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MW3 continues literally hours later after MW2 with Soap and Price labeled as war criminals from General Shepherd making them seem bad. Their goal is to try to stay under the radar until Makarov is back on the grid. The game starts out with Soap being rolled into a hospital in the first cut-scene and being patched up from the wound he received after Shepherd stabbed him in the chest. As they try to bring him back with defibrillators the logo pops up and then the game launches with explanation of the first major attack. The Russian Federation launches their attack against America in the main part of New York and you play as Frost which is a Delta Force Operator with Sandman, Truck and Grinch. Your first mission is to take back New York from Russian troops and they have planted a communications jammer on top of a building to keep the Americans from communicating via radio and disrupt them from receiving help from outside forces. It’s a very dramatic start to see New York burning down from missiles and helicopters attacking as you climb out of your blown up Humvee.
First starting out, you’ll recognize new things such as the dual scope on the M4A1 and the XM-25 grenade launcher which lazes targets and blows up in mid-air based on the lazed location. As you head up to the building you notice the beautiful display of the graphical and building details that Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games created which makes you really feel like you are actually in New York itself. I have to give them major credit for the audio, even without my gaming headset, through the TV this game sounds amazing. When you knock out the communications jammer, you hold the building down for evacuation in a helicopter and this part gets a bit insane as you have to shoot down Russian hinds chasing you down. The visual scale is very impressive and I’m surprised they were actually able to make New York at that grand of a scale without running into any problems with the frame rate. They have other parts of the world including Germany, France and London that look quite impressive as well and of course in some of the missions like in London, you get to play as the SAS, as well as fighting beside the French Special Forces known as GIGN in Paris. After the first mission, you move on to a classic Navy SEAL type mission where you have to take over a Russian sub on the outside of New York. The developers actually said that they asked the SEALs where they would place an explosive to invade the sub, and they said on the bottom tailfin; so that’s exactly what you do in that mission. That’s not all they took in from real Special Forces, they also asked Delta what they used for equipment being used right now on enemies and they told them that they do not use regular flash bangs anymore, they use 9 bangs. What 9 bangs do is pop off 9 times to ensure everyone in the area is flashed and then you take them out. When you get to the SAS parts of missions, they still use regular flash bangs, which I thought was interesting that they paid attention to using real world equipment to make it feel more realistic.
Besides playing majority of the campaign as Soap this time around, you play mostly as Frost and Yuri, which is a Russian man wanting Makarov dead just as much as Price and Soap. You also get the opportunity to play as Price later on as well. Price and Soap’s relationship between each other seems to be dramatically strengthened since Soap almost died from Shepherd. Again this time you’re on the hunt for Makarov while Delta takes care of the Russians in Europe and the United States and other parts of the world. Luckily Price still had contact with MacMillan from “One shot, one kill” in Call of Duty 4, which in Call of Duty time that was back in 1996. Captain Price mentions to him later on saying that he still owed him from that time back in Pripyat, Ukraine from where he saved his life and carried him several yards to a landing zone to escape waves of enemies from killing them both. Of course this is Call of Duty, and not only do you have the beautiful Hollywood blockbuster movie type moments, but there are also the very dramatic moments that keep you on the edge of your seat. While you are on the hunt for Makarov, there is a very good night mission where you invade a castle to find him, which is another sneak in mission like “One shot, one kill” which I liked. There are a lot of blanks that are filled later in the campaign which will have you saying, “I get this and that now.” Overall yes, the campaign is superb and is recognized as the best in the series by a lot of critics. If you do not feel like buying the game, give it a rent and fill in the story.
Multiplayer is of course returning and it’s more balanced and better than ever. With the removal of: Danger Close, One Man Army, Commando, Stopping Power and now Cold-Blooded being separated into two perks Modern Warfare 3 is now getting a mass amount of credit of being the most balanced Call of Duty in history. Also, with the adaption of weapon proficiencies, it also adds new things to make the multiplayer more dynamic than ever before. Certain proficiencies do certain things, and some weapons depending on their class have different uses for example, the sub machine guns have a weapon proficiency to where you can melee faster or get more range with them. The sniper rifles and light machine guns have the ability to run faster with them if you select them and the assault rifles have the ability to hold breath like a sniper. All of that is unlocked by ranking up your gun with the new weapon ranking system so for each gun, you have to level them up to get things like attachments, camouflage and weapon proficiencies, but you still get to complete the classic challenges along the way. The prestige shop is also new to MW3, giving you the ability to obtain prestige tokens for either prestiging in previous entries dating back to Call of duty 4, or each prestige for MW3. After you get a token or a few, you can spend them on Double XP, Double Weapon XP, extra class slots and even the ability to choose something like a weapon or equipment to unlock and keep even after prestiging again. This is great for people who want to start off with their favorite weapon of choice, or rank up faster afterwards after prestiging. Death streaks have returned, but painkiller was cut out. This time MW3 is boasting death streaks like running faster, being able to blow yourself up before you die and even receiving “Hollow Points” which increases your weapon damage for one kill. There’s also a new mode called “Kill Confirmed” and this gametype attempts to eliminate “campers” and requires you to pick up the dog tags of the person you kill, if you die, your team can pick up your tags, or the person you killed, giving both of you experience. Another added gametype is “Team Defender” which starts out normally and the first person to get the first kill gets a flag they carry for their team. As you continue to carry the flag on your team, you get double the points as the team that does not carry the flag. The main difference between Team Defender and Capture the Flag is that the flag does not have a required point to take it to in Team Defender and instead of every 10 seconds it giving you an icon of where the flag carrier is, the kill icon stays up on the flag carrier at all times in Team Defender.
There are new “Strike Packages” that allow you to choose what you want based on your play-style or your preference of gametype. Assault is the classic MW2 style strike package, with the ability to rack up kills and destroy your enemies with your air support. Support strike package is to help your team out, and unlike the other two, your streak does not end after you die; and you also get to shoot down enemy air support to build up your point streak. The Specialist strike package allows you to choose 3 perks of your choice and you unlock them every 2 kills. Once you hit your 8th kill, you get every single perk in the game. All of these still have the ability to choose 3 rewards of your choice, and you have to unlock your perks for specialist and earn unlocks for the others like in MW2. Also, to explain what I said before; Cold-Blooded Pro is in fact separated into two the new perks Blind Eye and Assassin. Blind Eye keeps you hidden from air support as Assassin hides you from UAV and sentries. The multiplayer is a bit to get used to, and is different from Modern Warfare 2 for sure, but overall it’s worth a rent if you do not want to buy it.
Spec Ops also makes a return in MW3 and adds a new feature called Spec Ops Survival to step up to Zombies from Black Ops and World at War. You start off with a preset weapon and have to fight off enemies for as long as you can in never ending waves that increasingly get harder as you go. Unlike Zombies, they actually shoot back at you and instead of just attack dogs they have helicopters, juggernauts, chemical agents and claymore experts that show up as well. They still have the classic mission modes if you don’t think survival is your thing. The mission modes include two co-op missions that require two people to complete, but the other 23 can be completed alone. Survival can be played with only one other person, as the developers did not feel that more players would really make the mode feel right but you can, when reaching the right rank unlock a delta squad and riot shield squad that drops in 3 operatives to help you take down your enemies. Everything you unlock in Spec Ops Survival like weapons, perks and killstreaks are obtained with an in game currency. The more you kill, the more you get and you can also upgrade your weapons to buy grenade launchers and other attachments to enhance your gameplay. The ranking system in Spec Ops is dedicated only to that mode, so regular multiplayer will not keep the rank you earn in Spec Ops. Even doing the mission modes earn you XP for your Spec Ops rank, so run through everything to rank up faster. Spec Ops is still one of my favorite things about Modern Warfare games, and I hope they continue to include this.
An addition to the Modern Warfare series, for multiplayer they added the cherry on top with the theater mode. Unlike Black Ops, this new theater mode has a few differences and also has the ability to stop recording or continue. It keeps up to 50 films to access at any time you want, and you get 8 slots in your file share so you can take screenshots or clips from your videos or even upload the whole video and share it with your friends to see. Even if you run out of file share space, you can cancel the recording in your options and it will keep the recent 50 recordings on your hard drive so that you do not lose them. This makes things a lot easier on the players with capture cards or PVRs so that they do not have to record all the time. Also with Black Ops there were many complaints that theater mode impacted frame rate sometimes, with MW3 they optimized it to try and sustain 60 frames at all times. I am glad to see theater mode added to Modern Warfare and I believe this will be included in all future Call of Duty games. Overall this game deserves a solid 9 out of 10, with a few issues only being on the multiplayer end including some spawn mess ups and a few random problems, the game is fantastic and I recommend buying it especially if you are a fan of Call of Duty.
source : http://www.mw3-forum.com
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