Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Is An Embarrassment

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is the worst game since Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in fact this game right here should not exist and I'm not saying that just to be funny or hyperbolic I mean literally this was not meant to exist from the start the universe has an ironic sense of humor where history does tend to repeat itself no matter how much we try to avoid it let's play a little game shall we and uh your job here is to figure out if I'm talking about Modern Warfare 3 or Modern Warfare 3 are you ready let's go question one what game was originally conceived by Infinity Ward but had to pull in Sledgehammer Games for help hm yeah that's kind of a tricky one isn't it it's it's hard to say um yeah I don't know well all right let's try another one uh question two which title was criticized for being mostly a carbon copy of Modern Warfare 2 hm man yeah this one's rough too honestly I'm I'm I'm just really not sure uh let's move on to another one question three which title features the main character Captain Price his pal soap and a bad guy named marov this one's really tricky so so take your time uh but if you still don't know this one question four which title had legal battles and or job layoffs behind the scenes around the time of its release still don't know okay last one we're almost done question five which title was originally DLC for the previous Modern Warfare 2 and was repackaged into a new title to be sold at full retail game oh oh yeah that's that that that one's pretty obvious actually but if you haven't caught on yes all of these questions could apply to both Modern Warfare 3s by the way MW3 is not an expansion pack do you remember when this was the narrative that was being pushed those of you paying attention around the time will recall when Activision at some point decided to make the call to switch plants to make Modern Warfare 3 originally the contents of mw3 for the most part were meant to be a year 2 Premium expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2 which was a very financially successful game I might note and cod an active division were on the precipice of breaking the cycle this would have been the first year in which a Mainline Call of Duty game would not come out in the fall 2023 was supposed to be a year of Premium DLC content for Modern Warfare 2 this much is guaranteed the problem was at some point in time the call got made to bring in Sledgehammer who just got done making Vanguard mind you to be the lead Dev on a new project now why was this Choice made well as Mr Krabs so eloquently says money it was in activis 's best interest to releasee a new title as this has a much greater chance of bringing in a brand new audience and increasing these right upfront short-term sales you know as compared to a DLC for a game that's already a year old at this point but here's where it gets interesting I also speculate that Infinity Ward knew that this wasn't going to go very well and dumped it on Sledgehammer so that they didn't have to attach their studio and name and be responsible for it Modern Warfare 2 was incredibly financially successful and say what you want in regards to the quality and how much you enjoy it Etc you know there's a lot of criticism that can be levied at that game too and I've already made my own tearing into it but in the end it still made Activision a metric zillion dollars and there's no doubt that a premium DLC would have made even more money I mean hell every single original Modern Warfare 2 map remastered plus an extension to the campaign and maybe even some other goodies as well like this sounds pretty cool to be honest and it's kind of refreshing and unprecedented that Cod is going down this route which makes me excited for what oh oh so they they just they just made it Modern Warfare 3 but this is actually the interesting part considering how well MW2 did and given that Modern Warfare is basically Infinity Wards baby why the hell wouldn't Infinity W drop this as DLC in 2023 then Treyarch drops their game in 2024 and after some time is passed and hype is built up Infinity Ward then drops the finale Modern Warfare 3 in 2025 that just makes so much more sense to me but I was really shocked to hear that after MW2 Infinity Ward was just genuinely not interested in making another Modern Warfare game they're they're they're kind of done with it from what it sounds like which is why IW will not be making MW4 in 2026 or whatever I don't even know where we are in the timeline but this is kind of weird because it's like they've invested so much time in energy and and money into rebooting Modern Warfare as a franchise but got bored and quit right before they could properly wrap up the trilogy it's like they were all sitting around a boardroom and were like okay we made Modern Warfare and we made Modern Warfare 2 what's the next step and then there somebody suggests like Modern Warfare 3 like you know wrap up the trilogy and then they go no I don't really feel like it then they just tell Sledgehammer to slap something together with the rest of the scraps that they had played around with and said yeah call it Modern Warfare 3 we're just going to go do something else it's very bizarre this makes so many aspects of the game feel unfinished cobbled together and I think you can tell that this wasn't meant to be a real game how do I know well I spent my fair share of time at Sledgehammer Games this year before the game released and I got to play it a little early and I got firsthand experience with talking with some of the folks there as well and I was able to paint a much clearer picture of what appears to be going on the call to make Modern Warfare 3 its own Mainline title seemed to be an Activision thing sledgehammer and Raven as well just kind of got wrangled into doing it and they had this tossed on their plates unexpectedly and without much time to do anything with it Modern Warfare 3 this year is the complete package so in a lot of ways I really can't blame Sledge all that much for the things that I don't like about this game from everything we can gather it's like they had to take a lot of the stuff Infinity W made and somehow turn it into a full Standalone package even though they're just working with bits and pieces and scraps from the year before now I can understand why that would be difficult however I don't feel anybody's completely blameless here for reasons that I'll elaborate on here in just a second after this definitely unrelated and very real advertisement break the hot logic bag is like the best product ever uh for uh reheating some of the foods that's already been made want to reheat some of that disgusting uh I I mean delectable casserole that you made last week try the hot logic bag the hot logic bag makes leftover meals that will be warm enough to eat in about 30 to 40 minutes and it uses um uh conduction heating which unlike microwaving Heats evenly which means no overcooked meals in fact it'll be so good that leftovers come out tasting as good or or just or or better than as the first time we guarantee that once you've had a frozen meal cooked this way you'll want to drop the mic row wave for good this is by far the best way to reheat and recycle stuff you've already made call the number on screen right now to get a hot logic bag and reheat your slop today when we learned that Modern Warfare 3 was going to end up being a standalone title in Sledge would be the lead developer on it it made me Gravely concerned for the overall Health and Longevity and reputation of it and all of my fears would come true when I first played MW3 in my mind I'm thinking okay honestly there's no precedent for what a premium expansion is supposed to include and thus there's no expectation for what really needs to be present in a package like that you know roughly but that would mean I think the community would be far more lenient on what is a three-hour campaign and a multiplayer that's basically just MW 2 multiplayer but on the original Modern Warfare 2 maps that means instead of Modern Warfare 2 having an expansion of Modern Warfare 2 maps Modern Warfare 3 comes out and is basically Modern Warfare 2 remastered multiplayer maps with Modern Warfare 2 guns and if that sounds dumb and confusing that's because it is like oh my God uh this is uncanny and so what I'm trying to say is if they had stuck to the expansion pack plan maybe it would wouldn't have sold quite as well but it also wouldn't have had nearly as much controversy which might also be the reason they changed it but that's an Alex Jones level conspiracy theory for another day what is true is making this content its own Standalone title instead of an expansion pack completely changes the perception and thus expectation a new Call of Duty title has certain bare minimums it needs to meet the precedent has been set for like almost two decades now and people are going to carry a greater expectation and set the bar higher if you're going to go out of your way to make it a new game and I really feel MW3 had a huge perception problem that they never quite Sol but at Sledgehammer I I tried to help them you know a few things I suggested after my initial Impressions is you know if they want to beat the this is not an expansion allegations they're going to have to do some big things to make MW3 feel and play unique I mentioned changing stuff like the HUD and the uy and the colors to make the layout feel more fresh and and unique and Standalone and a plethora of what I felt like would be helpful additions to make Modern Warfare 3 feel very different in its own way so it's not taken as a cheap copy or an MW2 clone but ultimately the answer I got was that they're trying their best to follow in the footsteps of Infinity Ward and there's some changes they'd like to make but it seems like IW more or less calls the shots at the end of the day this is really depressing because it seems MW3 has a massive identity crisis just like Vanguard did and you know think about it when boiled down what are the constituents that make up Modern Warfare 3 uh well we have a campaign that's obviously Modern Warfare 2 DLC repurposed uh it's multiplayer is pretty much Modern Warfare 2 remastered with MW2 from from last year's guns and stuff and then zombies is the Modern Warfare 2 DMZ mode but with zombie AI in fact uh I think MW3 is the CoD game with the least discernable identity but here's the point where it comes down on if they wanted to do an expansion that's fine you know keep the style and feel of the game similar to Modern Warfare 2 hell it would even make more sense that way but if what I'm trying to say is if you're going to call it MW3 and swear up and down that it's its own game and not just an expansion then go all the way with it and put some effort into making it feel fresh and new and different which they clearly did not largest zombies yeah yeah this is one of the main issues as far as I'm concerned and is even a greater symptom of the fact that every color Duty game has like damn near every single Studio Under the Sun working on it it's going to end up feeling very syy you know game to game and that's a deeper discussion for another time but basically uh I it just feels like they wanted the luxury of slapping on a brand new label and calling it a standalone title but did none of the actual hard work required to make it really come into its own they wanted the benefit of making a new game without actually making a new game it's just so bizarre man you know it's it's kind of like when Apple releases new iPhone phones with very minor changes to the previous model or stuff that no one asked for and calls it new uh I just think that this was a horrible decision I don't know exactly whose call it was to make this decision but honestly they they up like big time now to play devil's advocate for a moment uh the original Modern Warfare 3 is also damn near the exact same game as Modern Warfare 2 in fact the similarities between these two situations are quite striking but at least in the original MW3 there was more of an effort to give it its own ident identity still whereas the new MW3 and I'm not being hyperbolic literally wanted to be like MW2 albeit with a few key changes to gameplay and new weapons and such but it's not a one toone copy but it's uncomfortably close but it seems like a lot of those choices were imposed on Sledgehammer by Infinity Ward for example Sledgehammer actually wanted to go back to the Pick 10 system for multiplayer for those unfamiliar this was a far more simplified system before gunsmith that was more based off like trade-offs and sacrif IES to build your class with less overall options but each one was much more meaningful and you could still have a lot of experimentation and variety by engaging in this system this is what Black Ops 2 operated on and was massively successful this would do away with you know I's big gunsmith Innovation and I'm not saying that a p 10 would automatically change MW3 is multiplayer for the better uh but it seems like sludge fought hard to make changes that the community wanted after MW2 such as you know red dots not on the mini map in retrospect a horrible idea that I have no clue what IW was cooking with that one slide cancelling returns and movement is much more fluid and responsive again and they've even increased the health to 150 HP to make gunfights last a little bit longer and you know plenty of other core gameplay adjustments that they know the community was begging for the P 10 system probably would have been one of those but it seems Infinity War told them no and we'll talk about multiplayer in more detail later on in the video but MW3 caught so much slack for its campaign even Christopher Judge AKA Kratos grilled them at the game awards fun fact my speech was actually longer than this year's Call of Duty campaign [Applause] what I think MW3 has no doubt the worst campaign in Call of Duty history yes and I know I said that about Vanguard but it's even worse than vanguard's campaign which I wasn't sure was even possible and no it's not simply because of its length apparently size does matter to a lot of the folks in the Call of Duty Community as one of the main complaints was the fact that it was so short the whole campaign is about 3 hours in total runtime when a typical Cod campaign is usually anywhere from 5 to 8 hours and I don't find this a problem inherently as I'd prefer a Cod game story to be short and sweetened to the point as opposed to stretched and Bloated but that's assuming assuming that there's enough good story to tell to justify its runtime and MW3 doesn't even have nearly enough story to even fill three hours and the question is would a three-hour campaign be more acceptable if it were DLC an expansion pack instead I don't know the point is you know I wonder if people would be less harsh if it was an expansion instead of being touted as a full campaign on a new game either way I don't care which way you frame it it doesn't change the fact that this campaign is downright horrible it is easily the most nonsensical pointless unfinished embarrassing excuse for a story I I've ever seen the whole game feels like it was written by a bunch of airsoft players who like to speak in military talk when they play and the tone and Direction makes it feel like one of those awfully generic and forgettable action movies or shows on Netflix that you don't hear about or or care for but it makes the worst mistake of all and the cardinal sin of video game storytelling and it's a trend I absolutely hate there's so obsessed with making this game feel like a movie that they are forgetting to utilize the techniques and tactics that make video game storytelling so special so much of this game is Just cinematics which it completely removes the player from the situation even in the old Call of Duty games you know they're very cinematic and that's what they were going for and a lot of the storytelling would be done by letting the player be in the perspective of someone at least usually letting you walk around or interact with things even if it was very on the rails you still felt like you were in the situation and it made you feel like you were an active part in all this the Reliance on all of these CGI cutcenes is that it removes the player entirely from what's Happening and makes you simply a spectator and not an active participant I'm not saying cutcenes now and again aren't okay and they can even be really effective when used properly but this is my same complaint with Vanguard so much good potential stuff in this campaign is just lathered over with these boring forgettable cinematics I feel like this is a pretty good example for comparison in scenes where macarov sniffs you out and kill someone one is done Through The Eyes of the player which feels much more personal and the other is just some guy that we don't know or really care about or relate to that just like questioned his plan or whatever in the last mission and then dies for it it's so stupid but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself main point is Call of Duty keeps doing this thing where they're failing to use the things that make gaming so special in exchange for these movie likee cutcenes which just don't impress the audience at all anymore yeah maybe 10 or 11 years ago but certainly not now but we'll get back to all that now I want to quickly discuss the Curious Case of Modern Warfare Zombies because there's a lot more to unpack with this one than you might imagine at first however uh from what sources have claimed in rumors that have been spread uh this was apparently a mode that was a scrapped project most likely a spin-off or another variation of cold Wars outbreak which already was supposed to be in extraction mode by the way but in all likelihood when the decision was made to make Modern Warfare 3 a standalone title Activision most likely made Treyarch dig up this scrapped game mode from the bin and include it in the game to help justify the $70 price tag because without zombies what did MW3 really have to offer a half campaign and a reskin of Modern Warfare 2 maps from 2009 yeah that that just simply wouldn't cut it but the addition of a new Zombies mode was tacked on so that it could make the price tag a bit more reasonable but it's even more interesting than that and the rabbit hole goes much deeper but first I think should start by dismantling Modern Warfare 3's campaign and I'll lay out why I think this is a new low for the series even though it didn't have to be okay so let's do a very brief recap of the story from MW2 to lead us where we are now in the last game we follow Task Force 141 for the most part with ghost soap and gas hunting down a guy named Hassan who is zakia's son Shephard hires a group called Shadow company commanded by Graves to get things done the hunt for Assan is mostly a wild goose chase until some help from Mexican Special Forces and Alejandro come to assist you you also meet Valeria who has an interesting history with Alejandro and eventually Graves gets the order from Shephard to betray and kill tf141 so that he can take the glory the game ends with Hassan killed and in this bar they're like there's another Target and he's not new his name is marov then they do a Marvel movie post credit scene for terrorism in the next game everyone gets hyped because they said no Russian which is a thing from Call of Duty but horribly out of context here I liked um so the game opens up with the Coney group infiltrating a remote prison to rescue a prisoner and can you guess what the prisoner's number is that's right 627 from the hit video game Captain Price 2 the electric Baloo look the 627 thing was a cute reference in Modern Warfare 2019 19 and MW2 sure but I'm sitting here kind of just rolling my eyes cuz I'm just like can we please do something original for once so that everything in the game doesn't have to be a reference we're 5 minutes into the game and the creativity bankruptcy is already shown anyways after a mission that closely resembles the goog missions from the past we break into uh the prison to rescue what is indeed marov in the cell and then he's all like your commander Vladimir marar call sign 9 Act I have to come move to phase three out taking back immediate control and want to continuous plans after they escape they get off the island successfully meanwhile far is back for some reason and her friend that we've never seen before is there and is like hey how's it going uh and then she gets shot and then far realizes that she has to tag GPS's onto these crates because the Coney group is trying to steal the American missiles for nefarious purposes and in order to track them down she'll need to put a device on them well we'll come back to the story in just a moment but I want to talk about the structure of the gameplay in Modern Warfare 3 because there's a lot to discuss uh with this one it's it's strange now I was at Sledgehammer when they first revealed the campaign to us and how it would work and I hate to say it but unfortunately I feel I was in the right to be very skeptical we were told that the campaign would feature a mix of linear you know on the rails traditional scripted Call of Duty style missions and then the other half would be their new Innovative thing called open combat levels Modern Warfare 3 we're introducing a new innovation to the Call of Duty campaign we call them open combat missions the way it was described to us was that you would have one main task to complete but the level is completely open-ended and more sandbox oriented meaning that you can approach and complete it in any way you like you have your own Loadout and can even utilize things like armor vests kill streaks hidden weapons field upgrades vehicles and so on you even get like weapon unlocks that you can replay throughout the level again this doesn't sound terrible on paper I guess but what these levels end up being is a lazily thrown together chunk of war zone map with one task and like a bunch of weapons and kill streaks and just stuff thrown everywhere when I was there I questioned the campaign director on this one because I just wanted to pick his brain and really figure out why they ended up you know going with this style of mission I just wanted them to elaborate on why they decide on this direction and I was told this and I quote we feel this will be a very replay campaign and really fun for people to watch I think it's the most youtubable campaign ever end quote now sure that's all well and good and I don't doubt they actually win in with those intentions and want the game to be like that uh I feel he was being very genuine about wanting to make a good campaign experience but first of all it's funny as hell that apparently the most youtubable campaign has a copyrighted song in a cutscene you can't actually stream this campaign on YouTube without getting claimed it's it's like I just don't know what they were thinking with this one it's obviously that's just kind of a funny thing to point out but on a more real note I could honestly see this open combat level format maybe being fun if it wasn't only solo the thing is all of these sandbox elements and open-ended gameplay stuff could actually be pretty fun if the campaign was Co-op how like how was that not considered before if you can't do co-op fine just make the levels more crafted linear missions then no problem but if you're dead set on these open combat levels for the love of God it's such a wasted opportunity that it's solo only then like what's even the point at all personally I don't think even a co-op campaign here would have made all the levels great but still wouldn't have been a complete contradiction in wasted opportunity and it would have given them something that stands out it actually baffles me and I don't get their approach when designing these sadly though I don't think all of this was Sledgehammer choice this was probably done many months ago from Infinity Ward and sledge just had to be the ones to stamp their names on it and put on the finishing touches but regardless upon hearing this news I was skeptical and I was worried about the overall depth to the experience so then I asked if there was any chance for something like maybe multiple endings depending on player choice like Black Ops 2's campaign or hell even just regular old Intel drops to collect and I got a resounding no on both of those questions so what you mean to tell me we have a campaign that's 3 hours long which most of its runtime is cutcenes and the levels are a mix of lackluster traditional missions and weird open combat levels which you cannot play co-op on um oh okay I mean sure this might be acceptable if the story was any good but I mean oh that's why the guards need the guns let's talk about macarov Vladimir macarov is the dumbest character in this game and he makes everyone else look really dumb too first of all this is is the first direct appearance of marov in this story while it's implied that he had a hand in the events of Modern Warfare 2019 and MW2 they didn't set him up at all in those previous titles now I'm going to be making a lot of comparisons to the old macarov and if you have a problem with that you can take it up with my assistant I I don't even have an assistant I don't know why I said that okay so first is makarov's portrayal in the old games macarov was a cold calculating and emotionally stone-faced killer very rarely did he ever raise voice he delivered orders and killed people in a deceptively calm way and he never seemed bothered or worried or in a hurry at all just letting his enemies make their own mistakes and capitalizing on them when they do in a sense he's much scarier this way I think it's a lot harder to get a read on him because he's so coldly expressionless and and just doing the most heinous things a human being can do contrast this directly with the new MW3 where this marov is constantly yelling this is our he's always shouting and he screams at people to their faces and I think his tone and attitude just feels like he's doing a caricature of a villain I got to be honest I know a lot of people like him but I really just don't care for his performance as macarov he doesn't give me any of that same energy the old one did and I don't think that's just Nostalgia speaking let's break down what they do and how they behave first of all marov makes his big debut in MW2 with no Russian obviously one of the most shocking and horrific missions in all of gaming but more so to the point when marov kills someone he does it only after he makes roach participate in these horrible acts roach was also literally a spy and marov knew it and caught on yet still made him commit these atrocities and then killed him to frame him in the United States in Modern Warfare 3 marov has some guy executed just because he uh I guess questioned his tactics or ideas or whatever this just isn't nearly as compelling and I don't care and frankly we just haven't spent enough time seeing marov for a proper setup to take place he hasn't really impacted anything directly we did in the last two games so rushing to set him up here seems very strange so besides being introduced extremely late in this Trilogy and not really understanding what his motivations are and he behaves a lot different his acting doesn't do him any favors as well if you ask me remember in the trailer when they baited us that Captain Price was maybe going to die nah he just inhaled a little bit of Nova 6 had a an asthma attack or a coughing fit and then he was fine uh isn't this stuff supposed to be like like this guy get his face burned off gas protection as well anyways forget about that it doesn't matter don't don't think about it I'm fine price and far I have to go to this like bunker to stop the Nova they're not Nova 6 they're what what are these called again sain gas or sarin gas sain gas I don't remember which one I think it's sarin gas but uh anyways marov wants to use the big toot missiles to cause attacks that will eventually lead to an allout global war so at The Silo the missiles do get launched meanwhile Kate lwell just casually sneaks into Arlo base with basically no effort in like the worst Mission ever this is Case in point what I mean when I say the game is unfinished this level when broken down to its constituents has nothing to it you basically walk in a straight line shoot one guy pick up a thing walk into a building cut scene happens then you run upstairs and that's the end it's so painfully shallow and I hate to always compare it but to the mission in Cold War in which you're going undercover in the embassy is a great comparison there is so much depth to how you can tackle that situation whereas there's pretty much one real solution here that's just on on the rails on the same path and everything that all the characters do is boring Kate gets some flash drive that has something about Ma's location on it the whole base gets bombed from from the toot missiles that were launched there and then Kate lwell is conveniently rescued just her not no one else um and there's not an investigation to like oh my God we had a spy on our base or anything like not like nothing happens after this with this situation and she's fine even after being exposed to all the gas very cool yeah so for the first time for Call of Duty this year we're doing a direct sequel you know Modern Warfare 2 they asked a lot of interesting questions in their and Sledgehammer Games is excited to work with Infinity Ward on the then we get to Modern Warfare 3's equivalent to no Russian this is makarov's big moment to make the audience hate him and it starts by them boarding a plane and some of makarov's goons frame a young woman who was a fighter in far's group as a terrorist they executed so that it looks like her fault even though she was completely innocent in the situation and just was trying to help I do like the chaoticness in the tone of this level for the most part like it feels really tense and stressful like this should be but it's lacking that true bite while it's a horrible act and marov is responsible for it him framing an innocent young woman to blame Forest people somehow isn't quite as powerful as marov and his boys literally just gunning down an airport I mean hell macarov doesn't even kill anyone himself exactly he leaves a bomb with her and then they just leave I mean I I don't hate this part though and I do give them props for being able to build tension and atmosphere here it's a pretty good level or it's a good sequence and the confusion on the plane feels realistic and it it's fine albeit not a great spark that sets everything off nice Alex is the dumbest character in this game next to marov and why is he here we TR we do not know no one's ever really dead if you didn't see it Alex walked right into the thing to sacrifice himself and he's fine apparently and then also Graves apparently didn't die from the tank blowing up either which I called but I just want to say it makes Task Force One For One look really stupid and bad at their jobs but anyways Alex is alive and he's with far and right after this incident they go off together to the crash site to recover the blackbox in order to show what really happened on that plane and prevent marov from running with the narrative and then perhaps in the stupidest mission in MW3 that's pointless to the overall plot we get a flashback from four years ago where marov pulled off another attack this time at a sports Stadium besides the fact that I think this mission is just bait for war zone fans with fans I also don't really see any point of this so basically soap and price are on the scene civilians are running away in the Inner Circle of makarov's men are posing as police and gunning people down however eventually you wreck an ambulance in the tunnel to find our good old boy marov and I I don't mean to sound so salty but God this campaign drives me insane okay so one of my biggest issues with modern warfare This Modern Warfare 2 was that we capture Hassan at some point really early in the game but they have some lame excuse that they're not technically at War so that if you did it would technically be a crime or whatever it point is it's a it's a lame excuse but at least they had some kind of Reason where you had to let him go it's stupid as hell and spoilers it's just so that the runtime of the game is longer uh but anyways they at least had some excuse in the game why they didn't kill him in Modern Warfare 3 there is literally no good reason given why they wouldn't just kill marov right then and there they have no problem wiping out the rest of his men without a thought why does he get any special treatment oh oh you you ask oh because he's marov you know he's the guy from Modern Warfare yeah so I guess that plot armor is built real good these days huh you're all dumber than you look there something about like we got him now we don't got to worry about it and we we we need we can't kill him cuz we need to know the things he's going to do next but it's like if you if you kill him then the things he was going to do he like can't do anymore you know on on account of him being dead why is this mission even in the game it does not move the plot along at all it just explains how 4 years ago they encountered macarov and they messed up that's that's literally it they learned nothing from that situation other than we should have killed marov because that was the obvious thing to do from the start it just I I I I don't know I I need to be D I need I need to be done for today the last thing you want to do in a Call of Duty campaign is make your main protagonists look incompetent and dumb when you're sitting here literally questioning everything from the character's Act to their motivations it takes you right out of the experience and after this level we're right back to where we were we need to find marov so you remember this lady in the white shirt yeah this this lady here in like the first cut scene apparently her name is Molina and she's a very important and dynamic character so much so that she appears for a whole 3 minutes and then is never seen again so to get a lead on where marov is they decide to Target Melina in her luxurious State on an island and inter at her this is about as stupid as you'd expect she's like oh I don't work for macarov I just run his finances and then the boys are like Oh okay that's cool so where is he and then they threaten her personal bank account and then that gets her to crack in one of the most embarrassing cut scenes in this whole game why the mask to hard my face what am I doing with my life the only thing of any consequence that happens is they found a bank transaction uh to a thing and then they're like okay bye uh this this whole story is like Chase down a guy to get a thing that will lead you to this other thing that will lead you to other thing that brings you to another guy that will finally lead you to another thing it's just so exhausting and not to mention after this moment she has never seen or heard from again what an amazing and very important character to the Modern Warfare Universe pleasure doing business with you of Duty is known for epic cinematic stories as Shelby talked about I mean it's all right like perhaps one of my biggest personal complaints with this campaign is the lack of any structure or escalation I mean typically you can feel the tension ramping up in building throughout most of these stories usually it feels like the stakes get higher and higher coming to an endo and this is typically done by having an a story which is the main stuff and maybe a smaller B story modern warfare games have been especially known to follow the structure Modern Warfare 3 however has like three Beast stories and nothing seems to have any real urgency or tension or suspense that builds to an end point at all and it all just feels so off no story has any other weight than anything else going on but back to the plot so keep in mind that we're still chasing down macarov by the way uh then we come to a moment where Graves is just working with us again because that's a thing uh it was never actually explained in any real detail how he survived the tank explosion and I don't care if they talked about it in like a stupid seasonal cut scene that doesn't count and frankly it just makes Task Force 1 for one look terrible at their jobs in the old modern warfare games the heroes never left villains alive out of pure idiocy or just a failure to Simply finish the mission but that's a common occurrence apparently here so anyways if for some reason you're not actually convinced that this was DLC from Modern Warfare 2 originally may I introduce you to part two of the most boring level in this entire Trilogy and I've already explained how poorly made uh and boring they made being in an ac1 in Modern Warfare 2 and I won't reiterate because I don't want to bore you to tears uh they make games for that you would think that if a lot of time has passed to reflect and examine these older missions and see what they did wrong in the last game they would have been able to course correct or make something better and they clearly did not because this ac130 level is almost as bad as the one in Modern Warfare 2 it's not quite as terrible it isn't nearly as long and I will say I will give it credit because you can actually just shoot things and really don't have to wait around sitting for weeks but it's a pretty bad level still it's like they clearly made these around the same time with not much different design philosophies it is marginally better than modern warfare 2's though but I still just don't understand why we couldn't have had the original Modern Warfare 3 level structure where you're in the ac130 for maybe a couple of minutes you cut back down to the ground forces and then back up to the sky that would have been so fun here it would have been a very unique set piece and I think would have made this level far more Dynamic but of course they clearly didn't think about that because they made those two levels around the same time now I will say before we get here there is a very unique open combat mission where you need to go find and capture one of makarov's main men and you need to ascend this Tower and go up a bunch of floors I have to say I quite like this level honestly and it's very different to everything else in the game it's almost kind of like um like a Mario level or a Dark Souls level where you know you kind of want to trial and error find the best way up and then dying will make you reset you can get different equipment and tools to get up to the top of the level I can see the vision here and I think it's fun using different shortcuts and stuff to get there quickly or just brute force it floor by floor uh it's a very fun level but it doesn't get flushed out as much as it could in my opinion I like the idea though but still it's the one Mission I will give it credit for that I feel is maybe a small standout in this Modern Warfare 3 campaign if I'm being fair I just wish maybe it would have been taken a step further but something you're you're going to notice throughout these levels is that the plot doesn't really develop in any meaningful way and that coupled with the fact that most of these levels are just so like tedious and boring there's something about them that just doesn't feel quite done even for as much as I didn't care for mww's campaign either there are some memorable levels some experimental ones for sure but it still more or less felt like a complete experience at least and I'm not totally sure what to pin this on but I think Modern Warfare 3 had a real lack of something maybe it's the music that's not really present or perhaps the lack of mechanically interesting and complex levels of any kind or any creative in-game storytelling at all I I'm not totally sure but this campaign feels very incomplete and the cutcenes do nothing to make up for it the lack of music is a big one and I imagine the big falling out with the composer from Modern Warfare 2's music and then that being pulled had Ripple effects into this one too just speaking more broadly for a moment it feels that the entire experience is missing something and I think it's a culmination of many factors because the game is incomplete in some sense so anyways getting back to our story here uh in Modern Warfare 3 things just happened suddenly for no reason whatsoever at some point Shephard got captured which uh happens offscreen and then you need to go rescue him inadvertently by conducting a normal prisoner rescue operation and then you have to get him to cooperate while price and the lads have to resist the urge to off him because he has Intel on marov uh then there's more boring talking about nothing and then all of a sudden Shephard and great graes are now testifying in court to sell each other out and stab one another in the back this amounts to um well nothing much I mean I have no clue where Graves goes from here and we'll get to Shephard in just a bit but it's painfully clear that Infinity Ward wrote themselves into a hole with this Trilogy this clearly wasn't as well thought out beforehand as maybe they expected to and this means that most of the characters just don't have anything to do at all there's so many people here like like you know what I mean right so many people are just along for the ride with no real motivation of their own or any stories individually why is Alex still doing this wasn't his whole life purpose to sacrifice himself for far's cause great like he had that moment why is he still hanging around with absolutely nothing to do why is Melina here and not helping the tarnish get to the her tree what what does Gaz want we originally in Modern Warfare 2019 he wanted to join price because he thought he could make a bigger difference but you know he had his Arc in that game and now that's all out the window and he's just sitting around what do ghost want to do I don't know hide his face I I guess the only person with any kind of clear motivations are soap price and Shephard honestly I mean the rest of the cast just ran out of things to do I think this is a big reason why there's no sense of escalation or buildup among many other reasons now finally we arrive at the last playable mission in the whole campaign I literally got whiplashed my first time playing this because it felt like it just abruptly ended after this moment not knowing this was the last level it just feels like any old typical Mission you're in London there's a hacker apparently communicating with maavan so in order to not look sus you have to blend in having a Sig you doing a piss you know trying your best to be British chicken as well yeah chicken no true needed you follow this person around for a little bit to find out where they hid some kind of flash drive and then ghost gets on the cam to scan London and find out where this guy went so that you can chase him down into the tunnels and prevent marov from detonating the train under the English Channel most of this level is pretty entertaining honestly like I mean compared to what else this campaign has to offer it is a fun set piece and in the end soap and price have to work together to diffuse a bomb in the last moment soap even takes a few bullets in order to prevent the explosion uh but somehow marov shows up almost kills price and then B basically in the inverse of the original mon Warfare 2 soap saves price by distracting macarov but marov kills Soap in the process and then runs away to escape the bomb ends up diffused and soap was killed off in the very next scene we see Kate lwell confirm soap's death and also note that macarov escaped but only injured soap protected everyone in that train that cost him his life Gaz ghost and price have a memorial for soap and spread his ashes somewhere sleep easy Soldier see them range brother we'll take it from him rest in peace Johnny then right after in the Marvel movie post credit scene is Captain Price in shuting into General Shephard's office and then killing him offc screen you remember in the original Modern Warfare 2 when you as the player had to fight tooth and nail to kill Shephard and one of the most satisfying gaming moments ever or in the original MW3 when you struggle against macarov to finally put an end to his life it just feels more satisfying because it feels like you finally beat him you were the one to put a stop to their atrocities and get revenge I just hate how this moment where Captain Price kills General Shephard is just a boring cinematic that the death literally happens off screen it just makes me feel so detached from these characters or what's going on I mean they could have just as easily built a small playable level for this moment where you pilot Captain Price and you get to pull the trigger and do it with your own hands but no we just have to watch it on a TV show now when you think about it this is most likely the end of this story in the original Modern Warfare 2 General Shepard was killed in the original MW3 soap was killed and the only difference is marov lived and I just don't see Infinity Ward making another Modern Warfare game uh I I really just don't think they're interested in that and and so the story likely will end here which is honestly fine by me because I'm not interested nor do I care about what's going on anymore like okay what the hell happened to Alejandro and valy that was set up in MW2 and went nowhere here uh and in Modern Warfare 2019 as well there's so many plot threads and character arcs that just fell over and died in their tracks this is by far the most sloppy disorganized creatively bankrupt and unfinished campaign ever somehow it managed to be a new low for the series which I truly didn't think was possible after Vanguard the question is would it be more acceptable if this was simply a DLC expansion add-on for MW2 as it was was originally supposed to be that's for you to decide but would you have judged it less harshly if it was on MW2 it wouldn't have been any cheaper because the expansion still would have been $70 but would you have more grace for it if it were on just Modern Warfare 2 for me personally I I think I would have I I just didn't like them being dishonest about the substance of the game with the marketing and branding and calling it a brand new title it seems like they wanted to have it both ways and reap the benefits of less work and a shiny brand new game but it backfired tremendously the only memorable thing about Modern Warfare 3's campaign is just how unmemorable it is I I really don't even want them to continue the story because I just don't care anymore in fact I'll have a lot of respect for them if they just leave it here marov getting away is not what I expected honestly and that was a surprise I'll give them that I think we should just end it where it is and and move on don't drag it out any more than it needed to be the open combat levels in the general gameplay were very lack cluster and I didn't find any mission in particular maybe except this one to be a standout for any good reason I I don't want to be mean for the sake of it but there's virtually nothing redeemable about this single player experience it's so lacking and dull and by the books it's borderline nonsensical storytelling as well makes it feel like a complete joke and that would be fine if it was just a fun ride but most of the fun that could be had instead is just in an animated movie cutscene that you as the player are totally detached from now I can't really blame Sledgehammer for this though I have to say I feel like this one's on Infinity Ward maybe they knew that it was bad and they didn't want to be the ones to attach their name to it so they used Sledgehammer to be The Whipping Boy I I don't know but either way this campaign is absolutely not worth your time do literally anything else for 3 hours and maybe you won't have the most youtubable campaign get copyright claimed on YouTube Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer I think I would describe as incredibly fun but ultimately confusing because again just like with Vanguard I really don't know what it is Modern Warfare 3 has this awkward combination of things where I'm not entirely sure what it's wanting to be so we kind of joked about it earlier but let's break down the constituents of what this is Modern Warfare 3 at least on launch was all MW2 original 2009 Maps every single one from the base game were what's going to be included in this obviously we've progressed a little bit more in Modern Warfare 3's life cycle and now we have some original maps from Sledgehammer to add it to the mix it's not just MW2 anymore but it was and that's what it was being sold as at the same time it was also being proposed that all of the new MW2 weapons would be in this game as well there was this whole carry forward system so it's basically MW2 2 on MW2 maps with a few brand new weapons from Sledgehammer or at least that's what it was and a few core gameplay changes and this is where I think the most significant things were made because when I played this at Sledgehammer uh before it launched it was a little different to how it is now however the core philosophy of wanting to make a few of the big changes that the community was asking for was still first and foremost in their minds stuff like slide cancelling and fluid movement came back uh even raising the health to 150 HP and making the gameplay Loop feel more solid I think was a a big priority for them and they did succeed in that for the most part I actually think the feel of the momentto moment gameplay in Modern Warfare 3 is much better than last year I feel like it's a pretty good middle ground between the absolutely cracked out bunny hopping movement of Modern Warfare 2019 and the walking through mud stuck in the sludge no movement of Modern Warfare 2 I think there is a good middle ground here and raising the health to 150 I feel was one of the most positive changes I think with core player mechanics Sledgehammer really got things right and they even introduced a brand new one called tax dancing that was not their uh previously and this is a cross between adsing and hip firing while it's not incredibly useful in a practical sense it's a very odd input to be able to use it in combat it is a neat idea and in some cases can be very helpful now I will say with this carry forward system that brings almost everything from Modern Warfare 2 into this game one of the things that don't make it is the perk system but we'll get to that in a second what I find interesting is an intelligent Choice was made to not make the MW2 guns from last year the dominant meta they retuned and rebalanced all of the numbers for the Modern Warfare 2 weapons so that the new MW3 guns would still overall have an edge that you can use them and some of them are still relatively competitive but as far as like actual meta weapons most of them are going to be from the new Modern Warfare 3 stuff which I think is good because I wouldn't want this to turn into everybody running around with last year's guns and then the new ones kind of just get shafted so I think that was smart stuff like equipment and field upgrades and kill streaks are mostly identical to MW2 now I understand that Modern Warfare 3 the original had very similar streaks to MW2 but at the same time it was on a totally different system and they had like the specialist bonus and and all that stuff like the strike package system there was an innovation there however for the most part this is basically mww's killstreaks and field upgrades the perk system is vastly different uh MW2 caught a lot of slack for having a weird perk system where you kind of like earn them in game which I felt could be cool initially but I really did not grow to like it this is a much more traditional perk system called gear and I don't really know why they just don't call it perks because it's the exact same thing but basically you have realistic pieces of gear like gloves or or boots and stuff like that and they will all give you bonuses there's some vests and gear that are incompatible with each other or that you know unlock different options for other gear that you can run so there's a bit of like a tree going on there which is interesting I think I would would have preferred just a more traditional perk system but it's pretty much the same thing this is fine the core Gunplay is so similar to Modern Warfare 2 again even down to having the same weapons and that's fine but I think something that really would have made this multiplayer stand out and be distinct from MW2 was what Sledgehammer initially wanted to do from my understanding was a Pick 10 system and I mentioned that earlier but that was their initial idea they wanted to go back to the P 10 system which I I feel you know would have got rid of the gunsmith but I do believe would have been a positive change for this experience you can just tell that it was Infinity Ward's decision to make Sledgehammer keep their guns and do gunsmith but interestingly they remove the entire Innovation from Modern Warfare 2 that is attachment tuning you can't do that anymore here obviously you can still customize everything about the gunsmith but the attachment tuning once you level a gun all the way up is just nowhere to be found this seems like a a weird Innovation to be taken away but I think it just shows that Sledgehammer really wanted to go a different direction action and not do gunsmith at all would this have been a very positive change for Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer honestly I think so and if not or even if P 10 had its faults I still think it would have made MW3 feel far more distinct because when I sit down and play this multiplayer I realize like dude I'm just playing MW2 with slightly different player mechanics with a bit more movement and a little more Health that's it like I find myself on Farm 18 running around with almost the exact same guns moving around maybe slightly faster and I'm like this is the exact same thing I don't understand why they added all of last year's maps in if they already just did all of the 2009 Maps as well and then on top of their own original maps to be fair the original Sledgehammer maps for MW3 are pretty good I actually like them a lot and the 2009 Maps I guess we should probably talk about those the classics do feel similar but very different here as well and I think some maps play better than others stuff like scrapyard and terminal I think play very much the same as they did back in the day however things like FLL are totally different now and they don't have the same feel or flow whatsoever anymore it's it's a bit of a mixed bag you might say that these 2009 Maps were simply not made for the more accelerated player movement of modern Call of Duty but personally I don't feel it's as bad of a problem as I maybe would have expected they also did you know reorient some of the levels proportions to be a bit bigger and expanded so that it feels the same as it did for example if a player's movement increases the level that they're in needs to be bigger to accommodate for that this is why Halo levels got much bigger after they introduced Sprint even though it feels like you're moving faster through them the square footage makes it still play like an old classic Halo level generally speaking and I believe this is the philosophy they used for Modern Warfare 3 even though the proportions of the classic maps are pretty similar to their old ones and there are moments where I do think the movement is not necessarily the most compatible or cohesive thing uh to play with in them but I think generally speaking speaking they're okay now I don't think this is that crazy to say and I even mentioned this in my Vanguard review I think recently Sledgehammer has done well with multiplayer even though I think Vanguard struggled in terms of an identity I still thought its core toore gameplay Loop in Vanguard multiplayer was pretty fun and I feel the exact same here I actually think this is one of sledg Hammer's best multiplayer experiences even though I don't really know what it is is it MW2 remastered is it Modern Warfare 2 2022 part two like I know that sounds crazy but like that's where we're at now everything with the UI the HUD the guns kill streaks perks Etc are all Modern Warfare 2 stuff last year making it very clear that this was an expansion pack or a premium DLC however they did make a ton of changes to movement and core player mechanics that I think are all positive I basically this is like my fanfic version of MW2 literally almost all of the things I complained about in my last review have been mediated and modified here which is interesting and I think it makes the game a lot more fun I just think the only thing holding it back is frankly Infinity Ward I I don't think they allowed Sledgehammer to do all of the things they wanted to do and take it to the next level such as Pick 10 system or maybe even doing classic perks again uh it felt like they really had their own vision for what they wanted to do but that was being bottlenecked by a lot of infinity Wards choices I do give Sledgehammer the benefit of the doubt here where they tried to make the best out of a not optimal situation uh just being given this stuff from Infinity War and even making changes that the community wanted against Infinity Wars wishes is very interesting and I give them some respect for that but do many of the same problems that plagued Modern Warfare 2 still plague MW3 yes absolutely they do in fact a lot of the stuff with skill-based matchmaking uh is still just as prevalent if not more in this game so much so that they had to literally address the situation in this big Community Post in which they pretty much said exactly what I expected which is yes we do have a matchmaking algorithm and yes skill is a small part of it which is a non-answer that the community was certainly not satisfied with but it's all of the stuff about the Activision patents that I talked about in my Modern Warfare 2 review those are all still applicable here as well I mean it's basically the same thing as last year and I know that's like the Call of Duty meme but I I mean that in the most genuine sense here now I want to highlight some of the changes they made that I felt were great even just little ones like making actual player calling cards pop up on the screen again instead of just the Bland generic one from m W2 is is amazing player cards actually feel a little bit more meaningful again and also the kill pop-up animations are sick and I don't want to be that guy and say that I influenced this but I just do remember playing a pre-alpha at sledgehammer and the kill pop-up animations were nasty and not very goodlooking and I brought it up and I complained about it and wouldn't you know when the full game comes out they come out much different and they look great so whoever made that decision big thanks to them uh and I'm very happy to see that now here's a weird one uh they kind of only go halfway with this because you know a lot of the identity stuff is like oh in the original MW2 we loved having the factions and they bring them back here we have Task Force One 14 one you know we we have the Rangers and the SPN and everything but they only go halfway because like you get the Logo Pop up but it doesn't really mean anything like the character models are just whatever uh and then also there's no announcers for them either so I don't really understand the point of having this pop up if you really don't see it or you know feel it at all throughout your match it's just stuff like that where they made lot of strides making this a very unique multiplayer experience but I just still think it's bottlenecked by a lot of the choices from Infinity W they couldn't quite break away from that mold to really become its own thing which is a damn shame and I hope maybe in their next title that becomes more of a possibility I guess we'll have to wait and see because looking at it from a big picture perspective I think Sledgehammer has actually been doing really well with multiplayer I'm not going to lie I think this is the most fun multiplayer in quite a while it's very enjoyable the only drawbacks to me are the fact that it feels so much like last year's MW2 and not in a good way and also you can tell they haven't really quite been able to break away even though they've gotten very close I just think that if you gave Sledgehammer free reign to design the multiplayer exactly how they would want to it might be one of the best experiences of all time because I think the core gameplay is actually great here I really don't have as much to say about kill streaks and Crea a class and stuff like that this year because I've already covered it in my Modern Warfare 2 video it's just so odd I feel like I I've already talked about most of the stuff even though I technically haven't for this game it's but it's all the same if you've played you know last year's experience that's really where it comes down for me I feel Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer is incredibly fun and I actually enjoy it it's maybe one of the best parts of the game it's not really their own multiplayer however it's Modern Warfare 2 maps from 2009 with last year's guns and maybe a little bit of new stuff from Sledgehammer although the stuff that they did specifically I really enjoy so I'm looking forward to maybe their next game or or a project where they're the lead developer and I would like to see what they do when given free reign with their multiplayer because I think they have a good structure here and with a bit more creative control I feel they would be able to tap in probably one of the best multiplayer Call of Duty experiences that could be made at least in my opinion sludgehammer has a pretty good sense of what makes a Call of Duty multiplayer fun they do have that fun factor I feel they really nail how a game feels even with vanguard's multiplayer I think that feels good even though I don't love a lot of the stuff in the game terms of content not really my favorite they at least get the feel right so if they can nail the aesthetic in the tone and visuals and let Sledgehammer take the feel of the game I feel that's a winning combination in my opinion and I think Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer could have been a lot worse but it also uh probably could have been a lot better as well so I have a very interesting history and relationship with Modern Warfare 3 zombies because this mode is unique it's oneof a kind and it's something that has definitely divided a community even though it's actually gotten a very positive reception that was not speculated to happen at all in fact I was one of the first people in the world to play this mode and I don't say that sound that to brag I bring this up because it's very important context to how the community felt before this launched now we realized that Modern Warfare Zombies was not going to be a round-based mode you know the traditional classic zombies that has been featured in nearly every Call of Duty game up to this point would not be a thing here although they were doing a Zombies mode and so that was intriguing and when we went to Treyarch we were able to play one match of this and that was it and also we were not able to even look through a lot of the schematics or Acquisitions menus at all and you'll know if you've played Modern Warfare Zombies that's like the entire gameplay Loop that's a key part of it pretty much all of the progression in this game is tied to the acquisition and schematic system which we were not able to engage with at all we just played a random match of you know shooting zombies on a war zone map and it felt just incredibly lukewarm so that's why myself and all the other YouTubers came away and were just like yeah I mean it's like it's fine or whatever it's not really anything fun or special there was a lot of if you like outbreak you'll like this mode and that seemed to be true in the moment however I don't think that's a good comparison anymore I actually think Modern Warfare zombies and outbreak are very different in a lot of ways even though cold Wars out break was supposed to be in extraction mode like this is now I think this is the second iteration of outbreak a spiritual successor of it in a lot of ways but I don't know if they're that comparable honestly I think this attracts a very different audience that has a very different purpose and stuff and I was playing it at home after the Treyarch event and was realizing how much fun I was having there was a lot to do in the beginning you know getting all of these story missions done which are little tasks you accomplish because of course it's not really based on Survival anymore you go in and you have have this big open world to do a lot of tasks and story missions which will bring you to different points in the game giving you different boss fights Etc I suppose a lot of people were okay with having this mode because it's actually more similar to DMZ than it is to outbreak or round-based zombies and for people who wanted round based zombies for this year it was never going to happen anyways so a lot of people were like well it's better having something than nothing and I suppose that you can make that argument for this mode however it does make some very strange DV ations to the zombies formula and I don't think people want this to become the norm here's the weird thing Activision said that this was the most successful and popular third mode that Call of Duty's ever done which will be very ironic when we talk about where the state of the game is now but in the beginning I was realizing wow there's actually a lot of people playing this there's an audience for it I'm having a lot of fun with it I was making a ton of content and I was very much enjoying myself expecting support would continue on an already pretty solid base game it it surprised me because I didn't think I was going to like this and when not being able to do any of the fun things like interact with the Acquisitions and schematics when playing at Treyarch it made this mode feel incredibly Hollow and that's what leads me into how the basic structure of Modern Warfare Zombies is set up and the way that the content is experienced is quite unlike normal zombies now in a traditional zombies map the content to be experienced is the survival and then obviously doing its main quest or Easter egg and all of the things that come along with it generally speaking on your first play if you know what you're doing you can experience all of the content uh right away you know you can jump in and do the Easter egg either with Solo or with friends like there's not much of a barrier to go in and start experiencing the content maybe it might be a little bit difficult to do Easter eggs as they can be quite challenging not to mention they do require a lot of knowledge beforehand and that's what made Easter eggs uh the main content they were gated by knowledge and skill usually Modern Warfare 3 zombies has a fair amount of boss fights and a couple of different story beats that you can participate in and get cut scenes like you would a normal Easter egg however the difference is here the actual content is no longer gated by knowledge or skill it's mostly gated by time story missions aren't particularly hard at all like they don't require much skill to complete but you need to be jumping into multiple games doing very specific tasks to check off a list very DMZ this is what Gates much of the endgame content such as the dark ether Rifts or you know these different boss fights that you can experience there are a few that you can do in the normal map but most of the actual endgame content you have to grind through all of these story missions first the point I'm getting at is they made the content locked behind a Time gate rather than a skill or knowledge gate for an average player experiencing all that Modern Warfare 3 zombies has to offer is going to take around 35 to 45 hours just to get some of these dark ether Rifts and do the boss fights and everything and chew through all your story missions it's going to take quite a while even if you're really good at the game and you're very knowledgeable about it you can actually access most of this stuff without first grinding through these very arbitrary tasks this shift to the time gate I think is a lot of people's big problem with this mode especially hardcore zombie fans and why they may be turned off now ironically this goes right up DMZ alley and is exactly how that was set up and I had this realization when playing mwz that and I saw it happen with DMZ as well this mode is quite literally made and engineered to waste your time and I don't necessarily mean that as a negative partially yes in the sense that all a lot of the time spent in game is doing mindless meaningless tasks that you're not going to remember or even care about in a couple of hours and the content that you will remember is very few and far between and it's only experienced after all of this meaningless grinding now admittedly the stuff that is fun is grinding for these schematics and Acquisitions that you can get in game especially in the beginning when you're just a brand new player starting out with nothing it's very fun actually unlocking all of the little things then jumping into your next match with some better gear uh but I would say it gets old quickly and if you think think about it if there was no arbitrary task gate like these story missions that would block you out from experiencing like the endgame boss fights and let's just say you had all of the Acquisitions and schematics from the start what would even be the point of playing this mode I mean really like like once you unlock everything there's nothing at all to really play for and it gave me the exact same Hollow feeling I got when I played it at Treyarch it was so bizarre at home as soon as I unlocked all of the schematics and then I played another match it felt just like it did back then and the reason is there was no more progression to be had anymore and I think that is one of the big issues with this like I can play a round based map because the progression you experience is match to match you start out round one with nothing and you go you know throughout the game and get your equipment and weapons and you know how a zombies match progresses it just doesn't really happen the same way here and you realize that the core gameplay is incredibly disconnected in Hollow once you have all of the unlocks or when you're not actively pursuing those things anymore so it's a quite strange dynamic alth although I have to say I still find this mode fun even though I realized in the beginning that these story missions were just meant to like retention me and that's what this mode is built for is player retention not necessarily player satisfaction even despite knowing all that I couldn't deny you that I really enjoyed playing this mode I made a lot of content on it and I was having a ton of fun and I was under the impression that the amount of content that we received on launch would relatively speaking be the blueprint for the post-year uh of support going forward and we could expect more stuff like this maybe new maps and stuff like that but boy was I wrong recently I was on a call with developers and I just basically asked the question because I wanted to gauge where they were at with continuing support on this mode and I just asked if there was any new perks or you know enemy types coming and they basically just Flatout said no and to make matters worse the rumors have claimed and it seems to be true right now that Treyarch have completely left working on Modern Warfare 3 zombies and you might think that this is a bad thing but they've been pulled off to work on Cod 2024 you know their actual next Treyarch title so I can understand Treyarch being pulled off of this but it is a shame because like of how good of a launch it had that nobody really expected it did a lot better than was previously forecasted I'm sure and if Activision really had the numbers that this was their strongest performing third mode you'd think that they would do something to double down and continue support on this instead of just giving it to high mooon Studios to finish out the rest of the year because that's the thing the the post-launch content for modern Warf for zombies has been abysmal or at least season 2 has season 1 was pretty good but it seems like development more or less is done for this mode as far as any big sweeping changes the reason I asked that question is not because I inherently just care about perks or enemy types it's I just wanted to gauge where they were at with how much they were still investing into this mode and it doesn't seem like a whole lot now they're going to be doing from what it sounds like the bare minimum for the rest of the year which is sad because I again I genuinely loved this mode and I didn't expect to it's not a replace for round based zombies and I wouldn't say I enjoy it more than a traditional map or or that game mode for for that matter but if Treyarch has to be pulled off of this to no longer support Modern Warfare 3 zombies to develop cod zombies on 2024 in their next title then I can understand that even though it is Bittersweet another problem with this game mode that they haven't quite figured out is the cooldown system and so the way this works is when you acquire a schematic that means you permanently unlock that item or equipment in game forever albeit you can only spawn one in one time and then has a cool down for a period of time depending on its Rarity so for example you spawn in a tier three Crystal to automatically upgrade your weapon to you know the highest Pack-a-Punch tier that will have a 3-day 72-hour cool down so you don't you can't use them all the time I've seen a lot of people hate this system the fact that you have to wait to be able to use these things that you've unlocked and I kind of get it to some extent but I also don't think that just not having a cool down is a solution either because they don't want you to be maximally loaded out every single game all the time I guess the idea is you need to be able to stagger these things out but between you know being able to completely break the game with a Tombstone glitch which I won't even get into and I I I think it just makes people want to play the game only every couple of days then assuming you're not doing the glitch I think a lot of people will agree with me that you've gotten to a point where you only want to play Modern Warfare Zombies only every couple of days when your stuff is cooled down again and I don't really know what the solution is to that but I've noticed it's a problem and because this mode is so new I don't really see a way around that right now or at least not an obvious one but this mode is very fun and they've got good bones on it it's just not a replacement for round-based zombies but I think it's a valiant effort and for being a scrapped mode I would say they made something decently fun it's just so weird and such a shame to cut the support on this short in like the middle of the Year and that just goes to show how valuable this live service model can be and more so to the point this mode will die one day because the problem is and unlike any other Zombies mode you you can boot up Black Ops 1 right now and play it by yourself eventually in Modern Warfare 3 Al be it probably a long time from now you will not be able to play it anymore because the way this mode functions is online only with a lot of players you need to be able to fill up a Lobby and so if you cannot find lobbies uh to play anymore this mode will be literally inaccessible do I believe that Activision made Treyarch dig up this mode as a scrapped project to slap onto Modern Warfare 3 I do do I think it's a fun game mode also yes I very much do enjoy myself although I have to say I'm a lot more disappointed and much less motivated to play now knowing that there's not going to be anything major or significant that comes to this mode for the rest of the year and that's partially why I also decided to make this video now because for a lot of my Cod reviews I tend to wait until the typical season has run its course although I just don't expect anything big or major to come to any aspect of the game now they're going to be ramping up for Treyarch's next game and this is going to be left by the wayside and again just like with the multiplayer if Treyarch May maybe had more of a Workforce on this and had their time and energy to be able to fully invest in this mode and make it something unique and make it come into its own as they almost got here with this like they were on the precipice of making something insane and amazing just feels like the rug was pulled and they fell right before the finish line which sucks man because you know this mode wasn't projected to do well and at least for myself and a lot of my friends and colleagues and viewers really enjoy this mode do I think it will come back in a future Call of Duty I mean who knows apparently it was incredibly successful but round based zombies is coming back in 2024 which is what I feel a lot of zombie fans want and I don't know what the future of this mode will be but eventually it will be cut short and die one day you won't be able to play it anymore as far as Story Goes I really have no idea what the hell is going on in this new Modern Warfare storyline nor do I think it's conveyed all that well there are some cool moments and a few cut scenes that I really enjoy and I think that are fairly intriguing but as a most I don't know if this reached the potential that it really could have and that's what sucks about it and that's what's frustrating I don't think Treyarch's at fault for this I don't think Sledgehammer or Infinity Ward are at fault for this I I think this is an Activision thing to make this Mode come out it was probably a scrapped project and then they you know bail on it Midway through the year so that Treyarch can actually go work on their thing which is Justified fair enough we want them to be working on their next game as well but it does feel a little bit sad for people who genuinely enjoyed this mode for a lot of reasons and for it to be cut off at the knees just feels very disappointing before we wrap up real quick I just want to give a big thank you to all of my members you guys make this kind of content possible and I am so unbelievably grateful for everybody who does continue to support that allows me to make videos like this want to become a member to appear at the end of future videos it would be greatly appreciated no obligation but thank you everybody who does in advance I appreciate you so at the end of the day what do we really have with Modern Warfare 3 many people were complaining that this just feels like a $70 DLC and that's because in some sense it literally is while they tried some things to make it feel like its own Standalone product I don't think the campaign is nearly long or complex enough to cut it the multiplayer is basically last year's game with a few chord tweaks and maps from 2009 and zombies is borderline a scrapped mode that they decided to add on to this product to help justify its price tag even though there are some things I really find fun and enjoyable about MW3 I cannot say that this is exact the most unique or special game I think Modern Warfare 3 is an embarrassment to be called a full game would it justify itself as a DLC maybe but that's not really my call to make it just feels so disingenuous to present this as a brand new video game when all of its constituents are just repurposed and repackaged old assets and experiences from years prior and or scrapped modes it doesn't really feel like much of its own new game and so there isn't much to point at and say this is what Modern Warfare 3 did that was unique and this is what it made it memorable for years to come I don't think it's actually going to have a lot of that retaining staying power like many old classic Call of Duty games do the game is technically not over yet and there are a few more seasons that have yet to come out at the time of me making this however I don't really foresee any major changes being implemented that will fundamentally change this content from the ground up we pretty much get what we have now and I think they're gearing up for their future Call of Duty titles I think the lesson at the end of the day here is don't be dishonest about what you're selling you live and die by your reputation and I'm not sure this one did any favors for activis or for Call of Duty

Channel: Ch0pper

Views: 726,904

Keywords: cod mw3, call of duty modern warfare 3 review, cod mw3 2023 review, cod mw3 retrospective, call of duty retrospective, cod review, ch0pper, ch0pper modern warfare 3, mw3 campaign breakdown, mw3 campaign explained, mw3 multiplayer review, cod mw3 zombies review, call of duty modern warfare 3 full gameplay review, mw3 2023 story explained

Id: LlXs8U2rA6s

Length: 74min 25sec (4465 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024