Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) Review

Was Activision able to release a worthy sequel after the near-complete dissolution of Infinity Ward, the founders of the Modern Warfare series? How did the developers respond to the challenge from Battlefield 3? Read the details in the review!

Released four years ago, Modern Warfare truly set the standard for how shooters should be made: combining a dynamic campaign and excellent multiplayer, the first part of the famous series could have remained popular for a long time. However, it will be replaced by Modern Warfare 3, at least in the single-player campaign. The producers of Modern Warfare 3* chose the best from the first part and corrected the mistakes of the second. As a result, an excellent FPS action game was created. But now, let's go over everything in order.

As of today, Activision doesn't have an engine that can rival Frostbite 2.0 or CryEngine 3, and hopefully they will address this oversight. Therefore, graphically, Modern Warfare 3 lags behind its competitors like Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2. However, the programmers from Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games squeezed everything they could out of the IW 5.0 Engine, and the visuals produced by the engine are at a good level of visualization.

Of course, shadows, grass, trees—all these elements already look a bit outdated, but the textures, models, and objects are done very well. As for the notorious destructibility, there's more of it here than in Battlefield 3! And even though the destructions are scripted, the falling and exploding buildings look impressive. However, the player themselves cannot destroy buildings by shooting at them with an RPG or under-barrel grenade launcher.

The main advantage of the game is undoubtedly the story. It fits perfectly into the nonsense we saw in MW2: Russia is still at war with America and Europe, and our brave Captain Price is looking for the main culprit—Makarov. For almost two-thirds of the campaign, we are thrown from unit to unit, but the storyline does not break from this and does not lose any essence from such a method of storytelling.

Locations and objectives also change at a whirlwind pace: just now we were in Africa with Soap and Price, and now as part of the British SAS special forces, we are trying to prevent a terrorist attack in London. The story battles are so dynamic that competitors like Battlefield 3 or Crysis 2 are just a sleepy kingdom.

One cannot fail to mention the excellent gameplay. Finally, all the unnecessary elements that were distracting in previous parts have been removed from the screen (HUD). Now you can easily orient yourself to the location of the current objective, and only the necessary information about the amount of ammunition is displayed on the screen. The gameplay is diverse, yet balanced. By the way, we are entrusted with controlling equipment that has never been seen anywhere before. There is a similar unique aspect regarding weapons and ammunition.

Weapons are generally balanced. If it's a machine gun, then the bullet spread and recoil are appropriate, and if it's a sniper rifle, then it's comfortable to hold and the accuracy is at the desired level. However, weak and slow-exploding grenades render themselves useless. The AI of the enemies is quite smart.

The downside is the difficulty in killing enemies: even lightly armored targets can withstand a burst from an automatic rifle. But this rather requires us to shoot in short bursts and aim for the head, rather than firing wildly in all directions. It is also important to note that there is no crazy enemy spawn (like the missions in Brazil from Modern Warfare 2) here. This is an undeniable plus, it's nice to know that a lot of work went into testing the game balance.

Modern Warfare 3 leaves a very pleasant impression. On one hand, it doesn't have the main drawbacks of previous game series—confusing plot, insane enemy spawns, blatant absurdity from a military science perspective. At the same time, the producers didn't try to reinvent the wheel and improved what needed to be—an excellent story, unique equipment, stealth elements, epic events, a bit of everything. They even remembered destructibility! Well, Battlefield 3 probably had an influence here, which surprisingly can't really boast about it. Although the "bad Russians" still remain bad (as can be seen in the Prague missions).

*This article discusses the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 3, as the multiplayer mode requires separate consideration.