(Game provided by Activision)
By Sam Coles:
Call of Duty (at the time of writing) is a 20-year-old franchise that has had its highs and lows, but in recent years with a few exceptions has had a bit of an identity crisis. The reboot of the Modern Warfare series in 2019 was a good game, it had a grounded, dark and brutal campaign which showed the realities of modern combat as there are no good or bad guys but different shades of greys. Now we arrive at the third instalment of the reboot trilogy, and unfortunately it feels very unfocused. Is it four out of ten IGN? No, as that would suggest it is unplayable, which it is not, and I tend to not subscribe to such hyperbole as the game is functional if unremarkable. Let’s get into it!
Modern Warfare III takes place after the well.... Modern Warfare II, where Task Force 141 are on the hunt for a terrorist known as Vladimir Makarov and yes that Makarov from the original Modern Warfare trilogy. He escapes custody from a Gulag at the start of the game, which is a great opening to the game as it is a classic COD level, with brilliant pacing until you realise you are working as the enemy. After this, he is back to plotting to see the world burn, as he and his comrade's highjack a passenger jet to blow it up, to then pin the blame on an ex-freedom fighter from the fictional region of Urzikstan.
Now this plot sounds interesting with surprises, twists and turns, and yes it has its moments, but it is unfocused throughout and jumps all over the place with questionable cuts in certain scenes that leave me confused with the decision. The actor who plays Makarov is decent, but he is not given enough screentime to do anything with the character, not only that all the other characters from Task Force 141 don’t seem to be the same people from the previous games. They all for one sound like they have gone to their local garden centre, and swallowed a bag of gravel instead of spreading it on their driveway with how deep their deliveries are trying to be gritty (no pun intended).
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Now, easily the most contentious part of this campaign are the new open combat missions, which take an open-ended approach with the campaign in theory. How this work is that you can pick your insertion method and tackle any objective in any order, sounds great on paper right and yes, the first one was tense as you have no weapons and must secure your own firearms. However, this sacrifices the spectacle you expect from a Call of Duty campaign, and they feel very stale by the end of it and the A.I. is not great for the enemies as a lot of them lack pathfinding, they are either insanely accurate and will erase you immediately or have the accuracy and eyesight of my dad when doesn’t have his glasses on.
If it wasn’t for the tight and excellent gunplay you expect from the series, these missions would have felt extremely tedious, but the tedium remains as they throw in armoured enemies from MWII, which slows down the pace tremendously!
The good parts of the game are for one the gunplay, like the previous two MW games it is amazing with tight controls and really detailed animations from reloading to the way guns recoil. The game visually looks great for the most part, although it does look rather drab in places, especially in the open combat missions with some questionable textures in places. The game runs well, I played it on the Xbox Series S and the framerate stayed mostly consistent at 60 frames per second. The only real bug encountered was at the start of the game, when I exited the underground of the Gulag, and the game froze for a good 30 plus seconds for some reason.
Overall, the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is an unfocused story, with a questionable length just clocking in 3 hours with plot holes all over the place and just bizarre pacing and jumps in the story. It is unfortunate, even how poor the quality the other modes can be, we could always fall back on the campaign for a good time but unfortunately not with this one. All I can say is that it is certainly functional, and it exists.
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