Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360)

I have no idea what MW3 is about.

I know what the plot is, such as it is, and who the characters are, such as they are, but I have no idea what it is about.

Following the tremendously successful Modern Warfare and its sequel Modern Warfare 2, MW3 picks up directly where the plot threads of those games have left off. The world is at war, a war created by the machinations of a single man who has manipulated tensions to drive Russia and the United States into open conflict.

The first MW was a thrumming machine that propelled the player forward towards climax peaks that were truly startling and innovative. Set-pieces were grand and even moving. Modern Warfare 2 turned the knob to 11, culminating in the controversial “No Russians” sequence where a player could participate in a terrorist massacre of civilians in an airport and later, an orbital view of a nuclear missile attack. The set-pieces were massive, the plot incompressible, the momentum unrelenting.

One could say that Modern Warfare was about the atrocity and futility of war, and the (lack of) value of human life. One could say Modern Warfare 2 was about the relentless callous nature of terrorism and the quest for ultimate power.

Modern Warfare 3 is a mishmashed greatest hits of ideas from the earlier games, with the volume knob torn off, standing in front of Doc Brown’s giant speaker and slamming the strings over and over, seeking the most bitching power chord EVAR.

Characters from earlier releases return, but offer no connection to the player, other than be awesome. Set-pieces are an enormous, baffling spectacle, including a Parisian outing whose ending is so ridiculous one wonders if no-one at the six developers involved had ever seen Team America. There is meaningless loss, and character deaths that no longer startle or shock, because we have seen it before.

Following the hopelessly well-trodden formula of the entire Call of Duty franchise, players are funneled down increasingly smaller corridors as pyrotechnics savage the world around them. There is usually an NPC with the word “Follow” above his head leading the player to the next set piece. Commands are given and not to be deviated from as any independent thought is to be crushed by the engine. More than once I tried to upset the apple cart by drawing too much attention in a stealthy run and gun sequence, only to be immediately beset and exterminated by crossfire from invisible enemies.

The controls were tight and precise, the sound design overwhelming in its bombast. The engine is showing its age, running the game at 60 fps but at a little over half 720p resolution. Enemies tend to look like friendly’s leading to accidental mission failure for friendly fire.

In a year, much less a quarter, where innovative, exciting, immersive games are drawing players into stories, characters and environments and where player agency and emergent gameplay are encouraged, MW3 feels old and tired. It feels like a labour of necessity, a bulletpoint attached to the real game, the multiplayer.

It is a soulless automaton but so is a war-machine, and maybe that’s what it’s about.