Modern Warfare III Review (PS5) | Great Multiplayer And Solid Zombies, But It Can Feel Like An Expansion

In the "Golden Era" of Call of Duty (CoD 4 to Black Ops 2), it never felt like there was much of a distinction between the titles produced by either of the main studios, Infinity Ward (Modern Warfare) and Treyarch (Black Ops). Even though these games were set in different eras, and used different art styles, they felt fundamentally aligned with each other, at least in terms of gameplay.

But since then, and with the addition of Sledgehammer, it has felt like these studios and their games have drifted further and further apart. Which has also divided the fanbase into various sub-factions.

This separation within CoD, both at a publisher and audience level, has became its greatest weakness as a franchise. And when the most divisive of all games was released, MW2019, the problem significantly worsened.

Activision struggled to unify their brands, and certain audiences began feeling underserved. This led to a boiling point in 2022 with the release of MWII, because it was so strictly in line with Infinity Ward's design that it alienated fans of other types of gameplay.

In many ways, MW3 is a renunciation of how divided CoD has become, at least on a studio level. It borrows the themes, characters and maps from Infinity Ward's MW series, its gameplay is derivative of a Treyarch title, with higher base health and thus a longer TTK, and it's being put together by Sledgehammer (using many of their re-used assets from Vanguard).

Of course, tribalism still exists in the fanbase, and some players will enjoy the experience of MW3 far more than others, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

The result of combining all those elements is very compelling, and I think that because Sledgehammer (who are painfully aware of being the "lil bro" of the three studios) will do whatever the community ask for, many of the game's smaller issues will be resolved. These are the best things to be said about MW3. Now to address the ugly side of this "combined forces" approach.

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Modern Warfare 3 Review

Contents

1. Gameplay
   1. Movement
   2. Gunfights
   3. Balancing
   4. Spawns
2. Content
   1. Maps
   2. Modes
   3. Content Carry-Over
3. Audio-Visual
   1. Graphics
   2. Sound Design
   3. Technical Issues
4. Competitive
5. Zombies
6. Campaign
7. Verdict

MW3 Review | 1. Gameplay

The most noticable gameplay change from last year is this: Modern Warfare 3 has a higher skill gap than we've seen in a long time. I had to catch myself a few times from complaining about SBMM, when in reality the only reason I was getting destroyed by "sweats" was because I wasn't as good as MWII had led me to believe...

1a. Movement

The movement is going to be divisive. In terms of general mobility and handling (ADS, strafe speeds, sprint-out times etc.) the game is the fastest we've had in a very long time.

But that one specific mechanic, the iconic slide-cancel, does not work as well as it did in MW2019, BOCW or Vanguard. This is because there's a very slight delay after you break the slide but before you can sprint again. It's especially weird that they've nerfed the slide-cancel because they clearly want people to slide into challs, and there are even perks that make this easier.

Outside of that one mechanic, the game is incredibly quick. And in addition to it's natural pace, there are lots of attachments that now offer bonuses like "Improved ADS While Jumping" to specifically improve jumpshotting, and other aggressive forms of movement. The faster movement is a welcome change and it's especially refreshing after last year, but this will be alienating for slower players.

1b. Gunfights

The weapon animations lack the crispness of an IW production, but in every other respects the gunfights are an improvement on last year. With MWII's very short TTK, it didn't feel like we even had gunfights. But now that most engagements take longer, you have time to actually make decisions. For instance, if you're shot from behind, you have enough health now to reset and shoot back, maybe even throw in some movement to make yourself a harder target to hit.

Also worthy of praise is the shift away from high-recoil guns. In MWII you had to deal with so much muzzle flash and visual recoil that you ended up relying on aim-assist to do most of the shooting for you, but in MW3 there's a lot less recoil and, to make up for it, a weaker form of aim assist. This makes the weapons more enjoyable to use, and less unsatisfying to die against. It is admittedly less realistic that guns have so little recoil and muzzle flash, but the realism ship sailed a long time ago for CoD, so who cares?

1c. Balancing

The balance between SMGs and ARs felt much better in the beta than launch, but at least most other weapon categories are better balanced this year, with a very good Battle Rifle looking meta as well (the BAS-B), at least for big maps.

The SMGs feel especially punished at range against higher base health this year, but at the same time they do massively benefit from the faster movement in short-range. However, unless they get a damage buff, we might end up with an MWII situation where the vast majority of players will only use an AR and no-one wants to pick up a sub.

In terms of ARs, there are some standout weapons, but they aren't so strong as to become ubiquitous, and there are plenty of viable alternatives. Best of all, shotguns aren't broken!

1d. Spawns

The spawns are bad! There's no way around this fact. It often feels random and uncontrollable, and when you can't meaningfully impact or hold spawns, it takes a lot of depth out of the game. All I want here is a simple spawn system that can be manipulated with intelligent positioning. The current system sticks out against all the other aspects of MW3 that promote a skill gap.

Since the beta they have improved it once but there is still a very long way to go, with Quarry seeming to be particularly broken.

Spawns were terrible in Vanguard at the beginning as well, but Sledgehammer fixed it in that game after a few months, so I remain hopeful for improvement. And improvement is very much needed in this department.

MW3 Review | 2. Content

This is where MW3 gets controversial: Will the audience accept every single map being a remake?

2a. Maps

All of the maps in this game are remastered MW2 (2009) maps. But they are well-done, and SHG have struck a good balance between faithfully recreating the maps while still noticably improving them. Which is good for MW3 , because there's a lot of nostalgia in the air.

Sadly, I don't expect the nostalgia to last too long, because only a few of these maps are truly great, people just associate them with the memory of an overall great game.

In fairness, these maps will be brand-new to a lot of the current playerbase. And with map-voting, which is an amazing addition in itself, you will very rarely actually have to play on the worst maps in MW3.

2b. Modes

The game so far includes all the traditional modes, plus a knew 3v3v3 variant of Gunfight called Cut-Throat, and the War mode from WW2, with its own "gargantuan" map, which is basically a montage map that takes you from Bakarett, to Crossfire, to Strike and then ends in a missile silo. I was happily surprised to see that even Hardpoint worked (it wasn't in CoD when these maps first came out, so there was a slight fear the devs would misplace the hills), but apart from that no real surprises.

In regards to the new modes, I'm uncertain. I expect War to be very popular, particularly as a more casual mode, but I can't see Cut-Throat reaching its full-potential on 6v6 maps.

2c. Content Carry-Over

I have to touch on what I think is the worst decision they made with MW3: Content Carry-Over. All of the weapons and attachments from MW2 have carried over into MW3. So we now have hundreds of every attachments for every category and far too many weapons. But more importantly, content carry-over makes MW3 feel like DLC more than anything else. And there seems to be no positive; who wants to get gunned by TAQs and Vaznev's in 2024?

MW3 Review | 3. Audiovisual

Call of Duty usually meets the standard in this department, and I'm a fan of the high-fidelity IW9 engine that's been slightly upgraded here. But, MW3 feels less polished than usual.

3a. Graphics

The lighting and the color palatte of MW3 are great. There are some who will find the maps too drab, but in truth, this is just what faithful remasters of MW2 maps will look like - those maps were always a little drab. However, MW3 will catch some serious heat for for the graphics on old-gen consoles. The visivibility was also an issue in the beta, but this has now been fixed.

Based on the clips and screenshots we've seen of old-gen consoles playing MW3, we're unimpressed. To make the game even functional it seems that resolution was sacrificed for framerate.

At this point, in 2023, I'm not sure whether there's a good solution for this problem. Old-gen consoles have been struggling to keep up for years and maybe it's time to finally drop cross-gen support?

3b. Sound Design

Hitmarkers and headshot sounds are wonderfully satisfying, and the fact that Dead Silence truly eliminates footstep audio should mean we're in for a great year of Search and Destroy. But the various noises that the weapons and gadgets make sound cheap.

It's harsh to say, but the guns just feel generic and lack any real oomph. This is where Sledgehammer have traditionally struggled, and I can't deny I was disappointed.

3c. Technical Issues

I never thought I would be writing this about a Call of Duty game, but I have to be honest, I have experienced zero crashes and connecting to the servers has been painless so far. That's after 50 hours in the beta and a further 20 post-launch. I'm sure this section of the review might worsen over time, but at the moment I haven't had issues.

MW3 Review | 4. Competitive

It's far too early to say much about how this game will play at the highest level, but I expect the majority of the CDL's viewers will be very happy with MW3. There is just so much here that the competitive audience usually ask for:

• Red-Dots are back!
• Dead Silence as a perk should eliminate the Sound Equilization problem and give us a good year for Search.
• The higher TTK will allow the best ARs to stand out from the rest of the pack more, while more options for aggressive movement should have the same effect on widening the skill gap between SMGs.
• Headshot multipliers have been nerfed, which gives combat a more consistent overall feel.

The only major concerns I have are for the spawn system and Control, which is returning again (to the delight of nobody).

If you're curious about which maps will be used for comp, JP Krez (OpTic's coach) is thinking Invasion, Karachi, Rundown, Sub Base and Afghan for HP, with Invasion, Highrise, Terminal and Scrapyard for SnD (no word on control). Boston and Minnesota were already spotted scrimming Karachi HP.

MW3 Review | 5. Zombies

There will always be Zombies puists who prefer a round-based version of the mode, and to those people I sadly must admit: You won't like MWZ. But for the majority of fans, and especially those who enjoyed BOCW's Outbreak, I expect this mode will be popular.

By combining the classic Zombies formula with the open-world feel of this massive BR map, they've created a highly replayable and compelling experience. And the difficult zones really help to amp up the intensity throughout a game, with the final exfil feeling like something straight out of an action film.

The DMZ elements give you something grander to work towards from match to match, and this again helps with replayability. But quite intelligently, they removed the PVP element of the DMZ for this mode, which should make it especially popular among casuals (who are admittedly going to have less fun in MP this year). Whereas in DMZ, you had a lot of casual players having their experience "ruined" by a very small minority of aggressive players who only wanted to PVP and didn't enjoy BR/Resurgence.

The only real complaint I have regarding Zombies so far is that the XP rates are pitiful compared to multiplayer. I fully accept that they don't want people to level just as fast in PvE as in PvP, but this is ridiculous.

MW3 Review | 6. Campaign

The campaign is disappointing, and there's no avoiding that fact. The story ends very abruptly, there are no set pieces to make you say "wow", and the Open Combat Missions feel lazy. It's worth bearing in mind that less than 20% of customers actually complete CoD campaigns, at least based on PlayStation trophy stats, and so I don't believe the quality of the campaign will affect sales. But this is nevertheless a bad look for the product as a whole.

So what has changed to make people really despise this particular campaign? In a nutshell: Many of the missions in MW3 feel like doing random DMZ contracts. You get dropped into an area of Verdansk or the new BR map, you have to complete an objective four times (destroy helicopters, plant trackers etc.), and then you have to reach an exfil point to get picked up. While the idea here is that "players can choose to approach the mission how they want" the reality is that you have to use stealth on higher difficulties, and stealth gameplay isn't very fleshed-out in CoD.

In a traditional CoD campaign you're basically following the script of an action movie, and so the devs can control the pace and set up great moments for the player, and everything can be perfectly choreographed. But with the player left to roam an open area and do objectives as they please, the moment to moment experience of playing the campaign never feels very tense and all of the storytelling has to be left to cut-scenes.

The cut-scenes look gorgeous, and Graves is still a fantastic character, but those are minor highlights. And there is one egregious cutscene at the end that a lot of players will hate. It's not that what happens in the cutscene is necessarily bad storytelling, but more that it feels like the end of the second act and not the end of the entire game. Who knows, maybe it was originally just that, the end of the second act, but they didn't have the time to make a third? That would explain why the campaign is so short (it took me about five hours).

If I had to guess, I think that when they decided to make MW3 a full game, they realized the campaign would be the best place to cut corners. Most players don't touch it, so it's understandable from a cynical perspective. However, because they now release campaigns a week early, this mode (and it's poor quality) has left a very bad first impression.

MW3 Review | 7. Verdict

I love the design philosophy that Sledgehammer has adopted with MW3's multiplayer, and I think this is the best game the community could have hoped for considering it originated as Year-2-content for another title.

It isn't perfect; you feel like you're playing a confused mix of BOCW, Vanguard and MWII at times, but the overall experience is fun, and many of their new innovations work. We expect most Call of Duty fans will enjoy MW3, although the skill gap will have widened too much for some, and others will never want to pay for what began life as DLC (and still feels like it in parts).

If you buy CoD for the campaign, you should skip this one. If you're focused on multiplayer, we recommend it. And if you're a Zombies player, all you need to ask yourself is this: Did you enjoy Outbreak from BOCW?

Rating: 79/100

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

• 

  $69.00

Here you can buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III!

Without any extra charge, you can support EarlyGame through the link! This won't cost you anything extra, and we still get a small commission. It's a win-win situation for both parties! Keep in mind that the article price may change.