Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) (PS3)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009).

With a game as successful as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) (CoD:MW2), making over $1 billion within three months, the future of the Call of Duty franchise would be surely be guaranteed. However, that future would not include series creators Jason West and Vince Zampella. It’s a very infamous and well-documented story, but the short version is that West and Zampella wanted more creative control over Call of Duty (CoD) following Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s (CoD4) success, though Activision CEO Bobby Kotick included a loophole in the agreement that control would revert back to Activision if the duo were ever fired. Soon after, Activision did everything in their power through an internal campaign dubbed “Project Icebreaker” to find a reason to replace the duo during development of CoD:MW2, which included plans to stage a fake fire drill to copy Infinity Ward employee emails. After CoD:MW2 came out and proved a massive success, West and Zampella were fired after renegotiations fell through, with Activision accusing them of “insubordination”. About 40 of Infinity Ward’s employees, numbering around 100 at the time, would quit and leave with West and Zampella to form Respawn Entertainment, who would develop the Titanfall series in partnership with Electronic Arts before later being acquired wholly by EA and making both Apex Legends and the Star War Jedi series. In the meantime, however, Infinity Ward was in the midst of developing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (CoD:MW3), now put in jeopardy without the studio’s founders, and the publisher was in a legal battle over unpaid CoD:MW2 royalties. As such, Activision would seek assistance from Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software to help with development on CoD:MW3, which would see the light of day in late 2011.

That brings us to now, as I now finish my journey through the original Modern Warfare trilogy. I didn’t remember hearing too much from other people around the release of CoD:MW3, but I did remember hearing about the drama around West and Zampella (especially the fire drill story). I was already planning on playing CoD:MW3 to round out the trilogy, but after enjoying Infinity Ward’s work on CoD4 and CoD:MW2, even with whatever criticisms I may have expressed, my curiosity grew about how the studio would handle CoD without any involvement from its creators. Although Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward did their best given the situation, it’s impossible to ignore the effect of West and Zampella’s absence in the final product.

Shortly after the events of CoD:MW2, Soap and Price are extracted by Russian ally Nikolai to a safe house in India, but are attacked by Makarov’s forces, leaving Soap injured. Price seeks help from Nikolai’s best man, a former Spetsnaz operator named Yuri with a grudge against Makarov. Meanwhile, a Delta Force squad helps defend American forces in New York against Russian troops, forcing them to withdraw. Three months later, Russian president Boris Vorshevsky flies to Hamburg for peace talks with the US, but Makarov will stop at nothing when it comes to perpetuating World War 3.

Just to get this part out of the way, CoD:MW3 doesn’t feature any significant gameplay changes from CoD:MW2, even using almost exactly the same UI and in-game HUD. A couple minor changes that I noticed were that the Campaign mode in the main menu now displays your total playtime and, in-game, Cross now has you completely stand up from Prone instead of going from Prone to Crouch. The biggest change is that there is no longer a diagetic training Mission, instead having the player select their difficulty level right from the start (I once again selected Rookie) and folding the tutorial into the Mission “Black Tuesday”. There’s also another Disturbing Content notice like the one that CoD:MW2 used for “No Russian”, though this time I opted to receive a reminder so that I would know which Mission the game referred to this time (so that I could ignore the warning again).

While playing, I did notice that while the graphics (color palette aside) somehow looked better than what had come before, and props for including colorblind options for the first time, I did run into some glitches. Nothing that broke the game too much, but I did witness a dead body clip through the ground and, in a separate instance, a dead body float in midair until I reloaded the checkpoint. I’ll also mention that while Intel was much easier to collect than CoD:MW2 (with no reward for doing so), I had more issues with grenades, as I sometimes didn’t see the explosion that I expected. I have no idea how much of that was my perception, however, so I’m not completely blaming the game for this one.

An underwater section looked impressive even today.

As for the story, CoD:MW2 ended at a climactic point, but Makarov wasn’t defeated, so it makes sense that CoD:MW3 would focus on going after him, even if it doesn’t go in quite the direction you’d expect based on the previous game’s ending. As a continuation, I still felt attached to the returning characters, including Soap and Price, as well as Yuri and Delta Force members David “Frost” Westbrook and Sandman. Even though Frost doesn’t speak a single line, the events that happened around him felt significant and I felt bad when I accidentally made him shoot one of his squadmates (enough that I would reload the last checkpoint each time). Delta Force and the disavowed Task Force 141 both make significant efforts towards ending WW3 for good and both sides of the story continued influencing each other in ways that keep you invested in finding out what happened next. Yuri is interesting as a playable Russian ally, though he has a surprising relevance to the story outside of his relation to Captain Price. In fact, there’s a shocking late game twist that slightly recontextualizes the entire trilogy by connecting seemingly disparate iconic events from CoD4 and CoD:MW2 together in a way that feels plausible.

While I did like some elements of the story, I couldn’t ignore that the longer it went on, the more it felt “off” compared to the previous entries. CoD:MW2 did start sliding into a more action-oriented direction, but still balanced it out with the comparatively more grounded approach of CoD4. CoD:MW3, on the other hand, veers harder into the “action movie” direction, with even more blockbuster setpieces and increasingly outlandish developments. The most egregious of these is the idea that Makarov managed to go from a full-scale invasion of the US to invading all of Europe within only three months, a completely unrealistic timeline by any stretch that really bends willing suspension of disbelief.

This wonky timeline also affects “Davis Family Vacation”, a playable cinematic attached to the end of “Mind the Gap” that’s responsible for the game’s Disturbing Content notice. What happens in it, should you choose to go through with it, is indeed very tragic, but it didn’t have nearly the same effect on me that “No Russian” did in CoD:MW2, since it serves no narrative purpose apart from showcasing the tragic loss of a small family in the midst of war. Once you think more about the timeline of events, however, you start scratching your head at how an American family could be on their third day of a European vacation in the middle of a major war. All this to say that “Davis Family Vacation” felt more forced than “No Russian” and would have absolutely no impact on the story if it was cut (though skipping it does give you a different ending to “Mind the Gap”, interestingly enough).

Like its predecessors, certain Missions stood out to me. “Black Tuesday”, the first one where the player has any control, takes place in the streets of New York City and even takes the fight into the New York Stock Exchange, which provided an interesting environment with plenty of natural cover that I hadn’t considered. “Turbulence” not only takes place on a plane and has you playing as a relatively “normal” person, but smoothly transitions into a ground battle against armed Russian forces before a finale that takes advantage of the game’s UI for a neat twist.

Fighting in New York proved interesting.

The biggest issue, however, is how often the game recycles iconic Missions and moments from CoD4 and CoD:MW2. As much as I like "Turbulence" and how it expands on its predecessor “Mile High Club”, its twist ending still reminded me of “No Russian”, the only difference being the exact execution. There are also a greater number of stealth Missions that borrow heavily from “All Ghillied Up” and “Cliffhanger”, either in whole or in part. I liked “All Ghillied Up” and “Cliffhanger”, but the repetition made these feel less special, crossing over into a lack of imagination when the sequential “Eye of the Storm” and “Blood Brothers” blatantly copy the sequential structure of CoD4’s “All Ghillied Up” and “One Shot, One Kill”. Even though they didn’t copy the execution 1:1, they felt uninspired compared to their originals. Then there’s how the game loves copying “Death from Above”, which built its gameplay around commentary of how cold and disconnected drone warfare is, within Missions like “Return to Sender” and “Iron Lady”, but presented the use of drones more heroically. This presentation is perhaps a result of CoD:MW3’s change in tone from its predecessors, which still shows how awful war is while amping it up at every opportunity, but I thought it missed the point behind “Death from Above” regardless. 

Then there’s the ending. There is some satisfaction in seeing Makarov finally get his comeuppance and the Mission itself, “Dust to Dust”, has a unique scenario that punishes speeding through groups of enemies in tight quarters. However, the finale and the buildup to it is rushed and the game ends abruptly after Makarov’s death. I can only guess that this was a side effect of the unusual development cycle between West and Zampella leaving and Sledgehammer assisting what remained of Infinity Ward.

Once you finish the game, you’re again guided to the Special Ops mode, which you can play solo or with another player, either locally or online. Though you’re prompted to create a profile before you can play, this time you can continue without saving your progress. When you go in, there are now three distinct modes: Survival, Missions and Chaos. Missions are what you’d expect if you played CoD:MW2, but now with additional scenarios that can involve perspective changes from the Campaign. Interestingly, this mode locks additional scenarios behind player rank, rather than stars, and actually features an obstacle course in “Stay Sharp”, but expects you to already know how to play (not the worst assumption since it’s the third in a trilogy and you’ve ideally learned from the Campaign, but not the best for people who only want to play multiplayer modes). Survival is a wave-based mode where you fend off increasingly strong enemies, upgrading your equipment (depending on your player rank) or refilling your ammo as needed between waves. It’s actually kind of fun, though communication is key. I would have written about Chaos mode here as well, but it prompted me to go Multiplayer and buy DLC instead, so that’s all I have to say about Special Ops for now.

I'm not paying $15 for one game mode.

Compared with previous games, there’s a bit more going on with Multiplayer. There are now multiple playlist categories that you can peruse to your liking and you can more easily edit your Callsign right away, but Clan Tags are still locked behind a higher Player level. Those who go through the effort of grinding Prestige Mode now have a Prestige Shop where they can exchange Prestige Tickets for special items. If you choose offline Split Screen, you will also need a profile separate from the one used for Special Ops (for some reason).

While the Online component does have a number of game modes of its own, most locked behind higher Player levels, the notable new modes attempt to put a new spin on existing formats. In this case, Kill Confirmed is a variant of Team Deathmatch where you must also recover enemy Dog Tags and Team Defender is Capture the Flag, but you must hold for a team double scoring bonus. Offline Split Screen also has a few new alternate modes: Drop Zone (Hold the Drop Zone for Team Points and Care Packages), Team Juggernaut (Defend your Team’s Juggernaut to become the next Juggernaut), Juggernaut (Everyone fights against the Juggernaut. Kill the Juggernaut to become the new Juggernaut), Gun Game (Be the first to dominate with all eighteen guns), Infected (Eliminated survivors become Infected. Infect everyone or survive to win.) and One in the Chamber (You start with one bullet and gain ammo by eliminating enemies).

As for the multiplayer experience, I didn’t have a positive experience online. I did quickly get into a Team Deathmatch lobby, but my team was outnumbered by many very experienced players and got steamrolled. It didn’t help that the respawn points were atrocious and I often ended up dying seconds after getting back in. When the match ended, I tried the other modes that I could access, but no one showed up after about five minutes each time. This gave me the impression that, just like CoD4, it’s Team Deathmatch or bust. At this point, I’m sensing a pattern with older games where I actually try the online multiplayer. Offline fared better, but many modes still ran into the problem of one player steamrolling another and ended with the conclusion that more is better. Overall, I had much more fun with CoD:MW2’s multiplayer and would pick that up again if I so desired.

The fantasy.

Before I end here, it’s worth noting that there’s even more DLC with this entry compared with its predecessor. Aside from asking to pay for the Chaos Split Screen mode, CoD:MW3 has loads of map and content packs, enough that there are even collections of the content packs, all still available for purchase; perhaps a sign of things to come. There was even a Call of Duty Elite mobile and console app, with an advertisement baked into the game, that allowed players to look at and compare stats, with some social media functionality to boot. On top of that, you had the option to pay a subscription fee for even more benefits aside from the two hours of Double XP you’d get for signing up. As of this writing, the app is no longer available, so I have nothing more to say about that.

Despite my criticisms, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a good game. It has some memorable moments and the story does a good job of neatly wrapping up the trilogy as a whole while staying consistent with who the characters are. However, although Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer made the most out of a bad situation, and it’s amazing that the game still turned out as well as it did, the corporate politics surrounding the development had a noticeable impact, resulting in a lot of the recycling seen in the back half of the game. As such, it's more of the bronze medal of the original Modern Warfare trilogy, but it’s worth playing and I would happily recommend it to those who have played the first two entries.