Reviews: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Video Review

Looking forward to some Spec Ops again, and maybe a run through of the campaign.
 
But for some reason, Halo Anniversary is going to be my multiplayer game of choice this year.  Although I really wish I could just buy Battlefield for half price for the online alone.  Looks fucking great.

@avidwriter said:

@CanItRunBF3 said:

I predict that Activision does the same thing next year too, except the increase the gore to keep people happy. More blood,Bullet holes in head/Rocket gib stuff. Maybe partial decaps. Honestly speaking I am shallow enough to at least check out such a COD game were it to happen, and this is coming from someone who owned all previous COD games, but has passed on MW3 in favor BF3. I would like a modern-day-setting FPS featuring no aliens/mutants with Gears level gore. Call me maladjusted, but I wish BF3 would let me partially decap a human head and have half their brain fall out with skull fragments. Given how amazingly detailed BF3s graphics are on PC, if they went this far I might not need a single other game for the lifetime of EA's support for online.

Go back and play the soldier of fortune games?

There was the (by all accounts horrible) Soldier of Fortune: Payback a couple of years ago, which is pretty much a Call of Duty 4 knock-off with gore. Lots of it.

I didn't know Michael bay worked on MW3?!,anyways great review.

@Branthog said:

@RsistncE said:

@Branthog said:

@RsistncE said:

I'm surprised he gave it a 4, he definitely seems to be way more critical of the game evidenced by the heavy amounts of sarcasm he uses. Game looks meh, played this 2 years ago.

It seemed pretty obvious to me a few weeks ago that MW3 would get whatever score BF3 would get. Could you imagine the outrage if either one scored higher than the other?

That's would be horseshit journalism/reviewing and I like to think that that sort of thing doesn't happen at Giantbomb.

Not when it's so easy to justify a 4/5 in both instances. If a 5/5 had been considered for either game (and that would be hard to justify in both cases, also) there would have certainly been a long pause for consideration about the unholy rage that would surely unleash among the "but I only play one of these games and you slagged the one I like!" people. And, as someone who plays both, I suspect a solid 4/5 is pretty accurate in each case, anyway.

I disagree about both of this deserving a 4/5. At the end of the day the vast majority of people buy Call of Duty and BF for the multiplayer. CoD's multiplayer has become incredible stale. It's very one dimensional and boring. BF3's multiplayer on the other hand is nothing short of spectacular. Based on just the multiplayer portions, BF3 stands tall over MW3's multiplayer. However, this doesn't mean I'd grant BF3 a 5, and that's a limitation of the 5 star system I guess. I think MW3 scores closer to 3 stars and BF3 closer to 5, at least in my opinion.

@sear: A lot of people, including myself, have a lot of fun playing the call of duty games. Just because a bunch of people don't like the game, or think it's stupid, or think the engine is outdated, or think the multiplayer is too twitch, or think it hasn't been updated enough, or yadayadayada, doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people that genuinely enjoy the game. What it comes down to at the end of the day, is that it's a video game that people have fun playing. They buy it, because they like it. It's that simple. They aren't mindless sheep feeding the cogs of the Activision machine, they're people that like the COD games. I rented Black Ops cause I didn't think I would want it, but after playing it for several hours, I went out and bought it, because I liked it, not because I'm a mindless idiot that doesn't know what a good video game is. I'm going to rent MW3, and if I like it, I will probably go buy it. So my answer to your question is that people buy the game because they have fun playing it.

Perfect ending

Love that explosion montage!

Called it. Both BF3 and MW3 getting 4 stars. Good, solid shooters that aren't pushing anything forward. Great. I'll pass.

yes... more bro'ness... cant wait... better pick up your natty ice 12 pack on your way back to the dorm boys...

@sear: I love Crackdown 2. It has almost no improvements (other than the ability to fly). It's also exactly what I wanted. More Crackdown. This is the CoD mindset for the people that love the series, so I can relate. Reviewers slammed Crackdown 2, but it's my opinion that a game doesn't have to improve upon something to still be a ton of fun.

very interesting review! Great!

Love these video reviews.

Could do without the air quotes but otherwise pretty comprehensive review. Can't see myself buying this though, I got bored watching the gameplay footage and wager matches are the only reason I ever play black ops ATM

I don't think "if you just stop thinking" is a fair thing to say in a review. CoD has basically become an old horse that everyone is too attached to to look at in a fair light. If anyone else made this game under a different name, it would get demolished.

Juggernauts?

Aaaaarghhh!!!

Dog Tags!!!

Too bad the explosions looks absolutely horrid then.

@D_train_lives: I'm a pc gamer who doesn't play COD.

Why do people hate xbox bros? I don't see anything wrong with picking up a case of beer and playing a first person shooter on any platform.

haters gonna hate.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this but it just feels a little ridiculous when we get to the point of "just stop thinking" to enjoy something. Especially what boils down to basically the same game for the past 4 releases. It's too bad these games make as much money as they do because they really need to change some stuff up if they are going to get me back into them.

No 5 Stars! 
 
How dare you not give a recycled uninspiring game that we've bought years ago a perfect score!

I don't care about Call of Duty games at all but that's a pretty fantastic t-shirt you have there, Jeff. :D

police sketch jeff will never die!

With its great writing and editing, I give this review five stars.

I hate all of the maps. They are too small,badly designed and unimaginative. I know there are more maps but I feel like they drop the quality on each one. There is no good maps like Highrise or Airport which very fairly memorable from MW2.

Fantastic review Jeff. Great to see video reviews again. You guys do them better then any other.

i thoroughly enjoyed jeff's shirt in this review. he should wear it more often.

You know, if they want to save money and offload their videos to YouTube, and even if they want to still give members HD videos to make memberships valuable, how come I've still got Low and High options in their own player? You'd think they wouldn't upload those with new videos, right? Wouldn't they want to save money and only host the HD version?

Great review. I remember first getting into CoD 4, and how it knockedmy socks off. The sound effects, the style, the military jargon, everything was so cool! The controls where kind of perfect, everything felt so right. MW2 was not the juggernaut CoD 4 was, but it did expand things, for me Spec Ops alone warranted its existence. Now I look at this, and it's still pretty much the same, but several years later, without the wow factor, with lots of competitors who did catch up and improved the genre. And also there's the whole Activision/IW drama. Of course it's a competent game, can't get much more triple A than that, but also can't help but think this cow is running out of milk.

@ShinjiEx said:

No 5 Stars! How dare you not give a recycled uninspiring game that we've bought years ago a perfect score!

My thoughts exactly! :)

So many 'splosions!

The montages were awesome!

But I still have no interest in MW3, Call of Duty has just gotten incredibly stale and boring. I actually liked MW2 though...I wonder how many other people have gotten tired of this series now and whether this year is the one where CoD starts to drop off due to fatigue.

That was a fantastic review!

SO MANY EXPLOSIONS!

When "modern starts to feel old," you play Ghost Recon!

A Jeff review is a welcomed review. I love his humor in them.

I was laughing quite a bit during the explosion montage. Stuff like that is why I love Whiskey Media so much.

Regarding the review, great review! I was planning on going MW3 for single player and BF3 for multiplayer since I love me some Battlefield and got CoD fatigue for multiplayer after MW2. I think I'll pass entirely on MW3 now. Loving the Battlefield 3 multiplayer so far even thought the single player is pretty lame.

DAT ENDING

Shit got real.

I love this site.

Great review Jeff and Drew. The explosion montage clicked with me half way through, and I was busting up the second half. Glad I've been following you all since the Gamespot days, maybe I should finally pay you for a membership :)

The editing and writing in this video is sublime. Reminds me of when the site first launched.

@sear said:

@randomfella21 said:

@sear: A lot of people, including myself, have a lot of fun playing the call of duty games. Just because a bunch of people don't like the game, or think it's stupid, or think the engine is outdated, or think the multiplayer is too twitch, or think it hasn't been updated enough, or yadayadayada, doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people that genuinely enjoy the game. What it comes down to at the end of the day, is that it's a video game that people have fun playing. They buy it, because they like it. It's that simple. They aren't mindless sheep feeding the cogs of the Activision machine, they're people that like the COD games. I rented Black Ops cause I didn't think I would want it, but after playing it for several hours, I went out and bought it, because I liked it, not because I'm a mindless idiot that doesn't know what a good video game is. I'm going to rent MW3, and if I like it, I will probably go buy it. So my answer to your question is that people buy the game because they have fun playing it.

And? I never accused people who buy the game of being "sheep" or being stupid, or of not enjoying it. My point is that I've already played this game: it's called Modern Warfare 2. Aside from some modest improvements in the visuals and tweaks to the multiplayer, plus some new maps, this is pretty much an identical game. Modern Warfare 2 was fun, just as Call of Duty 4 was fun, just as Call of Duty 2 was fun. I'm not questioning the quality of the product on offer. However, that even many long-time fans of the series are regretting their purchase due to effectively being the same old game, shows to me that there's even less here for a tired old fan to like. Sequels should bring drastic changes and improvements, not a mild bump in graphics and a new game mode or two. Buy the game if you like, and have fun, but you certainly aren't encouraging any forward progression or innovation in the games industry by doing so.

Ok well that's where our approach differs. My underlying goal in every video game purchase I make is to have fun playing the game. I'm not trying to make a statement. Also I would agree with you that this game in its essence is pretty much MW2.5 (or even 2.1), but that doesn't change the fact that year after year somehow they're able to make a game that I have an incredible amount of fun playing for a couple months. So for me, it just makes sense to buy it. But I totally get why people are getting fatigued with the franchise, or even the genre. I can't tell you how tired I am of modern military shooters, the games that try to ape the feel and pace of a COD game (I'm looking at you every other military shooter on the market). There's just something about COD that keeps me coming back.

Fuckin' sweet shirt.

This is probably one of my favorite video reviews. Good job Drew, and good job Jeff! Love it.

Wow, awesome and insightful review! Thanks Jeff

also, this

@BFZ said:

Fantastic review Jeff. Great to see video reviews again. You guys do them better then any other.

seriously best video editing ive ever seen in my entire life

I knew Jeff's review of this was going to be totally worth watching! LMAO

Excellent review. I still haven't played any of the Modern Warfare COD games apart from half of Call of Duty 4, but everything I see indicates that the game hasn't really changed a whole lot. Nothing wrong with that, but I still don't feel much compulsion to play.

Based on the explosion and the multi-player kill montages in the review, I think we can safely say "Modern Warfare 3 in 5 Seconds" has been done.

Sorry, Jeff, walking is so 2010.