Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Review, Ratings, Key Points, Analysis And Impression

The campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 continues from where Modern Warfare 2 left off. Captain Price’s renowned Task Force 141 is back in action, and as hinted at in Modern Warfare 2’s closing cutscenes, Vladimir Makarov—a significant foe from the first Modern Warfare game—is the new threat. A fiery beginning is provided by Modern Warfare 3’s early Makarov reveal, but the story’s momentum is thrown off by the addition of additional Open Combat scenarios, leading to a disappointing conclusion.

Several characters from the revived series, like as Kate Laswell, Farah Karim, and Alex Keller, return back with Price’s squad in Modern Warfare 3. In spite of their betrayal of Soap, Ghost, and Los Vaqueros in Modern Warfare 2, General Shepherd and Commander Phillip Graves of Shadow Company also make a reappearance. Having Makarov involved means that everything is on full alert.

Operation 627, the first task of the campaign, requires you to break into a gulag covertly. Through the use of night vision goggles, you will descend the Gulag in this linear level by rappelling down and escorting guards one by one. This level in Modern Warfare 3 has a nice visual aesthetic, and it offers some of the most conventional and fun gameplay options. As one might anticipate from a Call of Duty game, the gameplay and cinematography are spectacular, and Makarov’s menace is immediately understood. He gets a thrilling chance to escape from jail and comes out of hiding prepared to wreak havoc. Modern Warfare 3 falters right away, though, since you have to play two of the game’s new Open Combat scenarios after this highly anticipated opening mission.

By increasing the playable area and giving you more options for how to accomplish your objective, Open Combat missions are designed to provide the player with greater freedom. These missions still offer you a set objective, but you can choose from a ton of supply boxes full of different armor types, weapon types, and killstreaks. As a player who lacks patience and prefers to attack head-on, I was optimistic about these new mission types and delighted to have the option of choosing them rather than always taking the predetermined, more linear course of a typical Call of Duty campaign level. 

I didn’t think I would miss the forced stealth objectives in Call of Duty, but now that they’re gone from Modern Warfare 3, I value those times more. Sadly, the ambiance and cinematic suspense that would be present during a more traditional operation are sacrificed in order to provide the freedom that these open missions offer.

The opening of the second mission, Precious Cargo, marks the beginning of the negative effects of these new mission types. The game opens with a cinematic sequence featuring Farah and a close friend in an emotionally fraught event. Next comes an Open Combat mission where you have to run about and gather gear as Farah, which feels much like a casual DMZ or Spec Ops fight. 

It would have been better to convey the gravity of the sequence, which had Farah witnessing the death of someone significant to her, within the confines of a traditional Call of Duty operation. All true feeling or urgency regarding the work at hand is still utterly lost within the style of an Open Combat mission, even though someone was still bugging me to remind me of my objective.

Although it’s encouraging to see an attempt to add new elements to the tried-and-true CoD campaign format, Open Combat missions give players too much freedom and sabotage the momentum that these military tales would normally generate through traditional gameplay and cinematics. The missions in Modern Warfare 2 allow you to have more mobility options without ever letting you lose track of the mission’s urgency, which is a far better way to strike a balance between choice and plot action.

One excellent example of this is the vehicle chase-style mission Violence and Timing in Mass Effect 2, which I appreciated for providing variation and player options while maintaining the traditional linear flow of missions. Compared to the earlier pursuit sequences in Call of Duty, it gave me more mobility options and made me feel less constrained. While I was permitted to hop and leap from car to car during the pursuit, I was never allowed to lose speed or forget what was at risk.

A year later, the MW2 mission is still remembered fondly, but Modern Warfare 3 lacks many of the iconic set pieces that fans have grown accustomed to from the series. Campaigns for Call of Duty typically stick to a template, with tasks like a slow-motion hostage rescue, a covert sniper session, and a high-speed vehicle chase. All of that is absent from the campaign of Modern Warfare 3, a change in gameplay that breaks the monotonous structure of Call of Duty but falls short of providing a novel and thrilling experience on a moment-to-moment basis. 

Even while you can opt to approach missions in a stealthy manner, other playstyles won’t be rewarded because the level design is geared toward open firefights. Almost all of the Open Combat objectives allow you to play stealthily, but none have the same vibe as the legendary All Ghillied Up mission from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or even Recon By Fire, the sniper mission from last year. The campaign concludes with a player-controlled AC-130 gunship scenario that adds a little bit of variety to the action, but Modern Warfare 3’s predictable gameplay still can’t be saved.

The storyline of the campaign is its finest feature, but because of the Open Combat missions, which give it a disconnected air, it never really gets a chance to shine. The story’s first part does a good job of establishing Makarov as a lethal radical, and it introduces a new No Russian-style operation that is both frightening and impactful. This remake places you in an airplane and isn’t quite as gory and gross as the contentious airport massacre, but it still puts you in an unpleasant situation where you have to be at the middle of a terrorist attack that claims a significant number of lives. 

There isn’t any real gameplay in this mission. Strangely, the game does not let you skip this assignment even though you are primarily watching the horror occur. All you receive is a content warning, which you may ignore or dismiss to return to the menus. It doesn’t seem necessary to have you participate in an act of terrorism, so I hope there is a way to skip this.

You’re forced to battle through Makarov’s goons while a shooting spree continues at Verdansk’s stadium in Modern Warfare 3, which doesn’t hold back when it depicts another carnage on an even grander scale. As you attempt to remove the terrorists, civilians pour out of the arena’s stands, running for their lives and stepping in front of you. This makes for a chaotic and terrifying assignment. 

Accuracy and trigger discipline are crucial in this situation since you will fail the task if you unintentionally murder an innocent person. Makarov’s abilities are further demonstrated by this assignment, but rather than being used for essentially cheap and dubious thrills, this kind of shock value should be employed to enhance the plot. And Modern Warfare 3’s conclusion leaves a lot to be desired when it all comes to a head.

An inadequate story resolution concludes Task Force 141’s race against Makarov. Open Combat missions sabotage any narrative momentum, so all of the early build-up to depict Makarov’s relentless fear is lost until an unexpected semi-cliffhanger occurs. A fourth Modern Warfare game is probably in the works, as this campaign hints to, although the journey there is very unmemorable. The storyline of the campaign extends beyond the original series.

When Warzone’s Verdansk map was used again, my favorite campaign moments tended to be nostalgic ones. These campaign highlights, though, like a sneaky mission as Kate Laswell through a military base or a mission to defuse a bomb on a bridge as Ghost, rely too much on the novelty of letting fans lose themselves in nostalgia for the glory days of Call of Duty’s battle royale, as the missions themselves are simply not that fun.

The classic sections of Modern Warfare 3 retain its amazing graphics, extravagant action, and firearms that still have the punchy feel and quick aim you’d expect from gunfights, even if you remove all of the horrible free-roaming sections of the campaign. For the game to seem complete, there simply aren’t enough of these moments.

In addition to having unsatisfactory missions, MW3’s campaign falls short of being the customary preamble to the multiplayer mode. Even though MW3’s multiplayer is meant to have a lot of new weapons, a lot of the weapons that are available are from MW2. Furthermore, you won’t be going back to the campaign’s locations as you usually would because MW3’s main multiplayer game launches with just remastered maps.

Though how the multiplayer element plays out is yet unknown, it appears that there will be a bigger gap between the campaign and multiplayer than before. It feels strange to have the most straightforward story continuation of any Call of Duty game we’ve ever seen, yet at the same time, the game’s execution feels so different from the rest of the franchise.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s fourteen campaign missions overstate the game’s depth; they should only take four to five hours to finish, which is less than average. This plot shouldn’t take up much of your time unless you really take your time exploring the expansive locations of the Open Combat missions. Open Combat’s attempt to provide freedom ultimately comes across as filler to set up Makarov’s arrival; there is little incentive to stay longer than necessary, and doing so would just complicate matters by throwing additional breaks in the story. The PlayStation 5 version of Modern Warfare 3 runs swiftly and features visually stunning cutscenes, but these two features only serve to emphasize how dull the gameplay is.

Modern Warfare 3 can’t get out of its own way, despite an entertaining narrative setting that features the dreary Open Combat style for roughly half of the missions. Modern Warfare 3, the poorest game in an otherwise excellent reboot series, is a letdown because to its jerky tempo and abrupt finale, which marries Makarov’s huge comeback.