Call of Duty Modern Warfare III review

I know that the phrases like “copy/paste”, “copy/paste”, “DLC” etc. have become very classic about the Call of Duty series until today. It was even one of the typical criticisms, but this time the situation is really different… This time it’s not a stereotypical criticism, it’s completely real!

The source of these criticisms goes back to the original MW3 in 2011. As someone who lived through those times, I have to say that MW3, which was technically and technologically inferior to Battlefield 3, which took its place in the market the same year, formed the basis of these criticisms. It continues to sustain the brand with this perception until today.

To elaborate; Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 was a great revolution, even nominated for the “Game of the Year” award, special editions bearing this name were released, and a brand new Call of Duty book was opened against competitors such as Crysis. In this time period until 2011, MW3 (2011) was seriously criticized against the realistic graphics of Battlefield 3 for its time. Because until this time, World at War, Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 and CoD4 dynamics had been followed. There were serious and obvious differences between Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty MW3 (2011). This was the common point of such criticism.

Even though the next Battlefield game, Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, Battlefield V and even Battlefield 2042 progressed with the same level of graphics, Call of Duty’s image was damaged once. Although it has come to this day by putting on top of the old games, so I used to think that these criticisms were unwarranted. Especially after the reboot event in 2019 and after the serious changes added to the game, I see that there is a brand new foundation in the Call of Duty series, I repeat again; I would say that these criticisms are unwarranted… Until the new Modern Warfare 3.

Call it copy/paste, call it DLC… This game is on another level! You are witnessing the worst Call of Duty game in history! Even Call of Duty 3 has never been on this level.

As calmly and hate-free as I can, I’m going to try to take a look at the good and the bad about this game. You may feel like I’m praising it while I’m bashing it, or bashing it while I’m praising it, but objectively, no matter how hard I try, there’s not much that’s good about it. I’m really, really sorry.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III review / PS5

We first wanted to test Call of Dty Modern Warfare 3 on PC with the system below, but even though our test system had extremely high specs, it was not playable. We couldn’t get more than 15-20 FPS per second, so we decided to do our review on PS5.

You know, there were criticisms that the game was DLC… As I mentioned before, I was arguing that this was an unnecessary criticism in 2011 due to the image of the original MW3 against Battlefield 3. I was praising Call of Duty again, but let alone those who made this criticism; this time the company even silenced me. Because they called the game’s Campaing mode a racy DLC. You can see this in the images below.

As you can see, Modern Warfare III – Campaing Pack 1 – 2 is added on top of Modern Warfare II.

With the update in recent months, the company unified the game’s name as Call of Duty under a single menu and name; Modern Warfare 2 (2022)’s Campaing (Single Mode) mode, Warzone, Multiplayer and Zombie mode were collected in this package. Those who pre-ordered Modern Warfare III (2023) were able to start Campaing mode a week earlier. In this case, it was combined in Call of Duty, which was presented as a single package, and Modern Warfare III was added as DLC as Campaing. So you were installing Modern Warfare III as DLC over Modern Warfare 2 files.

Even the loading screens in the menu were from last year’s Modern Warfare II. After loading with the MWII logo, you would switch to MWIII. They really offered us the most expensive DLCs on the market. You can see this in the image below…

We are starting the game…

I criticized so much, but a part of me said “technical problems, technical reasons” and said “it can happen” and I went on my way… I mean the game…

On November 10th, when the game reached the full version; Although I thought “it will be fixed and anyway the Campaing mode is a pre-order file, maybe that’s why they added it, the important thing is the content of the game, although it is criticized, Call of Duty is a completely different production”; When I checked the game again on November 10th, I saw that nothing seriously changed. And you know what? I got a “108 GB UPDATE”. 108 GB – UPDATE/UPDATE!

Conclusion: The green background of MWII became red for MWIII. The “2022 rights reserved” date became 2023. Just for that, the new Call of Duty, which received a 108 GB update, had taken its place in the market.

Oh boy, we’re finally in the game…

“Okay, maybe we got off to a bad start. Maybe the content of the game is great and will make us forget all this”, I finally start the game…

I’m going to divide this part into two parts with and without SPOILERS, otherwise there’s no other way to describe it.

I’ll start by introducing the spoiler-free part first…

Now even this line may sound like a mild spoiler, but don’t worry, it’s not. It starts from the gameplay video that was released when the game was announced. After seeing that video, I was much more excited, hoping that we would see characters like Sandman, Truck, Grinch, Sabre, etc. that appeared in the original MW3 in a more effective way in the new Modern Warfare universe. We complete the first chapter in a nice and fun way.

You know what happens after you complete the first chapter? That chapter ends and throws you into the Warzone map in Urzikstan. The indicators, the menu, opening and closing chests, everything about the Warzone is right in front of you. Believe me, everything that comes to mind is focused from the Warzone map to Warzone. At one point I was like, “I wonder if I accidentally switched to Warzone?” After all the technical bugs, I thought it was a BUG. I closed the game and re-entered the game… No… It was a story mode. They didn’t bother to make that many levels. They made the first episode carefully as an introduction to the game and maybe to shoot a gameplay video, and then they said they would fill the empty spaces with Warzone.

We jumped out of helicopters, found crates, opened them, and blew up helicopters in three different areas with the weapons we got. At the beginning, I also thought that; I think they presented Warzone as a kind of training mode after the first episode to attract people who played the story mode to Warzone, so that they could feel the feeling of let’s see what it’s like. Do you know what happened after this episode ended? A similar mission was opened again and we found ourselves doing it. It repeats itself so much that it feels like we loaded the AIs on all the maps in Warzone mode as if we loaded bots and we are shooting them uniformly. After those two experiences, we went back to normal Call of Duty mode. That was also a short episode. Then again the Warzone map… Some of the things are so copied that the famous map of Warzone, Verdansk, is exactly the same.

For example, in one episode, we switch to Captain Price as the character we’re going to manage. After the intermediate cinematic, he jumps out of the helicopter. The game starts. And that’s it.

Look, what I’m telling you is just three images below. I played as Price or a different character…

The actual storytelling in the game is based on cinematic videos. That’s the whole narrative. The cinematics are good quality and smooth, but the game is very short. If you just skip through the cutscenes quickly; you can finish the game in 3.5 hours.

One of the best and most enjoyable parts of the gameplay was the lack of a craft system. Since the game is already based on Warzone, you craft weapons and equipment in the menu. In the previous Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2, I was really bored with crafting and stealth. The lack of this was a bit of a relief. Although this adds a simulation feel, the core audience of the game wants to have an action-packed experience outside of stealth. There was a time when even games like Resident Evil 6 deviated from its essence with the Call of Duty influence because action games were in vogue at the time. Actually, that’s all we were looking for in a Call of Duty game. Story, character and action…

The feel of the game is perfect for a Call of Duty game. In fact, the feel of the game, the cinematic quality, the sounds in the game are all based on the previous game. For some reason, because of these features, I inevitably felt like I was playing Call of Duty while playing the game on Warzone knockoff maps. Maybe they thought about this and acted accordingly. I don’t know, but I enjoyed it after a while. Did I still get frustrated? Yes, I was. I also fell into such a contradiction. It gave me a short-term gameplay pleasure. Sometimes it may be that Warzone, which came out during the pandemic, may have turned to cover the current loss of players in this way.

After Modern Warfare, which was rebooted in 2019, many new characters such as Alex Keller, Farah Karim, Wolf, Kate Laswell were added to the game. When I saw these in the first game, I thought that the “Modern Warfare” brand would not end with three games, and that everything would work slowly like the first four seasons of Better Call Saul. And that gave me a very good feeling. Even over time, characters like Russell Adler in Black Ops Cold War, Alejandro Vargas in Modern Warfare 2, and Soap MacTavish in the original trilogy were enough to really excite you. Just hearing his name gave me a very good feeling. While I was impressed by the prominence of Ghost and Gaz, I can say that it really hurt me that they wasted such a potential with the Warzone maps made in this game.

The game, which also fictionalized the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian General Staff, very well in the game released last year, unfortunately, despite these characters and potential scenario power, they could not even fictionalize this in the game where the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out and the Russians were portrayed as hostile. They ruined Modern Warfare III for the sake of a Warzone mode. There is no save system especially in Warzone-like levels. Did you die? You’re back to square one. The fact that we started the game by capturing Zakhaev’s son in the first Warzone, and that the story was dispersed because of Warzone at that moment was disturbing, but it never made me think that it would bring the series to these levels.

There’s no music in the game. It’s like you’re playing on a really monotonous Warzone map. There’s no music in the background. There’s only the main theme music in some cinematic scenes. So you’ve stopped boxed sales on PC since 2019. Your costs have decreased partially and it is expensive in the world, you are selling at full game price, why is there no music? That’s another issue.

Storyline

The storyline of the game is very complicated. For example, a character we killed in the previous game appears in the new game as if nothing happened. A character that we identified as an enemy in the previous game is not clear whether he is a friend or an enemy. I’m going to say it’s mixed because of the linearity of the events… I can’t say that because the game takes place in the present day. So it starts on November 10th, 2023. Modern Warfare 2 was a few years before that. Of course, in this linearity, I wonder whether some events will happen in the next chapters, whether we are experiencing what happened in the past, but there is history. It’s not happening again.

We didn’t expect World War III or a Russia-US conflict in this game. We thought it had a coherent story from a very modern perspective, but they ruined that with their rebooted stories and marketing. Honestly, we didn’t expect top-level innovation from you, Call of Duty. Until today, your bone mass has been playing the game with the feeling of the current copy/paste product. Every year it was creating a completely different effect as a series. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that this year, and as we didn’t get it, all our memories were ruined.

If you remember last year, the most realistic graphics in the Amsterdam section became a hot topic. Everyone who played the game or not shared that part on social media. The same method was tried here in a London level, but it was not worth much because it was connected to Warzone again. You can check it out below.

Finally, I would like to briefly talk about the other modes. Classically Multiplayer, Warzone and zombie modes are available in the game, but believe me, the game called Modern Warfare III was added to the game as DLC. Multiplayer modes, which received a big update as usual, were also updated with the 108 GB update that I criticized in the previous lines. I don’t think there is much to talk about. The company obviously wants to move forward on Warzone rather than Call of Duty. They will obviously reflect this in the games they will release every year. If you will be thinking that I don’t know what zombie mode is, I don’t know what Multiplayer is; just read the old reviews on the site. Nevertheless, you can find my opinions below in order not to be idle.

What about Multiplayer and Zombie modes?

I just mentioned briefly, but I wanted to elaborate in case anyone still cares. I mentioned almost throughout the review that the main game’s Campaing mode forces you to play “Warzone”, which inevitably brought to mind that the game will be successful in Multiplayer.

The Multiplayer mode of the game is the same as in all other Call of Duty games. Especially this is the same as the previous game, Modern Warfare II. You know, if you present this game to people who have never played online, they wouldn’t know the difference. Our adventure starts on four important maps called Skidrow, Favela, Estate and Rust. I thought there was a problem with the graphics of the game and I thought it was map-specific, but since they were designed this way during development, they are a bit outdated. There is no problem in adapting to the environment. All four maps are seriously one of the most beautiful environments designed for Multiplayer.

Player interaction with enemies, stealth and combat is very fluid. Nevertheless, I noticed players who instantly reached levels 50-60 before a day of the game’s release, and plenty of colorful customized weapons. You really need to make a serious effort or use cheats to reach this within 12 hours. Considering the game’s security against cheaters, seeing these numbers immediately made me think. After playing a hand or two, I suddenly became level 7, which explained the situation later. The weight of the level you jumped in the game dropped in my eyes at that moment. Maybe I’m an amateur, but it shouldn’t have increased this fast. This situation may have created the logic that let’s spend this year like this in Multiplayer and let them continue in Warzone again. It’s still fun. It entertained me inevitably.

Especially the team play, Deathmatch, Domination Hardpoint gameplay in Skidrow conveyed the amount of chaos in the game and this presented the intensity of the war in the best way. If you think that chasing with bayonets is something unique to World War I and World War II games like Battlefield 1 and V, you’d be wrong. Depending on the features you add in the weapon customization sections, you can do what you need when you run out of bullets with bayonet-like equipment.

Also, since the running feature is already at a high level in the game, that is, raising your weapon in the air and simulating the situations in a war environment with the beauty of that animation, it is also enjoyable. When the first group of 32 players reached a total of 64 people against the team, it was not clear who was shooting who, which resulted in a faster result. Still, it felt like it was done without much thought. Everything led to the same place again: Warzone! If you really want to buy the game for the online modes, I suggest you play Warzone for free.

ZOMBIE!

Zombie mode goes a bit beyond the traditional. I started the game with Operation Deadbolt mode and experienced a zombie hunt in an open world map with up to 24 players. This time the round base in the game is unlimited, so you can extend the duration of the zombie mode in open world hunts. The only bad part is that if there’s no one to pick you up when you die, you can kiss everything goodbye. In the old zombie modes, once you died, it was all over, but here, help from your teammates can lift you up to the next level.

While there are open world maps that are made difficult according to regions, the number of players can reach up to 24 people as I mentioned. On the other hand, the zombie story mode in the game adds a kind of parallel progression to the campaing. I can say that it is incredibly great with the new zombie types, but I don’t want to praise it too much. If there is a game called Modern Warfare 4; there is a fear that they will present Campaing with Zombie modes like Warzone. In this mode, which is progressing on PvE mode, there is unfortunately a mixture with Warzone’s DMZ mode. Of Warzone of!

Nevertheless, many producers, especially the producers of FPS-based The Walking Dead games that have been failing for years, should take this mode as a reference.

The most critical point: NO RUSSIAN!

-SPOILER BEGINS-

I’ve saved these lines for spoilers, so if you’re intending to play the game and you’re just trying to finish it, skip these lines.

The only part of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III that got people excited was the return of Vladimir Makarov and the impact the “No Russian” episode would have. In the original Modern Warfare 2, this was the first time we got to know Vladimir Makarov, and it was in this mission that he brought Russia and America into a major war with an airport massacre. Not only that, but it would later lead to World War III. It’s a scene that is still remembered and has been mentioned in caps, memes and even in political events. How would they present something like that today?

Towards the end of MW2, we saw hints of this. As far as I understand, we are preparing our weapon with 3D printed weapon parts, our characters who managed to pass through the X-Ray device and the remaining parts that were previously inserted into the plane. That’s where Vladimir Makarov’s mare’s mind comes in handy, and through his men, he somehow gets Samara, a YPJ member from Urzikstan, into the game and blames her for the terrorist act on the plane after handing her the gun. The detail of the bodyguards traveling secretly on the planes at that moment was also well done. Because as far as I know, after the September 11 attacks, there are four bodyguards disguised as passengers on every plane. This detail was also well thought out. Because when I discussed this at the time, there was no evidence, but I can say that even in this game it was handled. I said spoilers, but I won’t tell you everything, but I have to say that the No Russian episode lasts 5 minutes, 3 minutes of which are cinematic videos. After Vladimir Makarov intervenes, he blames it on Samara and causes the action on the plane.

We see Vladimir Makarov many times in the game, but he’s a scrawny, little brother-in-law with no charisma left. When his name was mentioned in the original games, the ground shook. While even a two-second glimpse of him still has a 14-year-long effect on us, Vladimir Makarov’s Flash TV acting, even in name only, really ruins everything. Also, the “No Russian” episode, where the real carnage takes place, is not the airplane scene, but the stadium attack.

Especially in the last scene, where Ghost and Gaz are highlighted and Soap is pushed to the background, his death may be one of the most emotionless events you’ll ever see. It’s so frustrating and mundane that I can’t even describe it…

-SPOILER ENDS-

Last Word!

Believe me, there is nothing to tell about the game. In fact, the fact that the first episode was perfectly designed and put in front of us as a gameplay video and then they forced us to play it in the story episode as if to say hang out on Warzone maps, as if it was not enough that they made us install this mode compulsorily in the previous games, was really the last point. It’s as much as getting a No Russian message and throwing a phone in a glass.

Jason Schreier, who is bringing up a lot of drama as I write these lines, said that most Call of Duty games are developed in three years, but Modern Warfare 3 was developed in less than 1.5 years. This explains everything about how such a production can happen in such a short time. To be honest, according to the cinematic progression, the story is good, but the game is not. I wish Modern Warfare III never existed. The Call of Duty 3 effect at the time gave birth to a legend like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I don’t know what this will do in the future, but for the first time in history, we witnessed a very bad Call of Duty game.

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