Modern Warfare 3, the newest game in the Call of Duty line was released on November 8.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Trailer

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Expectations

I have been waiting for this game after having played both MW and MW2. I enjoyed both of those games alot and because of that, my expectations were quite high. I mainly played the single player campaigns in the two previous parts. I did try my hand at the online multiplayer as well but not as much as the single player. I have always enjoyed the fast paced FPS action with at least a decent storyline in it. That is what I was expecting from Modern Warfare 3 as well.

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Impressions

Graphics

The graphics look good in the game. Something I always liked in CoD series is that you don’t need to have latest and most expensive gaming PC to have things run smoothly. For this version the minimum requirements is: Shader 3.0 or better 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600GT / ATI® Radeon™ X1950 or better. The graphics looked good as expected. Infinity Ward even pulled in specialists from Hollywood to help with the CGI. The game of course runs the newest version of the IW engine. I haven’t found any graphic glitches during my testing.

Sound

When it comes to sound in the game, ether radio transmissions, ambient sound, surroundings, explosions, or gunfire, they all sound good. I didn’t test out how 2.1 would sound but on decent headset (Creative Fatal1ty) and soundcard, incoming fire makes you want to hit the dirt. Some of the bigger explosions make your ears ring. Your missions and objectives are given to you by radio-communications. The Music was very well done. You can really tell that they used a good composer for it. The part in the Stronghold mission especially gave me a chill down my spine. Other than that, I have to admit I did prefer the soundtrack from MW2 over MW3. The differences between the composers Hans Zimmer (CoD – MW2) and Brian Tyler (CoD – MW3) were recognizable. Still, the music in MW3 does set the mood.

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Game play

The game play is normal CoD- style. Some people complain about it not being realistic like AA, OFP, BF. Normally, I too prefer more realistic and difficult games. MW3 is more like an arcade game. The whole (single player) part of the game is rather scripted and fixed, far from a sandbox environment. This, however, didn’t mean that the game wasn’t challenging. There were plenty of moments in the game where I had to take cover in order to survive. There was still enough variation in the game play to keep things interesting. The game play ranges from full on war to information gathering and sneaking around.

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The downsides

There were a couple of annoying parts in the game play too. The A.I. sometimes seemed weirdly stupid. They would run towards you out of the blue or without any reason suddenly flee. They can stand or crouch next to you without spotting you. Sometimes, when you would be shooting at them, they choose to climb over an obstacle to get away from you rather then to run around it and take cover. This takes extra time during which they can’t return fire.

Bug

One thing that I managed to do was really weird.

Spoiler warning (not critical but it has a mission objective in it): In the mission: Iron Lady, after returning to the ground from the AC-130 I couldn’t destroy tank(s) with the Javelin. The weapon just didn’t lock onto the target at all. I tried different angles and distances: nothing. Restarted game a few times and even the whole computer: still nothing. After all that I restarted the mission from the beginning and that finally resolved the problem. My theory is that I probably destroyed two tanks instead of one, shooting from the AC-130 Spectre. That might have caused the tank to still arrive in the cut-scene, but game logic might have considered it destroyed. That’s why the Javelin couldn’t find any target. Trying to figure that out took a lot of time and was rather annoying, but I managed to continue forward after that.

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Conclusion

The atmosphere in the game sometimes felt like full scale war and other times, it was so quiet if you would have dropped a pin the enemy would have heard you. In MW3 you are playing an elite soldier and doing elite stuff to pin down your enemy. During your game play you will:

• Control the gun in a aircraft
• Shoot a tank with a Javelin
• Control a U.A.V.
• Blow shit up
• Laser paint a target for an air-strike
• Shoot people
• Shoot people from a distance (sniper)
• Gather intel

However, there was still lots of diversity with special missions where you were sneaking around, sniping and having fun with an AC-130, this gave the game the variation it needed. In a couple of special situations you would have ‘slowmos’ that offered a welcome bit of help amongst the chaos. The slomos were definitely a big help during the full scale war parts when all hell broke loose. In MW3 you definitely had more painful losses than in other parts of the game. Of course, losing Ghost in MW2 was sucky, but in MW3 the atmosphere was a bit more depressing sometimes. Making the player feel vengeful perhaps. In the end I still prefer MW 1 and 2 over MW3. Part 3 has better controls and is better graphics-wise but its no longer fresh.

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Game info

Players: 1-18
Platforms: PC(reviewed), Xbox 360 , PS3
Developer: Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games
Publisher: Activision
ESRB: Mature

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
• CPU: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 processor or better
• RAM: 2 GB
• GFX: Shader 3.0 or better 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600GT / ATI® Radeon™ X1950 or better
• DX: 9.0c or later
• HDD: 16 GB free hard drive space

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