doesn't do much to get you up to date. It feels very much like the third movie in a trilogy, and the second movie ended on a cliffhanger. That said, Modern Warfare 3 still tells an epic story and wraps up the Modern Warfare trilogy very nicely.

Gameplay
The gameplay, both in single player and multiplayer modes, is identical to that of Modern Warfare 2. You can carry two weapons and two types of grenades (one offensive, one special) at one time and you have to hide behind cover and employ tactical savvy in your approach firefights if you want to kill your enemies. It's an established and functional style that captures modern, "realistic" first-person shooter games. If you get hit a few times, you need to hide behind cover until you heal, or a few more stray bullets can kill you. It's unforgiving, but balanced.

The single-player campaign will last you about six hours, and it takes you everywhere from New York to Africa to Germany. It's short, but exciting and full of big set pieces and lots of action. Most of the game takes place on foot, but you'll take control of mounted guns on vehicles and drones to takes out groups of enemies during chases and attacks. The gameplay is extremely linear, with every level leading you through a set path like a guided tour of a firefight. Unfortunately, these firefights keep to the Modern Warfare Combat Randomness Pattern: any time you get pinned down by enemies, there's a 50% chance you have to kill them all and a 50% chance you have to rush through because they'll keep spawning. There's little indication which is which, and no logic for the endlessly-spawning firefights that force you to run to the next area. It gets predictable and frustrating, especially in open areas where the only way to find out the right way to move on is by trial and error.

Besides the single-player campaign, you can play Special Forces missions either solo or with a friend. These are shorter, standalone missions that give you extra challenge with time limits and different difficulty levels, along with a leveling system that gives you additional equipment as you play through them. They're a nice boost of extra content, but they play like remixed versions of the single-player campaign's levels, and you'll probably drop them after a single playthrough and move to the multiplayer game.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer is the big draw of Modern Warfare 3, and it pays off just as much as it did in the other games in the series. There are the same seemingly endless customization options, with an experience system and the ability to build your own class with different weapons and abilities. The killstreak system from previous games has been refined into a points-based system that gives players more balance. Instead of getting points for each kill, players can choose Assault, Support, and Specialist modes that give them different rewards. Assault is the traditional killstreak system, where you get new abilities like missile strikes for more kills in a single life. Support counts your kills and other actions between lives, constantly moving up and giving you support-based abilities like UAVs. Specialist gives you more perks for your kills, instead of new weapons it effectively turns you into a super-soldier who's faster, stronger, or able to take more damage.

The different multiplayer options and the Hardcore and Advanced lists keep the game interesting even when you raise your levels and unlock all your weapons. While Team Deathmatch and its variants are some of the most popular, objective-based game modes can also hold your interest. Activision also offers Call of Duty Elite, a premium online service that community features, statistics tracking, and guides to the Modern Warfare 3 experience. It's free, but gamers can pay an additional $50 per year for access to monthly DLC, clan advantages, and other things that enhance the game. However, since the premium access costs almost as much as the game itself, we're not including those features as part of the game.

The multiplayer options offer a benefit over Battlefield 3, which only has six cooperative missions compared to over a dozen in Modern Warfare 3. Competitive play is pretty evenly matched, with leveling in Modern Warfare 3 universal and steadily unlocking weapons and skills and leveling in Battlefield 3 and rewarding your class as you play it. The big difference between the two games is that Battlefield 3 has vehicles, which can change the nature of a game dramatically. To go to extremes, Modern Warfare 3 is more suitable for Counter-Strike fans, while Battlefield 3 is more suitable for Halo fans, but the distinction between the two modern combat games are far smaller than the rift between the two classic shooters.

Modern Warfare 3 is a solid follow-up to Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, and if you loved those games you'll love this one. It doesn't change anything big, and the single-player campaign wraps up a story with most of the exposition lodged in previous games, but it offers a great multiplayer experience and a solid, if predictable and occasionally frustrating, single-player experience. It's an incremental sequel, but it's just what fans of the series need: even more of the same, with slight improvements and tweaks. If you have to choose between Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, ask yourself whether you prefer vehicles or more cooperative mission content. Those are the biggest distinctions, and they're not enough to make either game clearly better than the other.

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