Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Xbox 360)

First review in quite a while so be gentle!

I thought I would make my ciao comeback on what is probably my favourite Xbox title & I dare say a good majority of my fellow gamers choice too.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the latest in the line of Activision first-person shooters, developed by Infinity Ward & Sledgehammer Games with additional work by Raven Software. It is the third installment of the Modern Warfare series as you might have guessed by the title and the eighth COD title.
So what game options do we have in this latest installment?

Campaign:

We have the usual fare here, as always a good engaging story line which involves you, the player, taking on various roles throughout the story based all over the world with a lot of nice cut scenes. I don’t want to give away much of the story line here as to be honest, personally I was a little disappointed. We have a nice WW3 doomsday scenario with Russia trying to cause a nuclear war, there is a lot more to it than that but find out for yourself, certainly worth doing at least.

However, it was all over far too quickly, took me a couple of hours (admittedly not on the hardest difficulty) to whizz through it & while there is, as always, lots of fun stuff you get up to which you won’t in the other modes, it just seems to be more & more of an afterthought in this series as I’m sure, like most of my friends, not a lot of people ever bother completing the campaign mode as they usually get stuck straight into the thing people most love, online play.

So overall I’d give campaign 6/10 – Good story & gameplay but over way too quickly.

Cooperative:

In this game we have a new Survival Mode, which is not a million miles off Nazi Zombie mode, however this time the enemy do not spawn at fixed location, but are instead spawn in tactical position based on the player location. Everyone loves killing zombies though so I really think they should be giving us this in every game as standard! You can earn cash for weapons, ammo, upgrades etc. . . . We also have Special Ops which you MW2 players will be familiar with. We have 48 stars rather than 69 from MW2. We also get some new weapons that are available only in this mode.

Multiplayer:

We all know this is the main event, why everyone buys this game, where all those hours of your life have went. If you haven’t woken up on the couch, controller still in hand, at stupid hours of the morning then don’t call yourself a COD fan!

As you wouldn’t expect we don’t have any radical changes here, just a little evolution that was provided by all those many, many hours spent online. The killstreak system has had the biggest tweak, they are now Pointstreaks and taking down the enemy is no longer the only way to earn some carnage action. It’s broken down into three different forms, Assault, Support & Specialist.

Assault is basically just the same as Killstreak, the more kills in a row you get without dying the more points you get and the more punishment you can dish out to the enemy. The juggernaut suit is a nice new addition, not good coming up against someone with this perk without a rocket launcher in hand but my favourite is probably taking over as gunner of the AC130 or the Osprey but can’t say I get a 17 killstreak as often as I would like!

The Support strike packages are based on the total points you have earned throughout the match regardless of how many times you die which is a nice touch and levels the playing field a little as there are some serious players out there who in previous installments would always be breaking out the big guns and taking those less skilled to China Town constantly. We have perks such as SAM turrets, support packages, Advanced UAV and things like that.

The specialist packages reward you for every other kill, but like once killed you revert back to zero, there are 15 perks for you to select from

As well as all the standard online game modes we are all used to we have a few new treats for your enjoyment such as Team Juggernaut, Gun Game, Team Defender, One in the Chamber and Kill Confirmed. I generally find myself playing TDM or headquarters and when I’m the mood for some carnage it’s always a bit of free for all! With so many options we it keeps it fresh although I have never ever heard of anyone complaining of being bored of playing COD online!

Special Ops is also available online & features new features which make it more re-playable than before. There are two main modes, one that is pretty much the same as MW2 & a new wave based game mode where the player is either spawned in the multiplayer maps alone or with a buddy. You can buy support options with XP earned during each round.

We also have Call of Duty: Elite for all the COD super geeks out there. It’s a free subscription based service developed by Beachhead Studios for MW3 multiplayer which was released on 08/11/2011 to coincide with the release of MW2. The free version has features like lifetime statistics & social network integration so you can boast about your stats & show the world how sad your life is! The subscription version will cost you the princely sum of 49.99. You’ll get monthly downloadable content, competitions with prizes & a few other things which, for the casual gamer will be a bit OTT.

So overall what else can you give the best online game ever except 10/10. This is what it’s all about people!

The graphics on this game are better than ever, I unfortunately have only played the Xbox version so I can’t compare with the PS3 & PC versions but from what I have read/heard as you would expect much the same with the PS3, with the PC version being slightly better but I dread to think what spec of PC you would need to run it smoothly with all the settings cranked up to the max.

The game has been well received from gamers & critics alike as you would expect but you can never please everyone but I am one happy camper (sometimes literally!)

Overall I give this game a 9/10 Campaign lets it down a little due to lack of depth, even compared to previous installments but the online action more than makes up for it. Maybe I’m a little biased being such a COD fan, I know a lot of Battlefield fans out there who would disagree but that’s for another review…