Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

After the release of Modern Warfare 2, the co-founders of Infinity Ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella, asked for extremely large bonuses and creative control of the Call of Duty series. Activision agreed, but added a clause to the contract that should they be fired, the rights to Call of Duty would fall back to Activision. After the contract was made former chief legal officer George Rose at Activision asked Thomas Fenady, former director of information technology at Activision, to "dig up dirt on Jason and Vince" because "we just want to get rid of them." This in turn led to West and Zampella look to means to make Infinity Ward a studio outside of Activision's control. And after Activision had a lawfirm investigate Infinity Ward, both founders were fired for "insubordination". This lead to the pair opening Respawn Entertainment where several employees of Infinity Ward left that company to join Respawn. This got so bad that Activision brought on Sledgehammer Games to help developMW3. Several lawsuit were then filed. West and Zampella filed a lawsuit against Activision shortly after their release to reclaim "substantial royalty payments" claiming that Activision failed to pay them in the weeks leading up to their firing. Activision then countersued calling their actions to fire them justified and asserting the two were "self-serving schemers". This also included EA as Activision claimed that EA, West, and Zampella were conspiring to try to "destabilize, disrupt and...destroy Infinity Ward", and sought $400 million in damages. This lawsuit didn't end until May 2012 where Activision had settled with the IWEG for $42 million, while private settlements were separately reached between Activision and EA, and between Activision, West and Zampella.

Back in high school, everyone was talking about these games, making it a hot topic. When I heard about this a lot, I felt that I really needed it, so I got it for Christmas.

The graphics are neat for the time that decide to go for more muted colors to fit the idea of it taking place in WWIII. Although it predicted WWIII taking place beginning in September 2016, we all know this ended up being incredibly false after September 2016-January 2017 had come and gone, and the world was not at war as it was still going, showing that the Modern Warfare story arc hasn't aged very well.

With great (though somewhat annoying in some cases, especially for Sandman) voice acting and a fantastic soundtrack, the game has quite a few great levels, from taking on Ultranationalist commandos in India with the mood all perfectly set with a fantastic opening cutscene, to sneaking in Russian-occupied Prague assisted by Kamarov and freedom fighters. But none quite stand out just as much as the absolutely power trip inducing final level at a hotel in the Middle East (I think it's in Dubai at the Burj al Arab). Playing as Price with the assistance of Yuri and intel by Nikolai, you hunt down Makarov protected by the remaining remnants of his Ultranationalist Inner Circle. The thing is, you're decked out in juggernaut armor and LMGs. You take far more damage here and only go back to normal halfway through. The ending to the original Modern Warfare trilogy is satisfactory, where Price finally is able to kill Makarov after all the hell he put the characters through. The campaign, however, is much weaker compared to its predecessors. Where MW2 was most definitely treading waters between being grounded and an action movie, here, the campaign is an over-the-top action movie with a B-plot about killing a big bad Russian man who hates America that's seemingly untouchable. Also, like all the other games in the franchise, the campaign is short at around 6 hours. Act 3 is considered to be rather rushed and anti-climactic. The levels consist of rehashed concepts (and, frequently, reused assets to go along with them) from previous levels in the series. You have a stealth mission with insta-fail conditions that borrows from the stealth mission you just did two levels ago, an ill-fated run through a bombed-out Berlin that echoes the DC levels from MW2, and infiltrating a diamond mine under support of a Predator UAV that's almost identical to the second half of MW2's "Contingency". This is likely due to the troubled development cycle and the team running out of time.

Even the Veteran difficulty is insane compared to the second game. Not only can you survive much less damage, but enemies are suddenly psychic and have superhuman reflexes and perfect aim. The only concession is that they're not constantly spamming you with 6 grenades at the same time like inCall of Duty: World at War.

Speaking of Makarov, while Makarov was shown to be smart and cunning in the previous game, he gets a power buff and is seemingly unstoppable throughout most of the game. To the point to where he's practically a comic book villain since he's able to kidnap the Russian president and his daughter with almost no problem, somehow knows exactly where Soap and Yuri are when they try to assassinate him, initiates chemical attacks across Europe, almost launches several nukes, and is able to escape from the UN without anyone knowing where he is except Price. Some plot holes involving him:

• How did Makarov get 70+ people onto the Russian president's plane?
• How did Makarov's forces capture the Russian President's daughter in Berlin without raising suspicion?
• How is it that military forces couldn't find Makarov but Price was able to especially when you consider that Makarov is just in a hotel in Dubai?
• How was there already C4 planted at the church if Makarov didn't kidnap Kamorov until after Price, Soap, and Yuri reached the church?

On the other hand, it does a good job at establishing that Yuri and Makarov were in the Modern Warfare series since Call of Duty 4 as it show flashbacks that show that they were both there when Zakhaev's arm was shot off, watching the nuke go off in the Middle East, and Yuri was supposed to join Makarov in the "No Russian" airport massacre, but Makarov gut-shot him in the underground parking lot after Yuri had a change of heart and attempted to warn the authorities. Yuri even managed to crawl up to the main terminal and was steps behind Makarov, Private Allen et al., trying to stop them before passing out from his injuries. In fact both COD 4 and MW2's remasters call back to this: the Call of Duty 4 remaster places Makarov and Yuri in the jeep they were in during the MW3 flashback. Modern Warfare 2 Remastered does more-or-less the same thing during No Russian, bringing Yuri's failed attempt at stopping the massacre.

Multiplayer is now much improved from MW2 with better-designed maps, much more balanced weapons, and the scorestreaks are not OP:

• The old killstreak system has replaced with the Strike Chain, with three different Strike Packages for pointstreaks to choose from:
  • Assault: If the player selects this package, getting kills with pointstreaks counts towards one's next pointstreak, as with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The pointstreak ends when the player dies, thus whatever rewards one desires must be accumulated within a single life (unlike the Support Package). Most of the pointstreaks provided are offensive in nature and help the player gain kills, intended for the lone wolf. However, it is worth noting that kills from previous Strike Chain rewards will not count towards your next chain.
  • Support: Unlike the other two Strike Packages, a player's streak does not end when the player is killed and points from Strike Chain rewards in this Strike Package do not add to the player's pointstreak. This Strike Package is geared towards players who support and play as a team. It is also useful for players that often die and would otherwise die too much to get sustained pointstreaks.
  • Specialist: Is special in that instead of equipment and air support, players are rewarded with additional perks upon completing the required Strike Chain. Extra perks are obtained after getting two, four, and six points in a row without dying (this is one kill, three kills and five kills with Hardline). If a player achieves eight point streaks (seven with Hardline), they are rewarded with every perk except for Overkill, an additional "Specialist Bonus" in the form of experience, and all Weapon Proficiencies except for Damage, Breath, Impact, and Attachments (Breath and Impact are awarded on the Wii version), regardless of whether the weapon actually allows the Proficiency (for example, one can get Range, Melee, and Speed for an Assault Rifle). These also apply to the player's secondary, and any weapon that picked up (normally, weapons picked up will have no proficiency). Pro perks are only awarded if they have been unlocked. Once the player dies, they lose any of the extra perks/proficiencies and must start the strike chain over, much like the Assault strike package. The player may choose what perks will be gained in the Create-A-Class menu.
• Online Split-Screen and Theater Mode returns from Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• Much more game modes in multiplayer like Team Juggernaut and Team Defender, and even "Community Playlists" modes, including Infected, Drop Zone, FFA Gunplay, and Money in the Denk.
• Each weapon now has its own individual rank (known as Weapon Level) and in order to level up the weapon a player needs to use it to unlock its attachments, proficiencies, and challenges.
• The map Dome is easily one of the best maps in the franchise due to it's small size. Many have considered this Infinity Ward's Nuketown.

Keep in mind, though, it also has a number of issues and is considered too similar to MW2:

• Deathstreaks return from MW2. Deathstreaks like Martydom and Last Stand make a return along with new ones:
  • Juiced: Gives a speed boost to 125% of a standard soldier sprinting that lasts for seven seconds upon respawning. This improvement in mobility can be used to enter battle more quickly and as an advantage in combat.
  • Revenge: It will allow the player to periodically see the position of the last enemy that killed them. The killer's position will be shown in the main window as the killfeed's headshot icon. This deathstreak ends after one kill, regardless of who the kill was.
  • Dead Man's Hand: It's just like Last Stand except you blow up instead of having a pistol to shoot your enemies, which is even more annoying.
  • Hollow Points: It gives the player 40% extra bullet damage, which is the same as the Stopping Power perk seen in previous games.
• The nuke returns in the form of a M.O.A.B. and this time you don't have to equip it, it's there for everybody.
• Maps like Interchange, Downturn, and Bakaara are not very well designed mainly because of how open the maps are.
• A lot of the equipment and attachments are carried over from MW2.
• Majority of the maps' color scheme are really bland due to how gray most of them are (to be fair, a lot of games from that era used this type of colour palette).
• When you prestige, your gun's level will reset, which makes prestiging pointless since you keep none of the attachments or skins.

There's a Survival mode where players must fend off waves of enemies on various multiplayer maps. The waves are semi-random with certain waves predetermined, but as the game goes on more and more powerful enemies appear like, Juggernauts, dogs strapped with C4, and enemy air support and sometimes all three simultaneously. And the Spec-Ops mode is greatly improvement as now you will unlock more weapons as you go.

Some other interesting things:

• In spring of 2011, a lot of info about Modern Warfare 3 was leaked, including concept art and the game's plot. While most of the plot is similar to what made it into the final product, there are several interesting differences such as a mission set in the Kremlin, a mission as a U.S tank gunner in Germany, and Sandman participating in the final mission to kill Makarov. The game also has cut lines for Price yelling out to Frost, the player character of the Delta Force missions, which alongside the fact that they actually made a model for him (used for Delta players in multiplayer and Spec Ops) indicates he was meant to take part in rescuing the Russian President, rather than being absent for no particular reason as he is in the released game.
• Dataminers found references to what appears to be an unused or extended version of the ending that was cut. A handful of code references and musical stings exist for a 'Mysterious Stranger' appearing during the Dubai finale. It's difficult to guess what the context would have been, but a fairly plausible theory is that this stranger would confront Price after Makarov's death as a means to setup a sequel.
• Beyond the weapons that returned from 2 and still use their original model and textures in the single-player mode like the USP, several other weapons still have some remnant of themselves left in the game files, including the M240 (enough of it left over that the Wii version was able to include it), Vector (was even seen in some pre-release footage), TAR-21, M9 (again, still exists in a complete enough form that AI teammates use it when they run out of ammo for their primary, and the player can even pick it up from them if they die while using it), and several WWII-era weapons reusing files from World at War.
• Like in MW2 there are a few cut perks: including a few holdovers of perks that were similarly cut from MW2, including "Blackbox" (would have let the player use killstreak rewards longer) and "Saboteur" (capture control points faster), there are a few new ones like "Siege" (player couldn't move, but accuracy and recoil control would be boosted), using launchers as a perk as in CoD4, an "Anytwo" perk that took up the first slot but allowed you to use any two perks from any slots in the other two, an "Endgame" perk that gave the player four times their normal health but made them drop dead after ten seconds, and perk versions of some attachments, like Extended Mags and Akimbo, which presumably would have applied their affects to any weapons the player picked up off of other players. There are also cut lines for being granted the Overkill perk through the Specialist Strike Package (which grants a player additional perks every two kills in lieu of normal killstreaks), despite that the way Overkill works (letting a player spawn with a second primary weapon in place of a secondary) means being granted it in the middle of a life rather than at spawn completely defeats its purpose.
• The game also had cut, early versions of some multiplayer maps, such as "Plaza" (reworked into Arkaden) and "Meteora" (later reworked into the DLC map Sanctuary). Spec Ops also had one cut mission that would have let the player(s) play through the defense of the Ferris wheel in Chernobyl from "One Shot, One Kill" in CoD4, echoing the Spec Ops map from MW2 that took the players backwards through "All Ghillied Up".

So that's it, and that's what defines MW3. Now go play it!