Modern Warfare 3 was finally revealed yesterday, and we received a surprising amount of information on all three pillars of this year’s Call of Duty. Below are some brief first impressions of the game, and I’m pleasantly surprised at my own positive response to the reveal, after what can only be described as a massive buzzkill of a year, which started with the first look of Modern Warfare 2 at the poorly received “Call of Duty Next” event.
Campaign
Call of Duty campaign trailers always deliver, and MW3’s was no different. All the familiar faces are there, Makarov looks as vindictive as ever, and Verdansk is a warzone. I was mixed on the Modern Warfare 2 campaign as it felt like it was missing a ‘big bad’ that’s on the same level of Makarov, so having him back raises the stakes a lot. The “open combat” missions sound like they will increase the replay value of the campaign, while also having more traditional linear missions full of set pieces that everyone has grown to expect in a Call of Duty campaign. Verdansk is one of the more memorable things to come out of Modern Warfare 2019, so having it play a central role in the Campaign makes a lot of sense and will hopefully tie together some loose threads that have unravelled over the course of the last few years in the Modern Warfare storyline.
Multiplayer
From what was revealed, Sledgehammer is living up to its name. The MW3 developer has demolished the vast changes Infinity Ward made to the gameplay of Call of Duty last year, with an emphasis on movement and player freedom returning. The new tac-stance mechanic should also allow for fast players to continue building momentum by being able to fire their weapon while sliding, trading accuracy for mobility. The perk system has also returned to a more traditional system, with all perks being available to the player upon game start – no more timed perks.
The map pool for MW3 includes all 16 maps that launched with the original Modern Warfare 2 in 2009. While it would have been nice to have some new original maps in there, this is a clear win for long term fans of the series. MW2 contains some of the most beloved maps in all of the franchise, and having a lot of tried and tested MP maps at launch should make the experience a lot more enjoyable than the more recent Modern Warfare MP launches. That being said, it will be interesting to see how some of these map designs hold up, as movement and gunplay has evolved several times since 2009. The return to a more traditional Call of Duty experience should certainly help, along with Sledgehammer’s decision to reduce headshot multiplier damage, and increase player health.
MW2 2022 played slow and had a fast time-to-kill. MW3 is going for the opposite of that, with a faster pace of play, and a slower time-to-kill. Which of these is the correct way to design a Call of Duty game is subjective – as much as I wish it wasn’t. I much prefer the slow TTK school of thought and am thrilled Sledgehammer are going ahead with the change for MW3.
Zombies
Zombies is back! I’m always thrilled when Treyarch returns to give us more Zombies. As much as it would be nice for the developer to be able to focus on its own game, that just isn’t the way Activision wants Call of Duty to operate now. I’ll be covering Zombies more in-depth in another article, but my overall thoughts so far are positive. It looks like it’s combining Outbreak with the parts of DMZ I enjoyed, while also removing the PvP element. A lot of my time spent in DMZ was “imagine this was used for Zombies in some way” and thankfully it looks like that’s now going to happen!
I do think it’ll lose some of the feeling of exploration that Outbreak has. I may be in the minority but I like how tranquil it is when you first spawn into Outbreak. You can chill out or go directly to the objective and get in about the Zombies instantly. It sounds like Modern Warfare Zombies is going to trade that for a more consistent gameplay loop with increasingly intense encounters, culminating in a final extraction.
Having 24 players all playing together on a Zombies map is an intriguing concept, but as a solo player – and someone that is a massive advocate for solo Zombies – I hope there is a way to continue to play solo. I’d settle for being able to drop into the map as a squad of 1 – similar to how DMZ did it – but hope Treyarch can go the extra mile with a solo mode.
On a more narrative note, Modern Warfare Zombies marks another chapter in the quickly growing Dark Aether saga. We’ve been spoiled by the amount of lore we’ve been given since the story debuted in Black Ops Cold War in 2020. As a diehard of Treyarch’s original Aether story, I am thrilled that the story is scratching the same itch for me. The hardest part of letting Treyarch work on its next project is having the story disappear for a number of years (none of us are getting any younger!) so having them return a year earlier works for me. I do wish we had other avenues to continue experiencing the story however – the Zombies comics were a great way of bridging the gap between Black Ops 3 and Black Ops 4.
Final Thoughts
To wrap it all up, I’m very impressed with what’s been presented to us so far and I believe the correct call was made in making Modern Warfare 3 its own thing and not just an add on for Modern Warfare 2. Makarov will give the campaign a sense of threat that wasn’t really there in Modern Warfare 2, and the missions set around Verdansk will no doubt be a lot of fun to play. The multiplayer overhaul has reinvigorated many hardcore Call of Duty players with a dose of nostalgia on top, and Zombies continues to tread new ground, while Treyarch also cooks up an incredible experience for 2024 that will almost certainly please longterm fans.