Review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)

 

I've grown less enthusiastic about the Call of Duty series, as you may have noticed if you've read any of my reviews since I started writing for Jump Dash Roll. It's difficult to talk about what was once the best shooter available because it has long since become stale. Even with the assistance of a bottle of Writers Tears Irish Whiskey, I mean, I technically get paid for coming up with clever things to say about things, but lately, I simply haven't been able to come up with a good enough description of the franchise. There haven't been many modifications to one of the most popular recognizable video gaming establishments that I've turned to, shamelessly reproducing portions of my old reviews whenever my editor sends me a key for whatever Activision-Blizzard chooses to call their yearly first-person shooter. That isn't the case, though, because Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) is so damn awesome that I have a ton of adjectives to describe it, the most important being "shit." 

Look, you, your pet, and your grandmother all know what Call of Duty is by now. It's a first-person shooter with a mediocre narrative, an addicting multiplayer feature, and a disposable co-op mode set in a vaguely modern world. Each of the twentysomething mainstream entries in the franchise is technically sound, has good but unimaginative cinematography, and is all around the definition of "fine." Every year, my dad, my pals, you, and I all purchase it for the same reason: we've yet to discover a game that nearly fulfills our needs for something to play on leisurely Friday nights with a few old friends. Look, you, your pet, and your grandmother all know what Call of Duty is by now. It's a first-person shooter with a mediocre narrative, an addicting multiplayer feature, and a disposable co-op mode set in a vaguely modern world. Each of the twentysomething mainstream entries in the franchise is technically sound, has good but unimaginative cinematography, and is all around the definition of "fine." Every year, my dad, my pals, you, and I all purchase it for the same reason: we've yet to discover a game that nearly fulfills our needs for something to play on leisurely Friday nights with a few old friends. 

In some way, Modern Warfare 3's campaign is where the game's issues begin. For those who would rather not explore its online possibilities, the franchise has never been known to deliver anything more than an enhanced on-rails Michael Bay movie, but this installment of the series fails even to accomplish so admirably. The three-hour single-player campaign of MWIII (2023) consists of a combination of "open combat missions," which are basically quick bot battles lifted from the popular Warzone, and a few other sequential processes devoid of anything approaching a cogent storyline. The antagonist that gained notoriety during Modern Warfare 2 (2009)'s "No Russian" sequence, Makarov, is little more than a comic book villain in this game, despite the fact that the two previous Modern Warfare reboots were obviously intended to set up Makarov, an evil Russian ultranationalist with oddly understandable motivations for trying to start World War 3. This also applies to Task Force 141, a group of superhuman operators—led by the pragmatist Captain Price—who continuously save the world from whatever threat the show tackles in the majority of its episodes, as well as a supporting cast that includes fan favorites like the former CIA agent who most likely tortured prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and a man who strikingly resembles a father who beats his children and consumes cheap beer.

    The campaign for Mass Effect III (2023) is only good because it allows you to look at Call of Duty: Ghosts Dog.

It's actually not worth playing the campaign for the first time in the franchise's history, which is saying something. If you enjoy aimlessly killing bots, you can have some pleasure, but there's nothing else exciting to do in it. Not only is the single-player in MWIII (2023) subpar by Call of Duty standards, but it's subpar. There are a few missions that may pass muster if the game had been created by an independent developer rather than a company owned by the richest man on earth, but alas, that is not the case. The legacy of the amazing Modern Warfare (2019) is nearly destroyed in MW (2023), which  Not only is it a strangely anti-war game, but it also includes playable missions from well-known war films like 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and Zero Dark Thirty. In some ways, it's even worse than Black Ops 4, which didn't even have a violent campaign. 

Although the zombies mode in MWIII (2023) isn't quite as horribly bad as the game's single-player, it's still not really enjoyable. Treyarch, who seemed to have been assigned to the project at random, has chosen to make the franchise's most entertaining method of killing AI little more than a ripoff of the previously mentioned Warzone, as opposed to the traditional round-based mode where you kill the undead to earn cash that can be spent to buy new guns or perks in a relatively linear environment. Every time you turn it on, you and a few friends or random online users spawn in an open environment. matching, and you have to take on and finish arbitrary missions on a big map that include teams of other players. After that, you have to extract using whatever gear you managed to find. Instead of having to find your way through doors or surviving rounds, you are free to explore the map for as long as you like, doing anything you please, until the 45-minute timer goes out or you choose to leave freely by taking a helicopter.

All of this is completely mindless entertainment, yet it may also be somewhat enjoyable. In MWIII (2023) co-op, your opponents are either bullet sponges that take dozens of rounds to take down or they are completely brain-dead, both literally and artificially speaking. These opponents are ideal fodder to help you collect experience points that are shared with the multiplayer mode. Since you, the player must choose when to enter higher-level areas that include the aforementioned bullet sponges, there is also no true sense of progression in Zombies. However, you could easily kill most of an hour simply shooting down hordes from your landing zone. Apart from the potential intrinsic gratification that comes with taking out a Zed's skull, its main purpose is to enable you to swiftly acquire weaponry in the multiplayer mode of Medal of Honor (2023).

            This is quite unpleasant because you have to do it each time the game updates, which is often every day.

Well, there's no nice way to put it, so allow me to be blunt with all of you: The player-versus-player mode in Modern Warfare III (2023) is abhorrent and represents a significant regression for the franchise in every aspect. The fundamental element of the series—getting new weaponry by murdering other players, which then enables you to use those new guns to kill other players in gory and antiquated ways—remains intact, but it is hindered by every horrible mechanic you can imagine. While some of those are objectively problematic—like the ability to almost completely negate the mode's progression system by simply playing Zombies and extracting whatever guns you want so you can use them in multiplayer games—others are subjectively terrible, like the inclusion of microtransactions that let your character look like anyone from Beyonce to a tree god.

The main problem with the mode is its maps. MWIII (2023) started with the same array of playable plots as Modern Warfare 2 (2011), rather than a dozen or so additional environments for you to drop shot other gamers in. At worst, it shows how far multiplayer design has progressed in the last ten years, as even beloved games like Highrise of Favela aren't very outstanding by today's standards of game design. At best, this feels like a poor effort on the part of the game creator. All of this being said, the mode is further hindered by dumb mechanisms like making you finish daily tasks to unlock a large portion of its generic armament rather than being able to acquire them naturally by leveling up, and an increased time-to-kill that is just uncomfortable.

No, I will not remove my request for my teammates to shut up, thank you very much.

The fact that all of the guns from Modern Warfare II (2022) can theoretically be used in Modern Warfare III (2023) is worth mentioning. These guns can be unlocked through complicated challenges once you reach the game's current maximum rank of 55 or by using them if you already own them in the aforementioned 2022 title. This also applies to any skins you purchased during last year's CoD, but it's not a good thing. Because it takes longer to kill your opponents, most of the 2023 title's enormous arsenal—which technically numbers in the hundreds—just aren't very effective, and very few of them even have unique features or captivating animations. 

All things considered, the multiplayer feature of MWIII (2023) is more akin to a free-to-play shooter than it is to the most recent installment of the most recognizable IP in video gaming history. Every time one of your kills is somehow considered exceptional by the game's algorithm, useless messages fill your screen, and the skins in the game are equally expensive as the title itself. You're also almost guaranteed to have a 1.0 kill-death ratio and unlock one new piece of gear every hour if you choose to use the skill-based matchmaking system, which pairs you with players who are roughly as good or bad at the game as you are. You're also guaranteed to have a miserable time if you ever decide to matchmake with a few friends who are either better or worse at getting kill streaks than you.

It's also important to note that, from a technical standpoint, MWIII (2023) is absolutely appalling. Even though the game has a respectable, if slightly out-of-date, appearance and passable, if unremarkable, animations, it has a ton of small and large bugs, major server problems, and—perhaps worst of all—every time it receives an update, which happens almost every day, you have to restart it. Even the audio design is really sloppy, with many of the gun noises being overly quiet or bassy.It's almost as if MWIII (2023) was built in less than a year and before anyone had a chance to QA test it, given that the franchise is widely regarded as having good graphics and being fine in all other aspects.  

This isn't an AI-generated image; you can actually purchase a Nicki Minaj game for £20. Doom Man, Skeletor, and 21 Savage—whoever the heck he is—are also available. 

Fans of Call of Duty have probably read that MWIII (2023) was originally intended to be an expansion for MWII (2022) rather than a stand-alone game. It's safe to assume that this was true at this time. It's still got the franchise's trademark dopamine-inducing, addictive gunplay, but it doesn't stop it from being the worst Call of Duty game ever made and, at its worst, an incredibly uninspired video game. Its multiplayer has so many major issues that it's difficult to appreciate, and its single-player is just plain awful. Its zombie mode is also uninspired. In addition, the game includes technical problems and microtransactions that almost seem like pay-to-win because of how difficult it is to identify premium skins on the game's maps. I will say it again and again and again: Call of Duty Bloody needs to cease being a yearly franchise, and your annual purchases of the game will contribute to that. Simply put, if you're thinking about playing the game, don't. Instead, play Battlebit Remastered or take a short break from first-person shooters. However, if you have,I want you to know that I understand why you did, but I also want you to know that you should definitely look into getting some of the treatment that is available for those who are addicted.