Call of Duty is a weird series. I’m getting some strange déjà vu. I could have sworn that Modern Warfare 3 came out when I was in high school. All the characters in this game feel like I’ve seen them before, same with the maps that are available in the multiplayer. Alright, all jokes aside, it’s been a year since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II came out, and if you’re still playing that, or Warzone, season after season, there’s finally some DLC for you. Unfortunately, it’s the same price as a full game.

Let’s start with talking about Modern Warfare III’s campaign. Soap, Price, and the rest of the team are back to take down Makarov again, and you’ll have to fight your way through missions that involve sneaking, shooting, and probably a lot of unnecessary frustration if you’re playing on higher difficulties. The flowing cutscenes that take control of your character at, sometimes, seemingly random times return from Modern Warfare II and a lot of them look quite good, honestly. I can’t fault the graphics on the cutscenes, as they are quite immersive.

Modern Warfare III introduces the new open combat system in roughly half of its missions. Essentially, you’re given an open-world style level, told the rough area your objective is in, and sent on your way. Get there whichever way works for you. These missions are interesting, but can get frustrating really quick. Gears of War is infamous for its bad checkpoints, but a lot of these missions have almost zero checkpoints. Playing on veteran, your goal will be to no-fun run (take everything as slowly as possible, sneak as much as possible, and overall take as long as possible) every single level.

There are two main missions that come to mind for bad checkpoints. The first one is Precious Cargo, the first open combat mission in the campaign. You’re in shipyard absolutely packed with enemy soldiers. You need to infiltrate a building and find some blueprints. You take everything as slow as possible, silently take out every enemy along the way, get what you’re trying to get, and oh yay, a checkpoint finally. On your way to the next objective, you die and restart at that checkpoint, but something is different. Every single enemy surrounding the building you took out quietly are back and suddenly they are all aware of your attempt to take even one out, good luck.

The other mission that I found excessively frustrating was Highrise, which is a bit closer to the end of the game. Your objective is to get from the ground floor to the roof of a highrise. Pretty simple right? There are four buildings you can jump between, all packed with enemies. Very narrow hallways, and a lot of grenades make it a little bit more difficult. Oh, and the first checkpoint in this mission doesn’t come until you reach the roof. Plus, no matter how quiet you are, there is a scripted part of this missions where no matter what you do, enemies find you on the top floor before making it to the roof, making it very easy to have to restart from the bottom.

Now, there is one part of Highrise that can be made easier. In open combat missions, there are collectibles to find. Unlike previous Call of Duty games, collectibles aren’t just simply someone’s dog tags, or a piece of intelligence. This time, collectibles are guns to build a load out to start the missions with (but only that mission, guns don’t progress from level to level), tactical items, armour, and ascenders. Ascenders are used to launch yourself up ropes that are left around the level, and in a mission all about going up, that makes this part of the mission significantly easier and quicker.

Let’s talk multiplayer now. Modern Warfare III is really sailing for that nostalgia hit because every single multiplayer map is just a remaster of the original Modern Warfare II (2009) maps. Highrise, Rust (which I could happily never see again), Estate, Afghan; you name it, it’s there. There’s not a single new map to be seen. The weird thing is, without even making new maps, they still managed to screw this up. Three maps have been taken offline in hardcore because the spawns were an absolute mess, and the maps that are still available aren’t much better. Terminal for instance, I managed to have a match where I died, respawned, and spawn still watching my own body falling and with the guy that just killed me already shooting at me.

Now if only it was just the spawns that sucked. The entire unlocking system is horrendous. Some guns, perks, etc. are unlocked the normal way, by levelling up. You know, the way everyone is used to. Others though, are locked behind their new armoury system. Do you want to unlock semtex grenades? Awesome, good for you, finish three daily missions. How about a certain gun? Anywhere between three and nine daily missions. Alrighty you put in the effort, now, finished your three daily missions. Now what? You need six more points. Win matches.

Simple enough, except the skill based matchmaking is far from balanced, so you have maybe one good match and suddenly you’re playing against thirteen year old Timmy who wants to be a twitch god and has all the time in the world to play Call of Duty and just wants to ruin the hour of escape you get by taking a flying jump around a corner, easily putting six shots in you before you realise what’s even happened. Resulting in you taking a deep sign, quietly putting your controller down, turning the game off forever, and going to bed. Thanks a lot Timmy, I just wanted to play some video games after work.

If you’re not much of a PvP multiplayer person, like myself, why not try out the PvE Zombies mode? That’s right, Zombies returns, but instead of having a traditional Zombies map, you get to play on the Warzone-DMZ map. Zombies can be played with 1-3 players, you can queue with friends or join random people in a squad. I prefer to play this alone because random people very rarely understand the concept of what you’re meant to be doing and become very frustrating. Zombies is the one mode that keeps me coming back to Call of Duty, and while this version is better than Outbreak from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, it has a lot of problems.

First off, the zones lack any level of balance. The map is split between low, mid, and high threat zones that make the zombies stronger. It’s suggested to upgrade your guns and get perks before heading to the mid-threat zone, but even doing that for the most part, zombies feel like they can take an entire clip from your gun before finally going down. It’s frustrating to feel like there’s nothing more you can do to be stronger, and still not be anywhere near strong enough.

Second, the game is insanely buggy. If you’re not familiar with DMZ, basically you can “win” by exfilling from the mission (getting a helicopter to pick you up and leaving) you get to keep all the guns and items you have to take into the next mission. If you die though, you lose everything you have. One issue I found was the game would fail to connect while trying to load in, which resulted in losing everything I took in with me. This happened a few times over a handful of days and became really frustrating.

The next big issue was that enemies would just freeze. Just stand there and do nothing, which isn’t that bad of a bug, but when you see a few zombies just standing and not reacting it’s weird. Last is the duplication glitch. People were boosting their levels by duplicating sentry guns and setting them up at exfil sites where a bunch of zombies spawn and just letting the sentry guns kill everything, while they get the experience for it. This is probably part of why the game was bugging out because people would have 10+ sentry guns shooting 40+ zombies at a time at every exfil site around the map.

As much time as I try to put into Modern Warfare III, and as many chances as I try to give it, it’s just way too rough. This feels like an early access version of the game. It’s missing way too much that would make it it’s own game in its own right, including original maps, an original zombies experience (with maps that aren’t just the DMZ map), and a campaign that is actually engaging. Playing four hours of a campaign you don’t really have any interest in isn’t worth $70.

Everything about Modern Warfare III screams overpriced DLC, right down to the fact that the achievements list is even wrapped up in with the Modern Warfare II achievements. Maybe after a couple seasons of content Modern Warfare III will start to feel like a real, full game finally, but as it stands now, it’s nothing more than a glorified expansion.

 

Graphics: 5.5 There’s no doubting that Modern Warfare III does look good. The campaign missions are well designed, but the multiplayer maps aren’t overly special, or all that much better than I remember from the 2009 Xbox 360 days. There are also plenty of flaws in the designs in multiplayer, like vehicles not loading in in MWZ or doors not showing they’re open in multiplayer.	Gameplay: 3.5 The same (modern) normal Call of Duty gameplay. There’s nothing stand out on the good side, where as there are plenty of glitches happening in the multiplayer. The armoury is a mess and make no sense to the unlock system, and all in all becomes very tiring to the gameplay loop.
Sound: 6.0 While the voice acting in the campaign is well done, everything else is lacking. In multiplayer, running sounds like an elephant stamping around and make it impossible to hear anything else. In Zombies, anything that attacks you sounds like it’s directly beside you, even if it’s half a mile away.	Fun Factor: 3.0 Modern Warfare III feels like overpriced DLC. The campaign is at best four hours long, with an overinflated playtime because of the poor checkpoints. Multiplayer is ONLY “remastered” maps from a fourteen year old game. Zombies is the only part that feels semi-fresh, but uses the DMZ map and feels like an afterthought, especially with how glitchy and broken it can be.
Final Verdict: 4.0

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.

A copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was provided by the publisher.