Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III – A Disappointing Return to a Familiar Battlefield
Over the years, Call of Duty campaigns have defined the pinnacle of Michael Bay-style cinematic action in video games. While the franchise has increasingly leaned towards its lucrative multiplayer modes, with the introduction of battle passes, microtransactions, and downloadable content, some of its single-player campaigns remain a benchmark for explosive sequences in the medium. Memorable missions from Call of Duty titles are part of gaming folklore – the raw shock of a nuclear detonation, the tense deliberations of a ghillied-up sniper, and the disturbing implications of a false flag terror attack. CoD campaigns have consistently delivered over-the-top, knockout moments through imaginative mission design, the “Oorah” machismo of American military might, and immersive cinematics that punctuate the action.
However, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s campaign represents a new low for the franchise. As a soft reboot of 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, and a direct sequel to last year’s Modern Warfare II, Activision’s latest shooter plays out like a greatest hits album, harkening back to iconic missions from the series. Sadly, it suffers from a severe lack of originality and inventiveness throughout its short campaign. You’ll find yourself reliving sequences you’ve experienced before, taking control of a gunship to rain down death from above, infiltrating a heavily guarded gulag under the cover of night, and hunting rogue snipers in the snow. Yet, none of these missions are delivered with the trademark flair and extravagance we’ve come to expect from a CoD campaign. There is no standout set piece to call its own.
The Warzoneification of the Campaign
More egregious than the lack of originality is the insidious integration of multiplayer ethos into the single-player campaign. In the name of gameplay variety and player freedom, Modern Warfare III introduces missions ripped straight out of Call of Duty: Warzone, the Battle Royale phenomenon now synonymous with CoD identity. Calling these sequences ‘missions’ is a stretch; they are a series of pick-from-the-hat objectives woven into weapons-free combat sections lacking any narrative thrust or cinematic appeal. They adopt a cut-and-dried approach to story progression. The game rotates its cast of characters who take up these missions, but these Warzone-style sections remain singularly bland. You blow up enemy helicopters in a nuclear power plant, defuse scattered bombs around a dam, and recover the black box at an airplane crash site — the objectives and the environment change, but the gameplay remains the same. This approach cripples Modern Warfare III’s campaign, replacing narrative tension and creative high jinks with familiar, uninspired fodder.
The Blandness of Repetitive Warfare
The campaign, which took me about seven hours to complete, begins with a prison break. The game puts you in the shoes of the bad guys as you infiltrate a Russian gulag in the silence of the night with night vision goggles, attempting to break out Vladimir Makarov, the main antagonist of MW III. ‘Operation 627’ is one of the more cinematic missions in the game, leading you through a tense, stealthy sequence of approaching the prison via sea, climbing up its tall walls, and then rappelling down the central section as you silently take out guards. Makarov’s menacing introduction and our prior knowledge of what he’s capable of create a tense set up for what could follow, but MW III runs out of ammunition after the first firefight, bafflingly throwing us into back-to-back Open Combat Missions. These take-your-own-approach sequences are presented as encouraging player choice and freedom, but they are unmistakably lazy rehashes from the franchise’s online Battle Royale twin.
Open Combat Missions introduce weapon chests, loadout drops, and other perks like UAV and Airstrike, straight out of Warzone. Each mission is set in an open map section with three or four scattered, generic objectives that can be tackled at your leisure. While these sandbox-style playgrounds are functional, they’re far from fun. There is no narrative tension, no specific identity to the level design, and no curated action set pieces to break the monotony of running around and ticking bland objectives off your list. The half-measures approach is apparent in tailored campaign missions as well, but it sticks out even more in these open combat sequences. It doesn’t help that Open Combat Missions make up about half of the total MW III campaign.
A Few Glimmering Moments in a Sea of Uninspired Gameplay
Most of these weapons-free missions blend into one another, indistinguishable from a 20-minute solo Warzone run, except there are no real players to shoot at. Out of a total six Open Combat Missions, only one stood out as distinct, both in level design and gameplay objective. Instead of a horizontal cutout of flat land like all other Warzone-style sections, “Highrise,” presents a vertical level, tasking you to scale a rundown, mercenary-infested apartment building, clearing floor-by-floor until you reach a final, frantic firefight on the rooftop. Clearly inspired by 2011’s cult action film The Raid, “Highrise” is a thrilling departure from the unimaginative drudgery of this new campaign format.
Aside from the weapons-free sequences, the regular linear missions that follow the trademark Call of Duty style also fail to impress. Most missions act as a refresh of classic CoD campaign bits, or a new take on familiar segments from the original MW 3. “Payload” has you sneaking up on a missile base through the tall grass, taking out members of the Konni group, a Russian ultranationalist private militia introduced in the previous game, before everything goes haywire. Parts of the sequence harken back to “All Ghillied Up” from 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare but lack the cold-sweat tension and the narrative context of the iconic mission. In “Frozen Tundra,” you lead the infamous Task Force 141 through a blizzard to intercept Makarov’s convoy in Siberia, before your team is ambushed itself by snipers waiting in the snow. This mission, where the snowstorm worsens with each passing minute and visibility plummets towards the end, is perhaps MW III’s most visually striking.
Disturbing Moments Fail to Deliver the Punch They Once Did
While the latest Call of Duty skimps on over-the-top cinematic set pieces that have defined CoD campaigns for years, it does deliver plenty of disturbing moments, as has become a series staple. In “Deep Cover,” you play as CIA operative Kate Laswell and infiltrate a Russian military base to contact an asset. A purely stealth mission, here you barely use your silenced pistol and rely on impersonating a Russian officer and obtaining key card access to the main building in the compound. But the mission objectives are waylaid when the base comes under a chemical weapon attack. And in “Flashpoint,” Task Force 141 tries to thwart Makarov’s terror attack on a football stadium. It’s a mission with genuine shock value as you rush to take down terrorists slaughtering innocent fans in the stadium.
Modern Warfare III’s most disturbing (and perhaps the most disappointing) moment is its take on the infamous “No Russian” mission from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. In “Passenger,” instead of indiscriminately murdering civilians at a Russian airport, Makarov and his men hijack a Russian airplane in a false flag terror attack. While the new mission is shocking in its execution, it lacks the gut-punch of “No Russian.” In the original MW 2 mission, while you could choose to not shoot at innocent passengers, you were actively involved in a gruesome terror attack. “No Russian” shocked the entire industry and stirred vigorous controversy all around the globe. It was the defining Call of Duty moment that sparked debate, provoked backlash, and pushed the medium into a new era. Up until then, video games were only rated M for Mature in words. One sensational CoD mission changed that. But MW III’s version of that harrowing mission remains mostly passive, as if afraid to hand you control, and plays out almost entirely as a cinematic. What’s worse is that the next mission undermines the high stakes established by “Passenger,” dismissing the damage done with a cheap cleanup job.
A Familiar Story with Characters Lacking Depth
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III picks up the story where the previous game left off. The multinational special operations unit Task Force 141 is on the trails of an old and dangerous foe. Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Makarov intends to plunge the planet into war, executing devastating terror attacks across the globe with the help of his private militia. Captain Price and members of the task force — “Soap,” “Ghost,” and “Gaz,” along with other allies, are playing catch-up, putting their lives on the line to thwart Makarov’s nefarious plans. The story follows familiar narrative beats from the original Modern Warfare 3, but also flits back and forth in time to add context. While the new Modern Warfare trilogy has tried to establish a more realistic and grounded identity, clearly inspired from military films like Zero Dark Thirty, I’ve always preferred the more dramatic approach of the original MW titles, where every character stood out in small but distinct ways. Makarov used to be intimidating, Price was fearless, Soap was loyal, and Ghost was an enigma. Now, they’re all military caricatures, grunting and shouting at each other as they run around and play war games.
And while the cutscenes in MW III are some of the best in the business on a technical aspect, with photorealistic facial capture and rich animations, the story told through them is forgettably bland. The missions shuffle you from one objective to the next, peppering in Warzone cosplay at every chance it gets, only to lead to a thoroughly unsatisfying ending. The original Modern Warfare told a complete story, one that ended with a fitting, dramatic climax that felt like a full stop. Here, the story sputters to a non-ending and tries to leave the door open for further sequels.
Unwavering Technical Prowess Fails to Compensate for Gameplay Deficits
What remains as good as ever is the gunplay itself. As we’ve come to expect from Call of Duty games, the first-person shooting aspect sets the bar that all other FPS games aim to clear. Guns look hyper-detailed and feel weighty to hold. The shooting is tight and controlled, yet loose enough that you don’t feel like you’re in a straitjacket. The feedback is robust, with each burst in a firefight hitting like kick from a mule. Weapon animations, reloads and other combat effects have been refined to near perfection. When you hit an enemy from distance, you can see the blood effects explode realistically in a mist. Bodies react in physics-accurate ways to explosions as they’re tossed away from the impact. And each gun retains its distinct feel — LMGs slow you down, while soft-triggered silenced pistols get the job done quick. On the PS5, weapon feedback is enhanced with the help of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers that present corresponding resistance for specific firearms.
All of this comes alive in the consistently brilliant visual presentation of the game. Quite predictably, Modern Warfare III is a stunner. From the detailed, hyper-realistic character models and rich outdoor environments to the excellent lighting that elevates even ominous indoor areas, MW III is yet another graphical showcase. The game’s sound design bears the Call of Duty seal of quality, too. The loud violence of a shotgun fired indoors, the low thrum of a helo hovering above, and the ghostly echo of sniper fire in the mountain — MW III presents detailed soundscapes for each environment and scenario. On the PS5, the game runs flawlessly, too, with barely any noticeable stuttering or frame drops.
As a technical package, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is a powerhouse. But then, the series has already set that standard high in previous entries and maintaining the status quo is the least you’d expect from the most profitable video game franchise in the world. With all its resources and the talent and experience at hand at the multiple studios that work on Call of Duty, Activision must deliver beyond the bare minimum. The Modern Warfare III campaign never does that.
Where Did the Heart of Call of Duty Go?
There has been a slow erosion of the single-player story mode in modern shooting games in favour of increasingly silly Fortnitification of multiplayer offerings. MW III falls further down the well by integrating popular multiplayer markers into its campaign. In its desperation to mimic the mundane familiarity of Warzone, the latest Activision shooter discards the curated drama of legacy CoD campaigns.
And while the best Call of Duty stories came a few years ago, the franchise has delivered on the campaign front as recently as Modern Warfare I and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. This time around though, the intense gunplay and excellent visuals fail to fire up a sputtering campaign that stalls right out of the gate.
Activision had earlier decided against releasing a CoD title this year, opting instead for a “premium expansion” for Modern Warfare II. The publisher, perhaps scared of the financial repercussions of not sticking to an annual release cycle, later decided MW III to be a standalone entry. All the evidence from MW III’s campaign, however, points at little effort to do so. With rehashed missions, lazy Warzone style sections, and a sore lack of typical Call of Duty knockout set pieces, Modern Warfare III does not feel like a full game, especially at that $70 price point. The original Modern Warfare games redefined the first-person shooter genre; the trilogy’s uninspired rerun, on the other hand, represents its decay.
Pros
- Tight, responsive gunplay
- Excellent visuals
- Flawless performance
Cons
- Warzone-style Open Combat missions
- Lack of thrilling set pieces
- Bland missions and story
- Unsatisfying ending
- Cluttered, confusing menu design
Rating (out of 10): 5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III released November 10 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X.
_Pricing starts at Rs. 5,599 for the Standard Edition on Steam and Battle.Net for PC, PlayStation Store for PS4 and PS5, and Xbox Store for Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X._
