Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Shouldn’t Exist – Review

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 by Kelly Stretch | Xbox Series X

Welcome to the annual instalment of how we feel about a game franchise that once helped define a genre, and now well, I’m hoping it’s showing other devs how not to put an FPS together.

The thing is, Call of Duty will ALWAYS have stellar gunplay. That alone is enough for a couple million people every year. I would say that Destiny, at one point, in its very early life, compared. And did I play Destiny. Thousands of hours of it. But then they got it too wrong in too many places, and I am wondering if we are near, or even beyond that, for the Call of Duty Franchise.

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I don’t even really want to talk about the campaign. It shouldn’t exist. It’s about 4 hours, and seems to me to be completely plucked out of Warzone and pieced together to ship a “total package”. The story is barely there, the missions are lacklustre, and then it just ends. Really. I was sort of just waiting for the next mission to load up. Cue Credits. I was not impressed. Rather leave it out.

Let’s talk about Zombies. Great mode, great fun. It needs friends or voice comms. I like that it sort of stands on its own with rewards and camos, but not everyone on this planet (yet) has played Zombies, and a tutorial would have been great. I may define this mode as the saving grace of MWIII. It remains deeply satisfying to shotgun a zombie in MWIII.

On to the mains then, MWIII Multiplayer.

It is what it is. You’ve played it year after year. This year you can slide and jump, and honestly, the jump isn’t well developed. You look like a flailing dolphin, and I suggest switching that off in your settings. The slide is better and more of a tactical advantage.

I have tried this game on three different screens on default settings. The game looks washed out. This makes it almost impossible to see enemies, and worse, it strains the eyes quickly. After spending some time on YouTube, I fiddled around with settings I shouldn’t have to look at considering I am not colour blind and eventually got the game looking vibrant and enemies popping a bit more off the map. I truly find this unacceptable in a AAA full priced game. This is the smallest of optimisations for the player experience, surely in visual media and entertainment, I shouldn’t be having to test 3 screens to make sure I am not going crazy at an idea I could just not wrap my head around the devs shipping the game with.

Guns are great. There is a great selection, lots of customisation waiting for them in terms of their parts, and camos, skins, stickers and more just waiting for you to unlock via some very grindy challenges.

Kill Streaks and tactical and lethal options remain much the same year on year.

Operators can be bought or unlocked. Yes, you can be Nicki Minaj in MWIII 2023. Please don’t.

I am hoping to see the multiplayer at least improve over the year as a live service, but the campaign is simply inexcusable, and I am not sure the franchise can withstand another debacle in this form.

While Call of Duty will always stand as a giant of FPS games, I think something needs to be done here. Either we bid it goodbye and open the talented devs and studios working on these games to other options, or we need to see a great overhaul. One for the players, not the in game store.