Before MW3 hit shelves, I think most of us knew we were getting MW2.5. This is because Infinity Ward (Call of Duty creators) had a major fallout a few months after the MW2 release nearly 2 years ago. It took Activision time to build a new studio (Sledgehammer games) and retool the old Infinity Ward studio. By the time MW3 went into production, these studios had 8 months at most to finish it, some even claim they finished it in 5 months. Activision had Sledgehammer build the campaign for MW3, and Infinity Ward do the Multiplayer, although info has leaked out that Raven Studios helped a lot with multiplayer, probably most considering they are a full fledged gaming studio.
So what we are left with feels like a copy of MW2 that has turned out to be nothing more than a cleaned up version of that game with a few new features in place of the old ones. The stopping power perk from MW2 was put into a deathstreak in MW3 known as Hollow Points. The juggernaut deathstreak from MW2 was turned into the ballistic vests in MW3. The 25 killstreak game ending Nuke in MW2 is now just a big bomb known as the MOAB that kills everyone instead of ending the game. There was a lot of reorganizing and tweaking more than there were brand new features added, let’s just put it that way.
One of the “new” features added into MW3 are weapon proficiencies, or weapon perks. It seems like a cool feature but once you start toying around with most of them it does not feel like they do what they say. For example, the kick proficiency is for less gun recoil, but my gun does not feel like it has less recoil with the perk equipped. However, for the bullet penetration perk it works because that was something that has been in Call of Duty for years now. I kind of get the feeling most of the proficiencies are fake and for show, at least it feels that way. I would not be surprised considering the short amount of time they had to make this game.
Another new feature in MW3 is how they have the killstreaks setup, now known as pointstreaks. You can choose your standard killstreak setup like how it was in MW2, or you can choose a support setup, which earns you killstreak rewards with total kills instead of streaking. Another package is based on perks. The more kills you get in a row the more perks you unlock. You also now add onto your pointstreak with capping objectives or shooting down enemy air support. I do like how it is all setup. It is not perfect but it is probably the saving grace of the game and the only reason people will continue to play it for more than a month.
The maps in the multiplayer are downright terrible. Almost all of the maps are really small and tight making for bad spawning and boring, mindless, repetitive gun-play. The environments of the maps feel more like Arena’s than they do real life environments. The color in the maps are very bland, lighting is not crisp and skies are gray. Overall the maps just feel like they have no life. I’m guessing Raven Studios made most of the maps because they do not feel and play like any Call of Duty maps I have ever played before.
The guns in MW3 are so boring. Almost all of the Assault rifles look and sound the same. Even some of the SMG’s sound similar to one another and if they don’t, they sound like the Assault rifles, like the G36C for example.
The perks are fairly balanced but at the same time lack interesting features. I don’t know why they don’t just get rid of perks and implement most of the things that are in perks into the game as standard. It would even the playing field, and give the game much more depth and room to do new things.
Theater mode and stat tracking is a joke in MW3 compared to Black Ops. There is no theater mode public lobby to view other vids and share your own. The stat tracking is very basic, it only gives you about 5% of what Black Ops gave you. A lot of this has to do with the epic failure that is Call of Duty Elite. A major mistake by the greedy company Activision.
The only positive I can take out of the multiplayer of MW3 is that the PS3 version does not have the bad framerate, delayed loading and connection issues that plagued Black Ops last year. However, the lag in MW3 is unbearable at times. The screen skips and sometimes pauses for a couple seconds causing unwarranted deaths and unplayable games. I do expect that to be patched and fixed.
Overall my final thoughts on Modern Warfare 3 is that it is boring and feels like the franchise is treading water instead of moving forward. It does not warrant the hype and sales it will get. Modern Warfare 3 is a huge step back from Black Ops and doesn’t come close to offering the new and exciting things MW2 did when it released. Will MW3 be the downfall of CoD? Probably not right now until a legit contender comes along, but I do believe MW3 will not be played as much as MW2 and Black Ops and MW3 will be dead on youtube and on the forums pretty soon unless Activision offers unique map packs. If not, then expect the Black Ops 2 hype train to move through town early next year.
New Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 images featuring some of the classic maps Scrapyard and Terminal have apparently leaked online.
Just like you remember! EXACTLY like you remember... now give us another $70 so you can play what you were playing years ago with slightly better graphics!
They've kicked this dead horse to the point that they're relasing re-remakes. "No, this isn't the same as the Modern Warfare II we released before, this one is an actual remake instead of a reboot!"
The maps on Modern Warfare 3 were the reason I lost interest in CoD all those years ago. They were horrifically designed.
Well there's a number of reasons really but if I can pinpoint the exact moment the series died to me it was with the MW3 maps
This franchise needs a break man. Imagine if all these CoD dev teams actually working on new IPs, not just call of duty.
Sales would have to drastically decline for that to happen, which unfortunately there are zero signs of that happening...the battle passes probably make more than most games ever do in lifetime sales
So this is Modern Warfare (2019) 3. Great job Activision. I've stopped playing because of this nonsense. Plutonium is the way to go now.
Jacob writes: "Upon release, Modern Warfare 3 was hailed by the critics. They raved that it exceeded the hype, met all expectations and was one of the best first-person shooters going. It appeared Call of Duty was still king of the castle and it had the sales to back the claim up too. And yet, player reception was remarkably muted. On Metacritic, the game sits at a paltry 2.9 user rating."
Fall 2011 will always be a time that I remember. I had come off of playing 4 straight Call of Duty games; MW, WaW, MW2, and black ops with a group of my friends. MW2 was and likely always will be my favorite. I had poured months of game time into the series, so it should have been easy for Infinity Ward to sell me on the game over BF3. I had played some bad company 1&2 before, but it hadn't quite grabbed me like call of duty did. Leading up to the release of BF3 and MW3, one stood above the other in my mind.
BF3 was all out warfare that I had never seen before, and the graphics looked so good! In contrast, MW3 looked like MW2....but maybe even worse. I decided to try the beta for BF3. That's when my mind was made up - the chaos of Operation Metro consumed me. Putting in over 20 hours into the beta during the couple day period. I told my friends they had to try it. A couple did, but only one of them got hooked the way I did. The rest were still on the COD hype train and didn't want anything to do with Battlefield.
When both games released, the public perception was clear. Although MW3 certainly sold more, there isn't much of a question in many people's minds which was the better offering. MW3 was a drab rerelease of MW2, while BF3 is one of the best games in the series, and one of the best FPS games of all time.
Some of my friends got sick of MW3 fairly quickly and switched to Battlefield, but there's still some of them that never got to experience the greatness of that game.
I have since switched back and forth between the series' depending on how poor each offering is, but I have to say, I still get much more excited about Battlefield games.
I could talk about my experiences in BF3 for hours, but I'll end it here for all of our sakes ;)
I remember telling my friends back in 2007 "keep battlefield 3 on your radar boys!"
You know what’s weird, I have played all cod’s since.. well cod 4. Put thousand upon thousands of hours into them. Loved mw1. Loved WaW. Loved MW2. Loved blops. Hated, hated mw3. Still couldn’t never put my finger on why.
Really the only ones I hated were ghosts, IW, Aw , Cold War and MW3. (And maybe vanguard)
A rep from Activision has confirmed that all reports about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered being in the works are false.
It would’ve been nice to be able to finish the trilogy in remastered form but at the same time, I’m not super surprised - by the time 3 came around they’d milked MW to death and it was the weakest of the 3 by far.
Every few years I replay one of the old cod and I like them for some fun, it would be nice to have it remastered when I get back to it in 5-10 years.
looks like you have plenty of time to remaster it yourself if its that important.
i agree 100% with your description of maps, it just feel worng, the feel the atmosphere sucks, very soulless and bland.
and.....bring hans zimmer back, the soundtrack blows compared to mw2 and CoD 4( made by harry williams)
Good review. 12 out of 16 maps are boring and bland, which wasn't the case with MW2 or even Black Ops. CoD4 still has the best maps out of all. I think MW3 is the beginning of end to Call of duty franchise.
"The guns in MW3 are so boring. Almost all of the Assault rifles look and sound the same. Even some of the SMG’s sound similar to one another and if they don’t, they sound like the Assault rifles, like the G36C for example."
Agree %100. What's the difference between an SMG and Assault rifle? the bullet count.
My biggest complaint (as a PS3 gamer) is the performance. Though nowhere near as bad as Black Ops, MW3 still has performance issues (ie. frame rate stuttering and lag) that are non-existant in MW2. I can't see why it just won't run like MW2.