The Turbulent Tale of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 has undeniably one of the most interesting and turbulent stories out of any game that exists today and ever since I've started the series you know reviewing these games by far the most requested one to do from the start that people have been asking me to review is Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3. now we're gonna talk about thoroughly you know the literal game itself and cover all the aspects that compose this experience to be what it is but arguably more fascinating than the game itself is the fork in the road this title was responsible for behind the scenes of Modern Warfare 3 we have the story of a growing Cod Community a fractured and crumbling Infinity Ward intentional internal sabotage Activision lawsuits and the additions of Studios like sledgehammer and Raven software have been thrown into the mix with Call of Duty literally all of that happened as a result of the turmoil conflict and ultimately high stakes that MW3 was banking on and it still gets crazier than that but I think to this day a lot of people are still in the dark about what MW3 really meant and and what happened with its production sure it was the finale to the original Modern Warfare series that made Infinity Ward so popular and of course it's not only one of the most financially successful Cod games but it was also what some people consider to be the peak of Call of Duty's cultural relevancy but in any case if you've ever played a Titanfall game or Apex Legends or any respawn entertainment video game there's a good chance that none of those would have ever existed without MW3 but how is all of that stuff related it's a bit of a complicated and delicate one to unpack but it means that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was so much more than what it appeared to be on the surface 2011 was a vastly different time for Call of Duty and its relative position in the gaming world and if you really wanted to go out on a limb you could make the case that Modern Warfare 3 is the moment where the whole Paradigm for COD shifted the momentum went from reaching higher and higher Peaks consistently to afterwards beginning a more downward Trend or just being somewhat more inconsistent and I know all of this might make it seem like I think Modern Warfare 3 is a bad game but that's not exactly true what I do believe is this Modern Warfare 3 is not the ideal version of the game that Vincent Pella and Jason West had planned it to be like MW2 for example feels like the peak of their creativity without really much overruling or corporate strings to influence you know to the degree that was possible but that is not the case with modern warfare 3. clearly whatever they were cooking was not what Activision wanted and is definitely not the MW3 that we currently have so I bring that up to say if you really love Modern Warfare 3 then then great that's awesome but there's a world in which if all the blackmail and sabotage didn't go on behind the scenes we could have had an MW3 that was much closer to what the original masterminds behind Modern Warfare wanted to create sure a lot of their ideas are still in the final build of the game but as an overall experience we got the sabotaged cobbled together version of mw3 was the original plan go going to be better I I mean we'll probably never know for sure so to get a clearer picture of it all we're gonna have to go a little deeper let's get our hands dirty and dive into where the story all begins this will take us all the way back to 2009 right after Modern Warfare 2. everyone please welcome to the stage from Infinity Ward Robert bowling and from Sledgehammer Games Michael Condrey after the unprecedented success of infinity Ward's title Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Activision decided to make MW3 the utmost priority over anything else to ride the wave and really capitalize on the success the series was beginning to accumulate everything was going great for Infinity Ward they had just put out a Titan of a video game it's made them Ultra successful beyond their wildest imaginations all the while you know able to maintain their creative dignity spirit and passion they wanted to pour into their project from the start Activision was happy as well since it made investors pleased and really helped their bottom line for quite a while it seemed nothing could Disturb This mutually beneficial relationship that Infinity Ward and Activision had together but when it came time for pre-production of Modern Warfare 3 that's when things begin to really take a turn for the worse so as it turns out Vin zampella and Jason West to a worthy Studio heads of Infinity Ward at the time and about 35 other employees at IW began to conspire against Activision the reason they felt that due to the explosive success of MW2 and the projected success of mw3 they weren't being compensated fairly with all this you know extra cash flowing in the devs themselves and even the higher ups like Jason and Vince felt like they were getting screwed out of money that was rightfully theirs and so this meant when it came time for MW3 to begin production these people you know mentioned that Infinity Ward essentially were holding the game hostage they refused to work on it and and some even forced to work on the game against their own will they tried everything they could to leverage their position in on the project to get royalties and extra money that they felt was deserved in fact rumors were going around that at that point MW3 was going to be delayed and that would be the first time ever that a Call of Duty game really didn't release on schedule which would be a huge blow to the faith in the brand of Call of Duty and Activision more broadly this led to Vince sempela and Jason West filing a lawsuit against Activision for the unfair treatment they were receiving and Activision counter-suing them claiming that they were sabotaging the pre-production and stealing assets Etc it was reported that Bobby kodek was trying to find dirt on Vince zampella and Jason West so that they'd have grounds to fire them on and I hate that I have to even talk about Bobby kodek on a silly internet video talking about a game I like but it's really crucial background stuff to be able to grasp the entire situation with Infinity Ward employees literally sabotaging the game from the inside and Activision fighting this internal fire ultimately they settled out and Jason and Vince along with 30 or so other former IW employees went on to make their own Studio respawn entertainment nobody really knows the intimate details of what truly went on behind the scenes but if your lead masterminds that are responsible for the massive success of the first two games leave before you can finish the finale and that can be released clearly something quite Sinister was going on behind closed doors and there's no world imaginable where all this chaos and uncertainty didn't hurt the actual final product that would eventually come out so now the situation was we had a bleeding and fractured Infinity Ward morale was low since basically the top dogs of the company abandoned the project and went on to make their own company as basically a big middle finger to Activision and with a hemorrhaging Studio Activision had to make a choice either delay the game and let a broken and shattered Infinity War pick up the pieces or keep the game on schedule and Outsource a lot of the now needed work to them and this is where we're introduced to Sledgehammer Games and Raven software there was no way MW3 was going to get finished on time without some help from not in-house in fact what's crazy is that Activision actually pulled Sledgehammer Games off of working on their own Call of Duty project to finish Modern Warfare 3 and this game from what we know was not Advanced Warfare so this means some Call of Duty game that they were working on at some point that we you know were supposed to see in the future will never see the light of day hey uh production shop here just wanted to add this in it was not part of my original script but I did some research on the scrap Sledgehammer game and this was called Call of Duty fog of War it was a third person Vietnam era CoD game and obviously this has been totally scrapped there's no way we're ever going to see this again but for those of you wondering of what that was then here it is we would have had this game if Sledgehammer didn't have to help with MW3 but anyways priority number one was making MW3 a success at any cost and again as much as I like MW3 I I still think that it has a little bit less of that unmistakable Infinity word feel and identity than say Modern Warfare 2 or Cod 4. you know what I mean right MW3 feels a little less like a perfectly sharp and crafted IW experience it's more like a mostly IW experience but polished up by a bunch of other people kind of softening its edges it's hard to describe but I imagine some of you will get what I'm saying maybe it's better to think about it like this imagine on one end you have the pristine IW experience MD W2 and then you have ghosts on the other end of the spectrum a mostly Raven software and neversoft game with hints of that IW influence then you have MW3 sitting somewhere in the middle of those two games that that's the best I can do in describing how the game feels moment to moment it's also interesting to note that MW3 is still one of the best selling Cod games ever it's many people's first title as well which probably accounts for at least some of the Nostalgia that's felt for this game but no matter the case it's undeniable that Modern Warfare 3 was still wildly successful in its own right despite all The Nasty Trouble behind the scenes Modern Warfare 3 came out in what is still largely regarded as the Golden Era of Call of Duty I I use that term loosely because that really depends on your perspective but there's no doubt that MW3 swept up the world and had everyone's attention the anticipation for this game was felt like none other and while things were an absolute nightmare back in the studio Activision faked the confidence that everything was going just fine and to much surprise rise this didn't appear to hurt the reception or sales of mw3 at all this just goes to show that even games that are basically Marked for Death being so slapped together by a ton of outside help and being a disaster behind the scenes the game can still come out and be a massive hit it's more complicated than that but you know that'll do for understanding MW3 my whole point with all this I think MW3 suffered a real loss to its identity more than anything else it still has you know a huge amount of content there's no doubt about that but I think you can tell especially when it comes to stuff like visuals and art Direction MW3 just doesn't look quite as nice as MW2 did the color palette is just so muted and washed out in a way that doesn't add any extra style or Flair in its own right I mean like you look at some of the identical Maps side by side and for as much as the game is basically MW2 you know same HUD UI weapon and movement animations Etc the art Direction clearly shows that something really dulled out the unique visuals and Aesthetics that the original modern warfare games possessed and no I don't want to hear the but realism the argument that mw3's visuals are better because they look more realistic same argument I made against ghosts simply dulling down your art vision and aesthetic for the sake of hypothetical realism is almost never a good choice boiled down MW3 is basically just MW2 but worse when it comes to visuals specifically also the soundtrack don't get me wrong I like a lot of the music in MW3 but it's not that Hans Zimmer curated Banger of a soundtrack when it comes to the gameplay that's a bit more complicated because MW3 has a campaign the final chapter in The Modern Warfare Saga multiplayer and spec ops same package as MW2 but very different in their details so how do these hold up though did it live up to the hype and expectations we all had I say We Begin by answering that question with the single player campaign oh hey hey are you watching this video yeah I see that burger in your hand when you're watching this put that down for just one second and click subscribe it's it's totally free and you can watch more of these videos man this terrible internet content also I am just a one-man show over here so if you want to become a channel member it really does help guarantee that this content can come out consistently and thank you to anyone in advance that does but anyways thank you for listening and back to your regularly scheduled program [Music] mw3's campaign is the final chapter in a Trilogy that wasn't even supposed to be a Trilogy from the start this ends up being both a great and terrible thing for this one as a whole I feel most people look at the story very positively and in retrospect I do too in a lot of ways but looking at it a bit more closely you know as of my last playthrough it ends up being quite the mixed bag for me while it has some of the best character moments in the entire Modern Warfare franchise it has some ridiculously crazy and over-the-top gameplay situations and unbelievable set pieces it also has a really satisfying conclusion but unfortunately it's also got some kind of lame stuff in it too a bunch of reused moments awkward pacing a story that feels about 60 filler somewhat clunky Gameplay at times and so on I think the biggest problem with modern warfare 3's campaign even when we first played it all those years ago was the fact that we kind of knew where it was going and headed from the start and to be too surprises in a way with the unexpected twist and new enemy introduction that kicks the whole thing into a new gear and since MW3 follows directly after MW2 basically the main story thread in that game is the only major plot point that still needs to be resolved we knew beforehand by the end you know we have to stop Makarov so I feel one of the weakest elements of mw3's story is that nobody really has anything to do for the first two acts of the game it's like they're all sitting around at Infinity Ward and they're like okay we know we gotta kill Makarov at the end but this campaign needs about four more hours of gameplay before we get there you know how do we fill that time like basically the build up to this plot point is largely set up bad guy in one mission that we've never heard of before and then take him out in that very same Mission this happens constantly like to be totally honest mw3's campaign doesn't really start getting interesting until the last two hours or so yeah in the meantime there are some you know incredible moments things that shock you and and raise the stakes on Makarov and give you a real scale for the conflict of World War III but from a character and narrative perspective nobody really has much to do that moves the plot along until about halfway through the game this means most of the game especially the introductory bits feel like filler the entire game is one giant third act but it's like they didn't know what to do for most of it until its conclusion so let me give you an overview and understanding of the events of the plot basically following immediately after MW2 World War 3 rages on across the world you pick up as Delta Squad playing as a man named Frost your allies are Sandman truck played by Idris Elba funnily enough um he's a um you know a tough and Grinch played by this guy whose name I can never remember but I know him from an embarrassing TV show that I watched before called the Santa Clarita diet hello what the hell what the hell maybe even darker one what the hell but it's still your classic Modern Warfare a b story format however this time after the introduction where we see price get sold to medical and try to recover we spend the first few hours of the game on the B story with Delta Force and battling the Russians World War 3 rages on around the world as Makarov continues to commit horrible atrocities eventually some peace negotiations with the Russian president are supposed to take place but of course this means that Makarov and his extremists would no longer be able to have power and cause chaos so they hijacked the plane the Russian president is on and they take his daughter Hostage to try and leverage her for nuclear launch codes so that Makarov can have control of the entire nuclear Arsenal but as always makarov's actual whereabouts are usually unknown and so during the game you're typically playing as Delta Force and assisting other nations around the world fight off the Russian invasion or you play as Yuri and fight alongside price and soap attempting to stop Makarov once and for all now I'll come back to story in just a moment but let's talk a bit about gameplay so like I said you're either playing as task force one for one or Delta Force and depending on the situation you might find yourself in downtown New York City or in Paris or even Somalia the game jumps all over the place very rapidly as per usual with modern warfare this does give you a clear picture of the scale and magnitude of the war the gameplay is about what you'd expect to be honest with a few notable good and bad exceptions great example I can think of is The Iron Lady Mission you find yourself in Paris and gunning in an AC-130 as you clear and cut a path for your squad but that's not all it cuts back and forth between the AC-130 sequence and ground forces keeping it both visually and mechanically interesting so that one sequence never gets dragged out too long or just overdone I contrast this Mission directly with the new one in in the brand new Modern Warfare 2. there's this mission where you spend like 20 or 25 uninterrupted minutes in an AC-130 where you spend most of your time not shooting like that's a great example Temple of how not to do an AC-130 sequence and this mission in MW3 is so smart as it keeps the pacing and tone in mind in the end the Eiffel Tower does fall at the last moment when you and your squad are on your last mags and things are looking quite Grim you get saved at the very last second it's a great emotional moment and a gameplay bit that I've always remembered this mission is so good and it's maybe one of the best in the entire game also I love the usage of Juggernaut suits in these missions while it only happens occasionally it gives you a totally unique experience and you approach your gameplay strategy slightly different because of the increased health and somewhat more restricted movement however there are some things that I don't love about the gameplay as well and I'm not exactly sure why these choices were made maybe a budget or or time constraint thing or lack of creativity I really don't know but MW3 reuses so many obvious sequences from older games uh that you could you could almost catalog them actually you know what let's do that Captain price shoots a guy after getting information about another guy swimming in water under a giant thing sitting in a far away building waiting for some guy to show up getting spotted after trying to snipe said guy distracting the main bad guy in the fight so that you can try to kill him Bowing in an underground prison and or catacombs to use night vision big plane or helicopter coming right at you escaping a really deep tunnel or an underground thing also this is another symptom in the long list of we don't know what we're doing with this campaign you know the iconic breach and clear slow down moments in Call of Duty it happens in basically every game here and there and it's really fun when it comes up but MW3 literally spams this it got to a point where I started rolling my eyes every time that stupid yellow icon came up to breach a door like it's fun and effective when used sparingly and in the proper context it really takes the game to a new level but this game takes it way too far to a point where it almost was comedic like there's even fake out ones I guess the game's had enough of it too it was so overused that I legitimately started to wonder if it was supposed to be a joke or not I mean seriously they're awesome when used every now and again but doing it like almost every Mission started to make it feel kind of cringe at a certain point also huge annoyance in the gameplay here in MW3 in a fair bit of the missions the Russian uniforms and your allies uniforms are way too similar there's so many levels where it's kind of hard to tell where the line divides between your allies and the enemy much more so than MW2 when no matter the color Choice the enemy always had a distinct look in that game and I can already hear people typing but but it's more it's more tactical it's more realistic no stop it's it's I don't care if it's more tactical or realistic that's not good game design everybody looks kind of more or less the same here visually for the most part and and the last thing I found kind of disappointing about the gameplay there was a clear jump in quality between Cod 4 and MW2 Mission structure but there really isn't that same leap here in MW3 it's essentially just more MW2 if that makes sense and that's fine if you like that style but in my eyes it was really a missed opportunity to take its gameplay depth to the next level the thing about Call of Duty is that it's very realistic you know it's very realistic you know it's very realistic you know it's very realistic you know to um uh but let's come back to the story again so after Makarov takes the president's daughter hostage he plans and executes a massive chemical attack on London this unfortunate disaster happens and raises the urgency to find and deal with Makarov as soon as possible this gives you the leads where he obtained the chemicals from some man named War robe and you track him down to get answers but really you're strung along again because War robe sells out another man named Volk who was the chemist that created the substance that caused the London event and now is the only known man with current ties to Makarov the last Act of the game is finally when things start happening you're able to gather some Intel about makarov's location and a meeting he's going to have eventually so Yuri soap and price set up shop in this building in order to assassinate Makarov when he's vulnerable of some Intel that you got from kamarov and so it's revealed in this mission that kamarov was set up Makarov knew your plan was coming and so he prepared for it he even says that Yuri shouldn't have come then Makarov blows wait what oh I'm sorry continues on to the next page then Makarov blows up the building that soap and Yuri were posted up in this reopens the Stab Wound from Shepard and causes major blood loss eventually upon soap's dying breath he tells price the truth about Makarov and Yuri it turns out Yuri knew Makarov and was involved in his plans to some degree however after the nuclear bomb incident that killed Shepard's men Yuri had a change of heart and decided he wanted to stop Makarov himself Makarov sniffed out this betrayal and took care of him instead Yuri did his best to stop the airport attack but failed in doing so and now a broken and angry Captain Price devastated at the loss of soap has to begrudgingly cooperate with Yuri as they still have the same ultimate goal Delta Force and Task Force 141 work together to rescue the captured daughter of the Russian president and to save the man himself eventually as well Delta Force sacrificed himself in the process allowing everybody else to escape and foiling makarov's plans and so the world is beginning to get back on track the last thing to do is get revenge on Makarov this takes you to the hotel where he's currently located and you and Yuri take Juggernaut suits and hunt him down during this this excursion Yuri gets badly injured and he encourages you to leave him and continue on to go eliminate Makarov price heads up to the rooftop and downs the helicopter that Makarov was attempting to make a getaway in after crashing down Makarov has you on the ropes when Yuri makes a last minute move to distract Makarov allowing you to find an opening and set up the killing blow goodbye you tie a metal line around his neck and break the glass beneath you and for the very last shot in the Modern Warfare franchise price literally smokes that Makarov pack [Music] that is in a nutshell the entire story of Modern Warfare 3. as far as narrative is concerned I think it's my least favorite Modern Warfare game purely because it feels like they didn't know what to do with themselves or the characters the whole time up until about the final conclusion or at least the latter half of the game random side villains getting set up just to be eliminated in a 10 minute window wasn't really that compelling to me but to be fair I love soap's little Arc I like the dynamic between price and Yuri changing throughout the game and you know kind of his Redemption Arc and well I don't find anyone on Delta Force particularly compelling they are a nice counterbalance and a b story that does end up tying into the ultimate plot later on Modern Warfare campaigns tonally have always been about that non-stop over-the-top action and you know I I get that but MW3 doesn't have enough of those moments that really slow down and let the world soak in the rare times that does occur are amazing though you know in this mission where you begin and you're strolling through Paris or Germany and and like you're seeing the effects of World War III in these places without outright having to be explicitly shown what happened in a cut scene it leaves it a lot up to your imagination and is excellent World building stuff it just the problem is there isn't enough of that here in my opinion well narratively again I think it is for sure my least favorite in the trilogy it still is a pretty good experience when complemented by the gameplay but one thing I really do appreciate is that they hard closed the ending and they close the book on the Modern Warfare story in this game you get a satisfying ending and no like embarrassing sequel bait that comes off really hard as fan service or money chasing they wrapped it up in a way that just felt good and and tied up the whole trilogy in one complete package and I know it sounds crazy but it felt weird playing a game with a definitive ending instead of games that constantly feel the need to keep the door open or being too afraid to kill off characters that they may potentially need to make more games in the future MW3 just wanted to tell a good story and wrap up this long experience in a way that everybody will remember and I I respect that so much with all of that in mind I feel like there isn't much else to dig at with mw3's campaign I think compared to the rest of the offerings in the Call of Duty series it's a pretty mediocre campaign not outright terrible or offensive by any means but it's certainly not the best we've ever seen either I I think a lot was Lost in Translation after Vince and Jason left the studio it's possible the campaign was the thing that suffered the most as a result of their departure like the best way I can sum up Modern Warfare 3's single player campaign very fun in its own bubble very similar to Modern Warfare 2 structurally but doesn't take too many big risks on its own and ends up being you know very competent but does not Ascend into being amazing but the thing that Infinity Ward was really banking on was following up on the Behemoth that was mw2's multiplayer experience so how does mw3s compare it exactly well let's take a closer look MW3 multiplayer is there anything more iconic than this one I know this is a lot of people's favorite multiplayer and for many of you watching this I'm sure it was also your first Cod experience as well for some of you now to take this one apart I'm gonna come back to the concept that I bring up a lot in my videos this game is a weird example of the thing I talk about where like enjoyment is subjective and quality is not like MW3 is a prime example of where that contradiction can take place I think MW3 is easily the best designed multiplayer out of the whole OG Modern Warfare Trilogy it is undeniably the most balanced sophisticated and thought through depthful experience oh out of those three games however I'm not actually sure if I find MW3 more fun than MW2 but why is that though shouldn't the objectively best one also be the most fun it's it's definitely complicated and I think the multiplayer suffers from being a mostly Infinity War thought out project but later on you can definitely feel the Sledgehammer Games and Raven software influence if you're paying enough attention and also I I think this is the most accurate way to think about it Cod 4 let's say is the creation of the basic Call of Duty formula if you want to think about it as like a chemical uh you know especially as far as the multiplayer is concerned MW2 was adding another element to that chemical compound that made it wildly enjoyable but really chaotic and unstable MW3 was like adding another element to that chemical compound that made it a lot more refined and you know way less unstable and made it more sophisticated but somewhat less raw and viscerally fun it's super memorable though and that's for reasons we're gonna get into like this is kind of hilarious and also embarrassing but MW3 gave me Permanent brain rot in in so many ways when getting shot down in an AC-130 this sound plays shut up and now every time I'm on an airplane in real life and I hear that Bell chime my fight or flight response kicks in subconsciously I I wish I was kidding about that it's got some very iconic stuff to say the least and there's a lot to discuss with MW3 multiplayer and I feel like we should start by highlighting the most dramatic differences between this and Modern Warfare 2 because to be real MW3 is largely MW2 DLC with a few core tweaks here and there no less than oh so that was just a lie let me start off with the things that I really like for example the core feature that MW3 was practically known for is the unique approach to kill streaks and how that changed the core gameplay Loop Infinity Ward stated with the old system of MW2 they were only catering towards one kind of player you know people who get a lot of kills one of the first things we did was we took a look back at Modern Warfare 2 we realized we had made the game for one type of player now they wanted to expand on the system and reward players who enjoyed doing the objective or who just want to be a support role for their team this means that MW3 had Point streaks rather than kill streaks however for the most part it still worked the same way but now there were three different strike packages you had assault which was basically the old killstreak system from the past you got a bunch of lethal items to obtain and mostly they're all just for getting more kills as well but then you had a support package and these allowed somebody to obtain more support based equipment and less lethal ones know I've said this one but for the majority of them they're items for map awareness or info Gathering Etc the fundamental adjustment to this package was the fact that your streaks do not reset upon death so effectively you can do all the things capture Flags diffusing bombs uh and of course getting kills all stacked to earn what were persistent even through death so then finally one of the most busted and fun packages was the specialist so instead of getting rewarded with either lethal or support items you get more perks stacked onto your character as you get more kills and score these did reset upon death but this can end up with you having damn near every perk in the game and being absolutely overpowered and busted the only downside to this was you know running this package you would never get any type of kill streak items period a worthy trade-off I would say but a pretty major one nonetheless MW3 does have a fair variety of these items divided up by the assault class and support so there is a lot of stuff to experiment with and all also another core feature unique to this title were weapon proficiencies this was a new mechanic that basically encouraged you to level up all kinds of weapons and unlocking the proficiency would deepen the sense of class customization and progression that you feel when leveling up so for example proficiencies can range from having more stabilized kick on your weapon maybe you take less Flinch when getting hit in gunfights or perhaps you want to run two different attachments on your primary weapon I thought this was a lot of fun and allowed you to build different versions of your favorite weapon for different kinds of situations without destroying the weapon's core identity also I really am a big fan of a lot of the maps not all of them but most of them are Infinity Ward really seeming like they got a grip on good map design figured out except some kind of horrible ones like downturn and uh interchange these are truly cringe but everything else in the game is either playable or very solid some of the DLC maps admittedly are a little question questionable but they got experimental with some of these but hey can you really blame them also another thing I really love is the weapon selection it feels like the culmination of the entire Arsenal that had been developed over Cod 4 and mw2's life cycle with some new stuff for MW3 as icing on the cake they'd also change around some stuff with how they're organized too like shotguns were no longer a secondary for example you couldn't run around with the M4 and dual model 1897s in the same class you know same idea basically applied to perks as well they tried to balance the perk selection so that there wasn't any blatantly meta perk that everybody wanted to use like stopping power for example was finally gone what you may be noticing here is that MW3 made many key adjustments to smooth out the rough edges and just borderline broken and unfair parts of the previous games but at what cost the speed of movement of the player perks every element of the game has gotten more balance was it at the cost of its fun Factor well you have to at least ask the question but I'll let you draw that conclusion yourself but the core 30 second gameplay Loop that is the moment-to-moment gameplay experience is actually Top Notch for Call of Duty not to mention it also had some amazing game modes in fact it appeared for the first time ever and was absolutely spectacular you had to capture the flag like mode but it was more just about how long you could hold a singular flag as a team for the maximum amount of time and MW3 eventually had Face Off you guys know that gunfight from mw2019 was extraordinarily popular but that really wasn't the first game to do it MW3 had a 1v1 and 2v2 mode specifically built for that kind of play that on top of a much more social experience through very customizable custom games and Call of Duty Elite and that website if you're old enough to remember that whole thing but I give it tons of props for going out of its way to be as competitive and social friendly as it possibly could be and I think that's the core reason people remember this one so fondly it was so accessible and fun to play for anybody whether you know you're a brand new beginner player or a long time series veteran everybody got something different from the experience because as much as I like a lot of the stuff with you know MW3 it wasn't all great you might ask okay well what problems do you have with modern warfare 3. honestly not a whole lot most of my issues aren't with the major components of the game rather the fact that it doesn't feel like the same leap in Innovation from Cod 4 to MW2 MW2 to MW3 feels like mostly the same game just with slightly different conditions and balancing factors despite all these new changes made to the you know Point streaks and so on if we're being honest it's essentially the same game as MW2 but on different maps and with a less nice color palette but you know there's is some stuff for the life of me I will never understand like the fact that there's a whole damn stealth bomber in in the support class for like 12 points potentially wiping out actual kill streaks and there's nothing you can do about it or how about the way they did the nuke so dirty like I understand it was kind of unfair and busted getting a nuke in MW2 and just flat out ending the game but my God was it so fun MW3 had a new type of Max kill streak called the Moab for all intents and purposes it's the Tactical nuke but it does not end the game it kills the whole enemy team once and leaves crap on the screen for the rest of the match and when you really think about it sure it's more balanced whatever that really means but it totally neuters the whole purpose of the nuke like even just practically speaking right like you can get a MOAB and kill the whole enemy team once basically six guaranteed kills right fair enough but also consider that in AC-130 and or Osprey Gunner can kill the whole enemy team multiple times over for half as many kills I guess the saving grace to the Moab is that you didn't have to equip it on your creative class you can just just get that streak anytime you achieve it in game but again the point is fun Factor sacrificed for fair balance also I do want to give a shout out to the gold camo this was the first time we saw gold camo for Mastery in an Infinity Ward game you know excluding Cod 4. and many people including myself still think that MW3 had the best looking gold camo to this date but even in the face of that I still can't help but feel that the rest of the visuals are just somewhat lacking maybe it's made even worse by how easy it is to compare it to MW2 and like all other aspects but MW3 multiplayer just has a more dreary and depressing color tone and atmosphere for no real reason that was just kind of always in the back of my mind when replaying this one usually one would expect a pretty objective jump in visual quality or art direction from two to the third iteration in the game like with Halo that's certainly the case not a one-to-one example but I'm sure you get the point by now also talking about the out of game systems for a moment while the creative class is large virtually the same as MW2 in terms of look and feel expanded a little bit with some you know new attachment selections and whatnot ironically so are the calling cards and emblems the ones in MW3 I feel are just objectively worse than MW2 most of them are from that game to begin with but the the really crazy and fun stuff is nowhere to be found in MW3 they just feel so lifeless and watered down and Bland compared to the previous game while the prestige system as well would deepen it wouldn't have the massive jumps in Innovation that appeared with Cod 4 and MW2 they just kept what was working and iterated on it as well so all this in mind you know good maps fun weapons interesting and new point streak system enjoyable game modes and so on even with all the pain points MW3 is still one of the best designed multiplayers ever and we love it for that no doubt but that being said it seems Modern Warfare 2 is where the industry defining and game-changing Innovations kind of capped out MW3 is merely a refinement of Modern Warfare 2's already existing formula and you know there's nothing inherently wrong with that but for people who had the expectation to see that same massive leap in features that we saw from Cod 4 to MW2 it just didn't really happen here if you'd like him to be too and just wanted more of that but maybe a bit different with some more attention to balance then MW3 is probably the game you're looking for in right up your alley but I also empathize with those who felt that the Innovation that had defined Infinity Ward and the Modern Warfare series was basically absent from this MP no new and unheard of boundaries were pushed and it felt as if MW3 was mostly a fan pleaser more than anything else as a whole package MW3 is still for sure one of my favorites when compared to all the others but I always have to wonder if the original team had stayed on board and really saw this one through to the end would we have seen something much more risky in a game that genuinely tried to go above and beyond what was thought to be possible again who really knows but all we have is this game in the experiences that it gave us for a reason I think this leaves a mediocre feeling in a lot of people's mouths who didn't really enjoy MW3 but if it was your first Cod however you'll you'll probably love it as it isn't objectively very solid game it's certainly a classic and is debatably the most important part of what made Modern Warfare 3 so memorable but that wasn't all this game had to offer spec ops is the wild card in the MW3 offering now from what I understand spec ops is in large part a direct product of Sledgehammer Games and Raven Infinity Ward helped these along but a lot of the amount of like just sheer content that it would get would be created by these other Studios so spec ops in MW2 was a really nice bonus and and gave a real Co-op experience that was distinctly different to the MP or campaign and while spec ops in MW2 was still fairly basic MW3 would seek to expand its Horizons not only by doing the original spec ops formula and those traditional rearranged you know campaign missions but also the addition of a brand new Survival game mode and DLC chaos game modes as well the really special thing about spec ops in MW3 specifically is just the sheer number of missions and Maps there are to play this was the first time in Infinity War's history that they got to make DLC content after the fact Force spec ops this puts a new Breath of Life into an otherwise was usually a shallowish mode now you had a plethora of classic spec ops missions to keep you busy for a while you know the gameplay of most of these are honestly just campaign missions again with very minor condition adjustments so it's not like a batch of this like really you know specific curated content was always hitting the shelves for spec ops as it were but like the gameplay is solid and they are always fun to do way way better bounce for solo as well if that was your thing and while I can praise these spec op missions till I'm blue in the face the real star of the show in my eyes is survival I remember loving this the most when I was younger and even now I had an absolute blast playing it it shocked me how good it really was so I want to talk about what I think the genius of MW3 survival really is and why no game sense has been able to quite replicate it in the same way survival has a bunch of maps and a few of them have like different rule conditions and stuff but the best one to play and I imagine the one that people almost always started on was resistance and the beautiful thing is this map is the textbook example of how to do this gameplay correctly obviously the main objective is to live as long as possible each wave becoming increasingly more difficult you know plenty of cod games have done this ghost Advanced Warfare Modern Warfare 2019 and so on what makes this one any different I was playing survival and paying close attention and I believe I figured it out the main reason this works so well is the AI Logic for example you can sit in this house and and of course the enemies will continue to approach but they don't all like push you at once just get in your face and spray you like they do in MW 2019 this means you actually get to defend yourself and think intelligently about where you're positioned the enemy balance feels very fair and like I don't know the technical reason for that but this seems to be part of it also in survival you're given access to these shops these give you guns ammo armor kill streets Etc and the key differences here it lets you play with the sandbox items whenever you want I'm pretty certain that in mw2019 the shops lock mid round and in this game you can you can be like oh I've got two juggernauts on my back I'm gonna quickly stop by and buy flash grenades and buy some precious time to get some damage in or I'm gonna call in a Delta Squad to temporarily distract the first wave of enemies like the sandbox element is nearly perfect and it's so well balanced and optimized to be creative and it's like excellent whether you're playing Solo or Co-op it's so damn smart man I cannot stress how fun and good MW3 survival really is it's simple to some degree but I'm baffled that Call of Duty hasn't been able to replicate a survival mode that's nearly as good as this one in over a decade like that is actually insane spec ops in MW3 considering that it has a huge amount of on-disc content and it got DLC missions and Maps as well this was a true extension and evolution for the co-op mode that Modern Warfare are introduced that I think a lot of people were craving and expecting with this title so it really holds up I have to say I was surprised about how much I loved spec ops again in this game in retrospect I mean I I remember I always liked it fondly and stuff like that but this truly made me fall in love with the survival mode again for sure I would even say with the sheer depth of spec ops it kind of makes up for the somewhat lackluster campaign like I know that's kind of wild to say but it's actually great here in compliments the game so well spec ops is maybe the best we've ever seen in this game specifically don't know if that's a wild claim or not but I think I would go so far to say that so now it's time to get to brass tacks and figure out like what happened to MW3 like what really caused it to come out the way it did again whether you like or dislike it isn't really the point it's clear that something went on that fundamentally altered what this game was supposed to be from the start and I think a lot of it can largely be boiled down to the greed kicking in after you know your massive title that had huge success in the last game and I'm saying greed on both the developer side and the Publishers I'm not going to sit here and pretend that it was you know one party that was absolutely innocent in this entire situation otherwise there really wouldn't be a legal battle it'd be pretty cut and dry it's complicated and so I'm gonna say that you know to some degree everybody was to blame for all of this now was it better or worse for the overall product I don't think we really know like at the end of the day Modern Warfare 3 is a very excellent Call of Duty game like it's the video game equivalent to the kid that grows up in a broken household and grows up to become a famous celebrity or whatever and while it's somewhat pointless to wonder about what this game was really supposed to be before all of the trouble for many people who feel this is their favorite Cod experience I doubt you would trade any of your experiences or memories with this for for anything else

Channel: Ch0pper

Views: 112,566

Keywords: call of duty mw3, ch0pper, chopper, call of duty modern warfare 3, cod mw3 retrospective review, call of duty modern warfare 3 gameplay, cod retrospective, call of duty modern warfare 3 multiplayer, mw3 review, mw3 multiplayer review

Id: Il6NFv4HOhk

Length: 45min 27sec (2727 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023