Modern Warfare 3

November 19th, 2011

So,  2 years in the making, more hype than you could shake a UAV at, and hundreds of thousands of devoted fans waiting eagerly with their controllers to hand – it must be time for the new Call of Duty game. The wait is over and from the moment the disk starts spinning and the opening screen loads with that all too familiar sound, you can tell Activision’s megolithic war franchise is back with a bang. Despite Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey’s Sledgehammer Games stepping in to finish development after the now infamous Infinity Ward fiasco, Modern Warfare 3 fortunately doesn’t seem to have suffered too badly from its slightly difficult birth.

Makarov is here once again threatening the western civilisation and all that it stands for; the only thing between him and his long sought victory being you and your battle hardened team, supported by the determined and well trained Captain John Price, Soap Mactavish and a wealth of Russian informants working for your comrade Nikolai.

From the get go you are thrown in to the thick of battle with the story set hours after MW2 left off. No firing range or demonstration just straight up, full on first person shooter action with those clean and smooth graphics we’ve come to expect from the Modern Warfare franchise. For all the true die hard COD fans, the glitch last year that was Black Ops, can now be forgotten. Whilst BLOPS couldn’t be put back on the shelf any quicker, MW3 returns to the fast paced action with crisp looks and faultless precision that any good shooter deserves.

There’s a tremendous amount of variety in the levels, from racing your dingy through massive warships and submarine wreckages, to fighting off armoured helicopters with a remote controlled machine gun, and the good old faithful breach and clears in slow mo – everyone loves a slow mo shotgun action sequence. And all this occurs within the first 3 levels of the game! The pace continues across the globe with some breathtaking graphics and one particularly gruesome scene. So if you don’t want to see what happened to that young tourist near Downing St, make sure you switch the mature setting off.

As we all know, COD games are not renowned for the12-15 hrs worth of storyline but what you do get is a solid game, amazing graphics and game play and to be honest the real reason we’re here is… MULTIPLAYER!

As the old saying goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but hey Infinity Ward didn’t listen to that. There are many new additions including a weapons proficiency, which allows you to not just rank up as a player but to enhance the gun you are using and unlock additional perks for your favourite weapon that range from FOCUS, which enables to keep your aim on an enemy whilst being hit, to Impact which offers greater bullet penetration through walls.

Not only do you have the choice on how to progress throughout your online career you can now choose between 3 (yes 3 ) different type of kill streaks. There’s assault, which includes your predators/AC130 etc… and your kill streak resets each time you die; specialist which earns you extra perks as your kill streak increases; and support where your streak builds up as the game goes on, regardless of how many times you die.

With all this included you wouldn’t think this game could get any better. What’s that I hear you say, it doesn’t have HORDE like Gears or Zombies like Black Ops, no, no it doesn’t but what has been thrown in the mix this time round is the Survival mode, where ever increasing waves of enemies from shot gun welding terrorist to Apache helicopters continually endeavour to end your game before you can earn the next perk. This whole section of game play has its own ranking system.

All in all this game was well worth the wait and when the next COD comes out without the Infinity Ward tag, leave it on the shelf.

Words > Ben Sewell

Tags: Activision, Call of Duty, Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 3