Developer: Sledgehammer Games
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5 (Reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X
Genre: First-person shooter
Publisher: Activision
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is the latest in the massively popular Call of Duty series, a sequel to Modern Warfare II. I haven’t played a Call of Duty game in a while, but I have had multiple versions since Call of Duty 2, so I know its genre.
It’s a first-person shooter game deeply rooted in the modern era where, in main campaign mode, you have to take down Makarov, a Russian terrorist. It’s a hyperrealistic war game where you take the reigns of your character to battle through a series of missions that consist of stealth, skirmishes, and just run-and-gun moments. I found the campaign somewhat flat. I enjoyed parts, but it didn’t have that gripping story to keep you glued to the controller. The flow of the campaign needed to fit more smoothly to tell a rich story. It felt like you dropped into a random area and killed as many enemies as possible. The game is fun; I enjoyed the all-out mayhem and unabashed action. It doesn’t compete with a Horizon or Cyber-Punk in terms of narrative, and it’s just okay. The voice acting, graphics, sounds and landscapes look fantastic. Some very cool water effects early on in the game did give the game a great start, but the game became pretty similar as you progressed; with each mission, you seemed to be arbitrarily dropped off and killed everything; again, this is fun. The gameplay mechanics were excellent and responsive, with fantastic weapons and tech to support your journey.
The multiplayer Invasion and Zombies are particularly good; the other online gameplays are good, too. Invasion is a vast 20 versus 20 all-out team deathmatch with some AI opponents thrown in for good measure. You feel at constant risk, and the mix of airstrikes, vehicles, drones and 39 other players is just a sight to behold, amazingly fun. The massive scale of the maps and the chaotic nature of the vast number of people are fantastic.
Zombies is a three-player per team, but the map will have seven other squads that can harm you but can kill zombies. Zombies is a mix of strategy coordination and is set in this wild zombie-filled world, where you fight more prominent and more enormous creatures before you exit. It’s a weird tactical extraction in a world of zombies; again, the graphics, sound, and gameplay build a fun game mode. I haven’t played COD Zombies mode in a while, so it was novel and fun.
Novelty is probably the biggest issue for this game; if you are a COD veteran who has every game and played it for many hours, I’m not sure you can see this as a massive shift to a previous incarnation; for me, someone who has not played COD in a while, I enjoyed the multiplayer aspect but was let down by the campaign mode.
The game is solid and decent, but the multiplayer is the most compelling piece I enjoyed; while the campaign mode started well, it could not keep up. The graphics, gameplay, and sound are good, but the game has tough competition from many innovative games in the first-person and online multiplayer environments. The online is something I would pick up again for sure.
Overall: 6/10
Enjoys more than the odd game, long time gamer, somewhat a technologist and everything else in between.
Also enjoys a good solid game of FIFA online. Currently PS4, XBOX 360 and STEAM.
