HomeReviewsCall of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign review: the Price is wrongWarzone but alone
Warzone but alone
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
Instead of Modern Warfare’s usual lead studio, Infinity Ward, development duties have fallen to Sledgehammer, the outfit most recently responsible for 2021’s unlovedVanguard. And in an industry where AAAFPS gamesnow regularly take half a decade to make, this campaign has reportedly come together in less than two years. Reader: it shows.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
It’s a cheap and somewhat cynical way to fill out a campaign, but the results aren’t hateful. During the infiltration of an oligarch’s island hideaway, I pilfered night goggles from a cabana on the beach and crept through dark caves to get closer to my target. In a nuclear power plant, I shot through a skylight at an explosive barrel, blowing open a locked door from the inside.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
Yet bespoke problem-solving exercises like these are few and far between. A couple of square kilometres and a mandate to have-at-it do notDishonoredmake. More than once, I fell foul of COD’s habit of painting false doors onto buildings, or a ledge deemed arbitrarily unfit for mantling, and couldn’t take the route I’d planned. If I recognised a vehicle from Warzone, it was probably enterable; if not, it was simply scenery.
Nothing Battlefield didn’t do a decade ago, of course. But much more fun than some of Modern Warfare 3’s attempts to recapture old glories. InCall of Duty: WWII, Sledgehammer’s finest campaign to date, you explored a Parisian fortress in disguise as a Nazi - engaging in sweaty conversation with officers who scrutinised your papers, and performing Hitman-lite feats of espionage. That proved to be a foundation that other COD developers could build on, first in the Kremlin setpiece of Black Ops: Cold War, and then in last year’s narco mansion break-in. These levels have allowed developers to flash Activision’s cash in meaningful ways, with lavish performance capture sequences and gently diverging outcomes.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
This uncharacteristic clumsiness extends elsewhere - from the subtitles that fire too early in cutscenes, ruining character reveals, to the interstitial dialogue that sometimes overlaps with subsequent shootouts. There’s a sense that less time has been spent honing the pacing and polish of these levels than in previous years. And in a series all about slick, curated movie moments, those details matter enormously.
After three Modern Warfare games in five years, not to mention the ubiquity of Warzone, it’s tough to distinguish yet more missile silos and shipping-container mazes from the ones that have come before. I found myself missing the invention of Black Ops: Cold War’s Spetsnaz invasion training facility, with its all-American mannequins and small-town cinema. And I yearned for the ambition of Infinity Ward’s 2022 convoy chase, which had you leaping between flatbeds on the highway.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Activision
Even Sledgehammer’s take on No Russian, the audacious and infamous terrorist attack of 2009’sModern Warfare 2, fails to stick in the memory. While forefronted with shocking imagery, it’s barely interactive, and thus much less morally challenging than its predecessor. The whole thing is over in a couple of minutes, and leaves no lasting impact on the plot. Then again, perhaps that’s for the best.
