Unique Preview (Mon sixth Nov, 2023): Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s marketing campaign has been out for a number of days now in early entry – forward of the complete recreation’s launch on November tenth. This has given us a little bit of time to blast by means of the sport’s single-player part and provide you with some impressions on Name of Responsibility’s direct story sequel to final 12 months’s Modern Warfare 2.
Now, we’ll deal with the elephant within the room immediately – MW3 is brief, noticeably shorter than final 12 months’s recreation. This time round, the staff has stitched collectively „open hearth“ missions with extra conventional, scripted ranges and this undoubtedly makes the entire package deal really feel a bit much less ‚premium‘ than MW2 – and even than its predecessor Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Nevertheless, the standard continues to be there for essentially the most half, and we truly fairly loved our time with the MW3 marketing campaign. The story follows MW’s typical ragtag crew of Cleaning soap, Ghost, Worth and co., and acquainted collection baddie Makarov makes his grand return on this 12 months’s recreation. Makarov and his place in the entire affair is no-doubt the standout right here – his introduction carries the storyline and offers the entire thing objective – even when these „open hearth“ missions contribute to a less-scripted marketing campaign total.
As we have come to anticipate from current CoD titles although – the interstitial cutscenes are actually top quality and do a superb job at bridging collectively the degrees, nearly making it really feel like a cohesive expertise. MW3’s construction is not good, nevertheless it follows a reasonably typical formulation for CoD – maybe feeling a bit extra just like the older, much less cinematic days of the franchise.
From a gameplay perspective we fairly favored these open ranges although. We would have beloved to see some extra multi-layered aims thrown into them however we had no difficulty with the collection opening issues up somewhat bit and including in Warzone-like options similar to weapon crates, loadouts and so on. Beforehand, we thought we would take difficulty with their place in a CoD marketing campaign, however for us, they broke issues up fairly properly and served as a great way to alter up the tempo.
In terms of the extra cinematic ranges, CoD does begin to present its age a bit right here. They work OK and play out fantastic — particularly if you have not been across the block 15 occasions with the collection already — however the identical previous token stealth mission, repetitive gunship stage, breach-and-clear shenanigans do put on somewhat skinny in 2023. These ranges are fantastic, and the marketing campaign definitely feels prefer it wants them to make it really feel like a correct scripted story, however do not anticipate to be experiencing a lot new right here when you’re a collection veteran.
The gunplay is completely prime notch nevertheless, with Sledgehammer taking the whole lot Infinity Ward has accomplished to date with this new MW engine and principally sticking with it. You may really feel such as you’re utilizing a number of the identical weapons, gear and attachments as final 12 months’s recreation, which is a good criticism when you take a look at it that means, however it’s a direct sequel so we anticipated that feeling getting in. As for the core mechanics – they’re the most effective within the enterprise anyway so why repair what ain’t broke?
We performed by means of this 12 months’s recreation on Xbox Sequence X with the 120FPS toggle enabled, and it is a handsome title that is for certain – even at such a excessive body price. Nevertheless, we did run into some crashes throughout one mission (though they disappeared on a second playthrough so we’ll give it the good thing about doubt), and people aforementioned emotions of it being much less ’scripted‘ meant it simply wasn’t as impressive a spectacle as last year’s release. MW3 has some nice tech below the hood, nevertheless it does not do a lot to correctly present it off.
All in all, the Fashionable Warfare 3 marketing campaign is a Name of Responsibility single participant story – no extra, no much less. It is definitely on the shorter facet for the collection (though some entries undoubtedly fall in the same class, notably the unique MW3 from 2011), and 2022’s Fashionable Warfare 2 completely feels prefer it had extra care and a spotlight crammed into it. We would not advocate placing your hard-earned cash down on day one for this 12 months’s launch (look ahead to a value drop if marketing campaign is your factor), however as a part of the general package deal for MW3, we had fun – and that is what it is all about. We’ll have to attend and see the way it slots into the general package deal when Fashionable Warfare 3 is out in full on November tenth, however for now, the MW3 marketing campaign is a satisfying expertise – even when it leaves you feeling a wee bit brief modified.