This is our multiplayer review for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Check out the single-player review for our thoughts on the campaign or the Zombies review for our thoughts on PvE.
I love pasta. I love classic pasta with red sauce and I also very much enjoy white sauce or buttered noodles – I’m really not picky. However, when I order a supposedly new and exciting dish on a fancy plate covered in garnishes, only to find I’ve actually just been served last week’s reheated leftovers, I’m less than impressed.
In that same vein, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer modes are fun comfort food gaming and I am enjoying the mayhem with the return of some classic maps like Highrise, Rust, and Afghan. But I cannot get over the feeling that it’s more of a map pack for Modern Warfare 2 than its own spin on the series’ ideas, and that’s a letdown compared to what Call of Duty has spent years training us to expect from a full sequel. Sure, there are some quality of life changes in gameplay mechanics in Modern Warfare 3, but they come along with some questionable progression tweaks that certainly don’t make it better, and I’m not feeling like the time I’ve invested has been rewarded as much as I’d expected.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room: Yes, it was reported that Sledgehammer only had a year and a half to develop Modern Warfare 3, half the usual time of a new Call of Duty. Other reports revealed that Modern Warfare 3 was originally planned as an expansion to Modern Warfare 2, with current and former employees on the team believing it would be an expansion until development was pretty far along.
That explains a lot, including how when you first load it up, you’re greeted with an in-game pop up screen telling you that Modern Warfare 3 is now available to purchase – even though you just did that. That ad makes sense for anybody who started it up wanting to play Warzone, DMZ, or Modern Warfare 2, but how does it not know that I already own Modern Warfare 3? I have had so many issues with this launcher and I don’t know why Activision insists on it – but that’s a rant for another time.
If we do look at Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer as a map pack, it’s actually not bad. Rust is definitely my favorite – it’s an extremely chaotic map due to its wildly fast-paced flow. Every corner you turn will have an enemy waiting for you, so it’s a great map to sprint around in and level weapons. Afghan and Highrise have great close-quarters fights too, but I like them more for their sniping opportunities, where I feel encouraged to find really sneaky angles and pick enemies off from across the map. The flipside of that is that, out of the maps currently in rotation, I absolutely despise Quarry. It feels plucked straight off Warzone’s Point of Interest and plopped into Modern Warfare 3 with no changes. The lanes feel much longer and wider, which does not help the feeling of the map being way too big for 6v6 matches. Fights are often sequestered to three buildings (one small tower in the middle and two on either side of it) and it feels more like you run and get shot from across the map more often than actually get to the fights, unless you happen to spawn right next to one of the points.
Aside from those gripes, the general feel on the 16 total maps is fine.
These Boots Were Made For Slide-Canceling
So we can safely say that I’m okay with the launch content, but I do have some more positive things to say about the updates to how we run around these maps. It took Call of Duty some time to find its flow with sliding and sprinting to keep up with the standards of its contemporaries after Fortnite and Apex Legends took the spotlight, but Modern Warfare 3 definitely feels like we’ve hit our stride with how multiplayer should move going forward.
Slide canceling is back (after we first got a taste of it in Modern Warfare 2’s beta but were robbed of it when it launched). This is a maneuver that you can pull by combining Tactical Sprint, sliding, hitting the slide button again to stop, and then hit jump to cancel the slide end animation that would normally slow you down. Once you master it you can maintain more momentum and keep sprinting after slide canceling without losing speed, and that allows you to do things like throw your enemy off track when moving towards them and ducking out of headshot height.
I quickly decided to learn the technique for myself after I would see an enemy run towards me, speedily slide sideways and then pop back up almost instantly, throwing my aim off from doing strictly headshot damage. It also grants you an opportunity for surprise when an enemy is mounted to a wall or horizontal surface, leaving them at a disadvantage when you slide and get back up to shred them while they try to leave their position.
Since everyone has access to this tech no matter what their loadout, it can create incredibly fast 1v1 firefights when running around a map. I love feeling like I’m constantly on my toes while slide canceling around corners to make sure I can keep my head down and sprint through to get away safely through areas.
I also like that in the days after launch, Sledgehammer was quick to adjust the time to reactivate Tactical Sprint after slide canceling, making the movement tech even better by increasing the sprint recovery speed. That kind of fast reaction gives me hope for the future of Modern Warfare 3.
Mantling is also faster this time around, so you’re not at a disadvantage when you choose to try to hop over a wall and become a hanging duck. The ready time after mantling is slightly faster, so I’m able to actually react quickly to an enemy approaching me after I finish a mantle. Of course, there is still a delay, and if you’re caught by an enemy while you’re still mantling you’re just dead, but overall movement speed just feels more coherent.
Another welcome tweak I’ve noticed is that the weapon recoils aren’t as visually harsh as they are in Modern Warfare 2. The sight not shaking around as much and having less muzzle flash when firing subtly helps me play a little better since I’m no longer feeling blinded when trying to take down enemies.
Keep Calm and Carry Forward
Finally, perhaps the biggest silver lining to so little having changed between Modern Warfare 2 and 3 is that it was very nice to start it up for the first time and see my previous weapons already accessible in Modern Warfare 3 off the bat, and not be back to square one in creating my own classes. On that note, I was so happy to see my Operators and skins in my multiplayer locker!
One of my bigger criticisms of Call of Duty’s model of putting out a whole new game every year was that money I’d spent previously would just be lost to the wind and never seen again (unless I go back to play the old games). It’s a nice inclusion that I feel like should’ve been implemented quite a few games ago, at least within the Call of Duty sub-series (eg Modern Warfare weapons transferring to another Modern Warfare game, and Black Ops weapons moving to the next Black Ops sequel), but I’m happy it’s a part of Modern Warfare 3 and hope it continues like this in the future.
However, It’s kind of a bummer that the arsenal from Modern Warfare 2 is not comparable to the new shiny Modern Warfare 3 weapons. Yes, you can use some of your old favorites in the new matches, but should you? Most times, no. The default classes available in Modern Warfare 3 are incredibly strong relative to last year’s DPS numbers. Even with mods added, older weapons just don’t hold up – with the exception of my beloved Signal 50 sniper rifle, which still packs an incredible punch.
I do understand that the whole appeal of a new multiplayer game is to feed us a new lineup of weapons that can survive in this new iteration and must be leveled up to give us that sense of progression. Modern Warfare 2 weapons carrying over is just a nice plus, but doesn’t give you a ton of benefits most of the time.
Get to the Grind, Soldier
While I’m incredibly grateful we have default classes that can really kick some serious ass, I was shocked to see that some of the default weapons you might like can’t be unlocked in traditional ways, and the new way is not better. Instead, some require an awkward new system called Armory Unlock Challenge that opens up when you hit level 25. For example, to get the Assault Rifle DG-58, you have to complete one set of three very boring Daily Challenges. Most of them are to get specific types of weapon or lethal equipment kills, headshot kills, or eliminate enemies in specific ways (ADS weapon kills). For the most part I was going to do that anyway, so fine, right? It’s like unlocking achievements and trophies.
You can’t just do the challenges, though – that would make too much sense. Before they can be tracked, first you have to click on the weapon and activate the Armory Unlock, then proceed with finishing the Daily Challenges. You can queue up to three total in your queue, but you can’t have various Armory Unlocks activated at the same time and kill two birds with one headshot. Only one can be active and tracked.
So, say that the Armory Unlock Challenges you have queued all say to just “Complete Three Daily Challenges.” You can go and complete the three for that day, but those will not count toward all three Armory Unlocks you have in your queue, only the Unlock that was selected as active. The other two are just on reserve for when you do finish that challenge. So, best case, it feels like digging yourself out from a hole nine challenges deep; worst case, if you don’t notice you don’t have one active – which I did not for the first three levels after the system came into play – you aren’t progressing them at all.
While I like the idea of being able to choose what item I want to unlock so I can get it sooner than waiting 20 levels to unlock a specific weapon, this system is annoyingly unintuitive, and Modern Warfare 3 drags it out too much. The problem lies in the fact that you’re effectively only allowed about two consistent unlocks per day (one if you only count the challenges in Multiplayer and not combined with the ones you can do in Zombies), and with the many, many items you can unlock, the process of unlocking attachments for your weapon to see if you like how they feel is an incredible slog. Armory Unlock Challenges apply to Gear, Tactical and Lethal Equipment, Field Upgrades, Gloves, Boots, and a decent chunk of good attachments to top it all off. That wouldn’t be so bad if you could preview a weapon mod for your gun if it’s locked behind the Armory Unlock, but of course you can’t.
Also, you can’t actually do them in any order you want because the Daily Challenges are sometimes impossible if one requires a killstreak or piece of equipment you do not have access to yet. Say you get a Challenge that requires you to get a Cluster Mine kill or Bomb Drone kill. No one actually has access to Cluster Mines or Bomb Drones at level 25, so it’s even worse because you have to unlock those items first before being able to complete those Daily Challenges that specific day. And it’s actually worse than that once you realize that when you complete three Daily Challenges you actually unlock a fourth Challenge – so getting an impossible Challenge in your daily three locks you out of both the impossible one and the one you can’t access. This system could be something good for Call of Duty, but at the way that it’s presented now, it’s more of a nuisance and an incredible source of frustration than anything else.
To Sledgehammer’s credit, that fourth Challenge is generally an easy one: get a win. And you can repeat it as many times as you want! That can speed up progression. Unfortunately in the main modes, it’s not really up to you if your team wins or not. As with any Call of Duty, the random players you get matched with most often don’t play the objective, so I found better luck playing the other available modes, which are all the same ones we saw in Modern Warfare 2 with little or no changes other than maps: Domination, Team Deathmatch, or even Free-For-All (where placing in the top three counts as a win).
Even though Domination is an objective-based mode, the spawns being so close to each flag point your team actually does have captured does make a difference in people at least trying to play the proper objective, so if you get sick of playing Team Deathmatch, Domination is not a bad mode to try and get that Win Challenge in.
The counterpoint here is that you can go into Zombies mode and complete the Daily Challenges there, and also complete the Armory Unlock Challenges. Plus, Zombies allows you to search the map for a gun you want and exfil with it to permanently add it to your roster. However, Zombies is effectively a different game (which is why we’re reviewing it separately) and maybe I don’t want to play Zombies? To my mind, this system and its progression should be sustainable within the mode it is predominantly meant to be used in. Also, in Zombies, you cannot exfil with Perks, Field Upgrades, or most mod attachments on guns. It’s very frustrating.
So yes, that is a very long list of complaints, so let’s circle back and make it clear that for the most part, the fundamentals that worked so well in Modern Warfare 2 continue to work well here. Modern Warfare 3 is smooth, gunplay is good, the time to kill (TTK) is just as fast as Modern Warfare 2 (which is nice because there’s no learning period), and movement is sharp. If you skipped Modern Warfare 2 but want to jump in now, I’d say that’s a great move for you. It’s a fun game that I will be playing with my friends… but if someone already owns Modern Warfare 2 I would not recommend this game to them.
It was not an easy conclusion to arrive at, but when I sat down and played Modern Warfare 3 I couldn’t bring myself to say otherwise. It’s a sequel that doesn’t reach the bar Modern Warfare 2 set, and there just isn’t enough content or novel ideas in play to justify a whole new Call of Duty. Not with the way it is at launch, at least. There could be changes that bring more quality of life adjustments – making the progression system less of a slog, for instance – but even then it’s just not a very substantial iteration, and having played heavily over the weekend and really diving into the differences in Modern Warfare 3, I’m just not impressed.