MWIII Proves what we have all feared
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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III (Reviewed)
Released: November 10th, 2023
Price: $70 USD
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is the most recent title to be released by Infinity Ward and Activision. It embodies what the series has evolved into throughout the years. It's repetitive, feels dated but overall it's an okay game held back by CoD.
CoD died long ago. This, I feel, is a fairly common argument that many players share about the series, with nostalgia and simpler times playing a large part in why they love the originals so much, such as Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops Zombie mode. The issue is that many of these games are simply overpriced for what they provide and have one priority in mind, being DLC / Battlepass pushes to get you to buy things. It doesn't seem fair to pay upwards of $80-100 for 5 hours of classic Call of Duty "cinematic" story and filler without touching Multiplayer.
Multiplayer has traditionally been the focus of Call of Duty games, the question arises. Why spend so much money on something that isn't as good as free or cheaper games available elsewhere? Is it just because you like the series? Because you're buying it to play with your friends? Maybe because you're bored of everything else that has been out for years and you just want to try something new. It makes no difference on what your reasons are, the fact remains that you're wasting money.
Story
Filling in the blanks
The story takes place after Modern Warfare 2 but before Modern Warfare 3.
It follows the account of Vladimir's release from prison and how Task Force 141 fought to stop him from leveling the east and west with all out war trying to blame each side. See to someone who hasn't played the franchise, it's confusing, but the easiest thing to highlight is that Modern Warfare 2 wasn't exactly a finished game and left a lot of questions unresolved for the community and this remedies that badly.
This game fills in the blanks with 15 missions spanning 5 hours, essentially serving as an overpriced DLC to bring the entire story to a close for anyone still a fan of the story. I've never been a fan of the story. It wasn't interesting to me, so it's strange to see them releasing what is essentially DLC for MWII as spec op missions that look more like a single player tutorial for Warzone. It isn't really that fun or solid.
I wasn't particularly impressed. It was great to see Ghost, Soap, Shepard, Price, and many others who I hadn't seen in years, but it felt hallow and pointless.
The encounter left me feeling very detached and in search of more answers. The only way I'd obtain those answers is by purchasing their other games to relive the remainder of the story that I'd forgotten all these years, but who has time for that when you can just look it up on Youtube, which is a good way to save an $80-100.
Issues
Pricing
The prices are extortionate. It's never going to be worth it. The problem is that, while the franchise is objectively terrible, it is too big to fail as a community.
Children and adolescents all over the world will continue to support this type of content and unaffordable gameplay because they don't know any better.
For some, it's month's worth of food, while for others, it's an hour of real life work. All it does is limit the number of people who can play these types of games due to different regions financial issues.
Launching the Game
I expected this to possibly happen, but the game isn't all that well optimized because it's inside of what essentially is a folder for the games and all premium stuff, but the game would not launch on release day. It wouldn't load the HQ, and when I tried to load into MWIII, it took forever for the games to restart, launch and let me just play.
Even after validating all of the files and getting the screen to launch once, I couldn't play the game, despite the fact that it had been running completely fine previously to the game's release from Early Access. It's very upsetting to see such poor quality but not unexpected what was unexpected is what comes next.
Optimization
I... have MWII now...? The Call of Duty HQ had every single game mode for MWII locked because I did not own the base game, during the Early Access period before the launch. But now everything is unlocked, all I have to do is download it?
Their games are that poor that they have to bundle it as a free add-on to the new game in order to entice more people to play it despite the very unfavorable reviews?
They bundled them all together
I'm baffled because they bundled with MWIII. This is them trying to get people to play their game for free (making it 3 in one) despite the massively bad ratings.
In short: Our game is bad, so have it for free with MWIII!
Call of Duty HQ
I don't enjoy having to download a large file only to find out that it's some poorly designed application that will close you out of the game and restart the game that you want to play from WarZone, Modern Warfare II, and Modern Warfare III.
When you load in, navigation through these menus it's quite confusing because the developers thrust battle-pass after battle-pass in your face and place you on the WarZone screen, rather than the game you were attempting to play originally.
None of these battle pass cosmetics and skins are even worth it. You can unlock similar things through just playing the games natural achievements, save money.
I'm sure a better approach could have been taken, such as bringing you into a panel where you can choose which game to play first, or letting us launch individual games that aren't piggy-backing off of new games in an attempt to get more players to see the overwhelming negative game modes they have to offer for their prior games that just don't do all that well on their own, so they hope you won't notice and support it.
Presentation
Looks good
Despite my dislike for the series, it looks great and felt immersive. I like many of the gunplay components, such as switching to your secondary but not completely putting away your primary until you need to reload your sidearm and ADS.
The only real issue I have with it is that it is a CoD-style game. You know how they display their games with linear on-rail gameplay that prevents you from moving from side to side? You move forward and possibly push a button or two while seeing some cinematic gaming action unfold before you and then you're back to the gunplay.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer has a few different game modes. Zombies, Classic Multiplayer playlists, and a few new entries are available, but it is what it is. CoD multiplayer is a lot of fun, and it's arguably the only reason to play the game or franchise, but it still feels like it's not worth the price considering there are many free or cheaper alternatives.
Gameplay
Single player
The combination of WarZone aspects and single player gameplay is something I couldn't get over, and this is coming from someone who hasn't played the franchise since Black Ops. It's simply so disconnected and confusing, trying to figure out where the plot has taken you and why you're playing this "Weapons Free" game mode in what should be story, missions, and visuals. It felt like downtime or even filler gameplay to make it seem like you're actually making progress story wise.
While the single-player gameplay was brief and uninteresting. I enjoyed a few things they added into the gameplay, but I despised a lot that felt like they didn't even try to make anything interesting, but were instead trying to push content to fill in the gaps until the next dramatic slow time event that left you scratching your head.
Multiplayer
If you've played a CoD game, you've played them all, with the exception of AW, which was perhaps the most dull of the bunch. Apart from literally getting my ears blown out by the insensible yelling and chatting in the open mic lobbies where all you hear is screaming children and pot heads. The gameplay was enjoyable, if a little too fast.
Zombies
It felt stale, uninteresting, and pointless. You sprint and drive around the map alongside 20+ other players in squads of three. Hunting targets for bounties, killing zombies, and leveling up until you're ready to exfil and cash in your EXP and gear. Coming from Black Ops, I have to mention that they reused a lot of the same elements, such as "INSTA KILL" features and the mystery box, as well as everything you've already seen. To summarize, I found nothing fascinating about this game mode, and it was quite dull for what it was trying to be.
Achievements
It's incredibly annoying to have the game repeatedly spam you with x/50000 zombie kills. I don't think we really need to know how many more zombies need to be killed. Because I won't be playing in order to obtain such a meaningless achievement.
Kill 10 in a row? Your screen will be partially blotted out with the constant spam.
Conclusion
The game falls short of the original's expectations
Save yourself spending $70 on this and go get something cheaper or wait till it's either 80% off on sale. Because you are not getting a lot for what you pay for.
The game we grew up with was entertaining and controversial, particularly with the civilian massacre scenes in the "No Russian" terminal mission. This style of story telling and gameplay was fantastic, not to mention the online multiplayer, which was and still to be enjoyable to this day if not for all of the hackers plaguing the originals.
It's fine for whatever reason you have to like the series, but when you attack people who disagree with you on why something isn't as fantastic as you make it out to be just shows what has happened to the community over the years, and who this game is mainly aimed towards following the toxic behaviors in game and in forum.
This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them. If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.
- Pawkt
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