Is Modern Warfare 3 the worst campaign so far?

Call of Duty series is the most impactful series to gaming industry. With the first game, Call of Duty brought an innovation to gaming industry, they told a cinematography with in a game, this kind of approach has never been successfully told us so far until Call of Duty 1. Over a decade, many believe Call of Duty started to give less care for its single player campaign, but I disagreed with most of the critics. This time, Call of Duty developers have failed.

Warning! Major Spoilers Ahead

Modern Warfare 3 Campaign starts off with invading a Gulag-like facility, a Russian prison near the Japanese border. We attack with a bunch of special forces with black suits, not knowing who we are and why did we come for. We enter the facility and incite a riot, prisoners help us clear the way against Russian prisoner guards, which are heavily armed with assault rifles. After we come to the bottom of this old prison, a familiar face from the previous series has shown to us. Vladimir Makarov.

Now, at this point i started to get excited because he is without a doubt the most powerful Call of Duty villain. In previous series of Modern Warfare 2 we killed a bunch of civilians with Makarov in a grand scheme and this caused Russia a casus belli to invade USA which incited a World War 3. It was portrayed so well, most players who played that mission got hooked up to the game immediately.

The new Makarov escapes from the prison with a Russian mercenary group, which is called Konni. Makarov assumes command and starts to enact his plan. Using missiles and toxic gas. Now wait a second, this is basically Modern warfare 2 story except for toxic gas! The game’s storyline becomes find the missiles with Task Force 141 and destroy it. Now storyline starts to fall off short here.I will talk about this in detail in the second part of my review. Task Force 141 fails to get one missile therefore Russians are hit, they find this a casus belli to invade Urzikstan.

Now we are coming to story’s hit point, where in the last game last scene it has been shown to us, Makarov is about to commit a terrorist act in a plane that he snuck a plastic pistol parts to a airport. That scene comes in and at this point i am expecting an amazing brutal scene, where Makarov commits an act of evil that shook the entire world. Instead, we get one of Farah’s who is a character from Modern Warfare 1, comrade got threatened to tied down to a bomb and suicide. It was executed so poorly it didn’t even feel like playing the game, rather watching a cutscene, At this point I fell off from story and focused on finishing the game faster.

We also learn Alex Keller is alive after that explosion inside the factory in Modern Warfare and Graves is alive after the tank got destroyed. They tried to make a plot twist and surprise us but they have failed because we all were so sure both of them got killed. They both deserved their deaths and their story was complete. It is absolutely disrespecting to both of those characters from Activision.

To Do Good Things, You Must Do Some Bad

Now, let’s talk about gameplay. Call of Duty single player design is mostly linear, and it usually complements the story. In Modern Warfare 3 they changed this to open combat missions. Open combat mission basically lets you approach the mission in different ways. You can choose stealth approach by waiting and executing enemies in stealth with knives, silenced weapons or just by sneaking. You can also choose a run and gun approach by fighting multiple enemies at the same time, using vehicles and finding good weapons around. While this is sounds a great concept in paper, there is a big problem in this approach, and that is the design of levels by developers. They designed the levels so plain and generic, most missions are uninteresting and generic, therefore it does not create enough tension for players.

Another problem is that there are “loot box” like chests around! You loot them for “rare” and “epic” weapons, just like in Call of Duty Warzone! It all kills the authenticity and seriousness of the campaign. They tried to make that you salvage for loot and tried to make it feels grand mission concept, but the problem is that the maps are too small for this.

The last problem about gameplay is that there are some logical mistakes of campaign. Call of Duty campaigns is like watching Michael Bay movies but in one mission, as Laswell we meet Yuri Orlov who is the main character we play in old Modern Warfare 3. During this mission she talks in radio with Nikolai but the problem is we are trying to sneak to Russian military base in Urzikstan. During sneaking when we are about to get detected by Russian forces, Laswell starts talking about how she is about to get detected. This is obviously a logical mistake and another authenticity killer which wasn’t shown in previous games of Call of Duty.

Hopefully this is my last negative review about Call of Duty, which I am a fan favorite of the series. I could have recommended this if this was a DLC of Modern Warfare 2,but this game came at full 100 dollars price, therefore I can not recommend this game. They really tanked this series to the bottom. Buy it on sale, or you can just watch the single player campaign from streaming sites.

3.8 Not Recommended

The Good

1. Innovation
2. Main Characters
3. Using Stealth

The Bad

1. Storyline
2. Gameplay
3. No boots on the ground

• Replayability 3
• Storyline 2
• Mechanics 7
• Seriousness 3
• Authenticity 4
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