News Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review

great choice, great choice!


MW1: great game.
MW2: screw PC, but fun new kill streaks and laugh at people complaining about commando and quick scope (yes on PC)
MW3: M'eh. same as MW2, with more "screw PC" attitude than ever before. where's Elite? who are they to call PC platform insecure?

for singleplayer, let's face it. CoD and BF series are both heavily multiplayer dominated game. you don't go watch a comedy film expecting an exciting and twisting storyline. if multiplayer can't stand on its own merits then the game fails hard.


end of the day, i hope this trend of marketing hype budget >> development budget will stop. Indie developers are the real heroes of industry, pushing innovation and creative boundaries. Activision (and EA's, considering the rumoured BF3 marketing budget) marketing are the devil, destroying innovation in favour of yearly releases purely on franchise's name.

 

*COUGH COUGH* ARMA II *COUGH COUGH*

 

i think the era of the modern military manshoot is pretty much dead.

 

People review MW3 and say M'eh lots in the review. Totally expected.

I'm not knocking Joe's review. You can always rely on Joe for an honest appraisal of the subject and an entertaining read. But.....

You don't play a COD game expecting massive amounts of plot depth, character development and gaming innovation. You play a COD game expecting a massive body count and loads of huge explosions. And in my opinion it delivers that in spades.

I'm about an hour into the campaign playing it on the hardened setting (why don't people do this? It extends the play time!) and I'm really enjoying it.

I've had a quick dabble in the multiplayer and it was loads of fun also. I'm sure I'll put a good hours into it before I get bored.

No one ever mentions the spec ops mode. My brother and I have had hours of entertainment playing the spec ops in MW2 and I'm sure we'll be doing it all again in MW3.

So M'eh to M'eh. If you want some mindless fun then it's a great game.

 

I also explained that that's (partially) infrastructure based (my opposition to Multiplayer), TYVM.
Different priorities also play into that (for example my unwillingness to commit hours and hours to being abused online in a game - which is something I quite frankly don't enjoy...).
Clearly, that means something's wrong at my side...

First off: No need to apologise. I understand that I am in the minority here, and I understand that a review by definition is a opinion of an idividual or a group of people, and not an absolute.

Then - the spoiler made me LOL.

I italicised the bits that I would have hoped to read in the quote above. Fair enough to imply it, I guess.

You responded well, and said what I wanted to hear in comments. I appreciate that.

The single player was covered (and this is the main gripe of mine) in a (perceived as such by me) tone that implied not luiking the game from the start. It sounded a bit like "Blah blah... more of the same, oh and you shoot people in single player."

As for the other reviews - Maybe it's because it said what I was hoping to hear, but I personally enjoyed the way The Register handled reviewing both games (for example). "Single player's as dumb and as much fun as watching a michael bay film". That sums it all up for me, that's what I was expecting, and that's in all likelyhood why I'll buy the game - To forget about serious crap for a bit, and let myself be distracted by drivel for a while.
I'll probably buy BF3 as well (and on the console... - I know...) and play the single player.

As for the price premium mentioned: It's non existant here - at least not on consoles.

 

I like BF and COD just as much as each other. I just wish they would stop making the campaign linear pieces of ****. Arma II is the only fps I can think of which isn't linear. Multiplayer wise COD feels like COD, and BF3 has actually changed slightly. But I feel the rating was a bit low as the game it self isn't bad just a bit meh, so imo for a meh game it would have 60-70% not 55%.

 

What i meant - for example i see acceptable to pay 50€ for Deus Ex HR, which gives you 20+ hours of fun. I find that price segment acceptable for games which offer 10+ hours of singleplayer (and optionally multiplayer content). I don't find 60€ acceptable for 5 hour singleplayer and especially if we ignore the multiplayer content - because your single reason to buy this game is singleplayer, right ?

1 hour of gameplay for €12, now that probably matches or goes over many people hourly salary .

 

Great review. This is just Activi$ion cashing in on the COD franchise.

 

Bang on the money. They don't deserve a good score for being lazy gits - and there should be more reviewers out there ramming it down their throats.

You only have to take a look at the metacritic score (1.6 out of 10 from users after 1200 rates - http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3) to see that there is a consensus in the general public. Seems like some reviewers received a wad of cash!

 

They don't need a good review it will still have sold millions

Cod and bf3 play both works better ( bf 3 needs a clan to enjoy best )

 

I'll be buying both games eventually, and in both I will only play single player. Whats wrong with that? Oh and an off-the-top-of-my-head convertion, I'll be getting both for 40€ each. At the end of the day I buy a game for my enjoyment, nothing else for no one else.

+1. Something about being called pathetic noob when killed a few times, then have "Hackz" screamed at me cause I killed said person once - i don't know why, but I really don't enjoy that

After all that, I have to say that this whole BF vs. CoD:MW is rather distasteful and show the general level of mental maturity that both sides have. Yes both sides are correct (shocking, i know) there is no improvement, but the "same old sneak, shoot people, escape" arguement can be played to every FPS, and is actually also why we want to play MW 3 or BF 3.

In fact I'm just going to go ahead and say: Forza 4 is s**t! its the same old thing, nothing is new. I mean you still driving around a closed track, IN A CAR no less! Thats soooooo
Forza 1!!

/ 2 cents

 

...as long as they don't go back to making WW2 ones...

 

Fair enough...
I also spend close on 40 Euros on The Gunstringer, which is 4 hours long.
I also spend ~25 Euros on 90 minutes of film
I also spend ~30 Euros on an hour-and-a-bit of music I appreciate around here.
You see, in this country, it's not that bad to spend that amount of money on that little gameplay. So that perhaps relativates it all a bit.

 

Good review! I got MW3 the other day, I have not had time to play much yet, I think it is a very canny observation on how the WWII instalments of this game seemed to fall out of favour and now the modern era environment is doing the same.

I am certainly one of the few players in this for the single player campaign storyline, MW was far fetched but well written and engaging, MW2 was preposterous and engaging. It appears MW3's story is going to be equally ridiculous, I hope it is more enjoyable than the campaign in BF3 which other than good main protagonist characters was a pretty disappointing story.

As an action fan you can see how COD has followed action movies and tv genres really well, people saw Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and were able to experience a similar great well scripted story in COD. Again movie genres changed, Jack Bauer 24, Jason Bourne etc became high profile, again COD switched and again the story writing is pretty compelling (only marginally more unbelievable than 24 and Bourne at least, still great stories). Nowadays look at the genres in media, I think action as a whole is pretty much stagnant so corresponding interest in games based on this genre is going to fall off, if there is nothing new to offer in multplayer then it is understandable that the review score may be low.

 

Yet, go into a shop and watch how many parents buy that game for the kid for christmas..

 

meh I enjoy the game, it's like a summer action movie it's predictable and over the top. It is very over the top.

All said and done, The graphics are more advanced in battlefield 3, but there are more glitches. BF3 of course has tanks and planes, but the infantry to infantry combat in mw3 is better. They are both great games and don't need to be in direct competition. I pplay both

 

Honest review makes me happy face

 

Thank you, Joe, for your honest and unvarnished opinion of the game; a brave thing considering the cowardly prose spewed out by others, in an attempt to avoid fanboy backlash.

I was hoping for more from MW3, but I'm not surprised that it failed to move on from the previous games.

I just cannot bring myself to care about multiplayer anymore, given the increasingly appalling behaviour of a significant number of players (not just the 13yr olds either!), and the sub-5 hour SP campaigns that are not worth the money. As such, I won't be touching MW3 or BF3 until they hit the bargain bins.

I didn't miss World at War, when I decided to give that a wide berth (although I stupidly bought the tragedy that is CODBLOPS), so I'm sure I'll manage to get by sticking to the likes of Arkham City; and other games that offer you something for your investment, that isn't governed by the mindset of a bunch of Ritalin-deficient tw@ts i.e. 20+ hours of thoughtfully crafted gameplay.

M'eh, indeed.

 

I've yet to find a player like that on BF3.

 

MW3 and BF3 are completly different games and other than pointing out the advancements of one over the other in terms of technology they should be judged almost as different genres.
Although i like the review, on second reading i think its a bit over the top. MW3 is addressing the backlash against MW2 by giving PC gamers back the dedi's and thats what the clan gamers want speaking for my own clans wait for a repacement for MW1, to be able to play CoD in matches not just public public and although i dont have it yet me fellow clan member say its match playable out the box. I think BF3 does a great job as a public MP game the visuals and destruction are great but there are major bugs to be addressed i honestly dont think i've had a complete hour of play without a disconnect or a crash and as far as i can see there needs to be some sort of mod for easier match play.