 Endgame. The inevitable has happened. The Russians, infuriated by the supposed American attack on their civilian population, have invaded most of the modern world. Now it is up to a few brave men to end the war.
 To watch our video review, click the image above! 1. Gameplay
For those of you who don’t feel like reading a lengthy “overall fun” section, let me sum it up as simply as possible. If you have liked the previous two Modern Warfare games, you’ll like Modern Warfare 3. If you didn’t like them, you’ll hate this one. It’s as simple as that. Modern Warfare 3 offers essentially the exact same gameplay as the previous two games, but with some relatively minor tweaks.  A lot of this will feel familiar. Modern Warfare 3 takes place in a hypothetical World War 3 scenario where Russia takes on the US and every nation in Western Europe. Where does it get the manpower for such a huge task? I have no idea, and this isn’t really ever explained. Yet somehow Russia manages to throw millions of troops at the US, Britain, Spain, Germany, France, and most of Eastern Europe. This may seem like an absurd notion (and it is), but you’ll have to get over it and many other gaping plot holes in order to actually enjoy this game’s campaign.  And it is a lot of fun. The campaign plays like a Michael Bay action movie. No, there aren’t giant robots that disguise themselves as American vehicles, but there are tons of explosions and absurd action sequences. Really, the opening credits could have included “Produced by Michael Bay” and I would have believed it. There are lots of explosions, lots of guys doing absurd jumps, and lots of slow motion sequences.  Fire is usually a good indication of an imminent explosion. I actually loved this game. Again, getting over the lack of realism, it’s fun to be able to almost single-handedly save the world. The scenarios that the player is put in are well designed and story is, for the most part, well written. Levels are linear but usually don’t feel like it, and the missions have enough variety that they feel fresh. There are some negatives to the campaign. The whole “slow motion breach” sequence was done way too much. It was cool the first time it happened, but after the fourth time I was thinking “isn’t there something that could add a bit of variety to this?” The multiplayer is pretty much exactly the same as it was in Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2. Players will level up and unlock new weapons and other extras. More information about the overall feel of the community in the multiplayer is discussed in great detail in the “Online Community” section below, so I won’t get into that. The one thing that I really liked is that players can select different killstreak packages. The standard one, called “Assault”, has the player unlock killstreak rewards by killing opponents, but if the player dies the killstreak is reset. The “Support” package was, in my opinion, the best. Not only did it reward players for getting more than just kills (such as by shooting down enemy helicopters), but it also kept the killstreak going after death. It took a lot of killstreak points to get the best rewards (EMP requires 18 “kills”), but it was great for a player like me who prefers to complete objectives rather than just get kills.  In b4 "terrorists win". Other than that, there’s really nothing new to this game. If you don’t feel like trying this out for $50, rent it (or buy it used) and see how you like it. Most gamers either love it to death or loathe it with a passion.
The main campaign is very short. It took me about 6 hours on my first playthrough to complete the entire campaign. There is some replay value for achievements and a few collectibles, but overall once the campaign is completed there isn’t much incentive to replay it immediately. It’s enough fun to definitely warrant a second playthrough, but I’m not about to immediately start it back up again. Fortunately, there are other things included with the game that should give players more than enough value for their dollar. There are 20 different “Special Ops” missions. These are specific scenarios that the player can attempt alone or cooperatively with a friend. There is also a new horde-based survival mode that the player can attempt alone or cooperatively as well. It’s not particularly unique though. These modes can be a lot of fun if completed with the right friend and will definitely add at least a few hours of gameplay to the overall package. The real meat of this game comes in the multiplayer. Without doubt this game’s multiplayer can add on hundreds of hours of gameplay depending on how dedicated an individual is to moving forward. As a player works through the multiplayer game mode, they will increase in rank. The maximum rank is Level 80, but the player can also enter a “prestige” mode which unlocks some extras but resets the player’s level back to 1. I know at least a few players who are dedicated enough to reach the 10th level of prestige, but it would easily take a few hundred hours of gameplay for even the best players to do so.
2. Parental Notices
For the most part, the violence in this game is pretty standard for shooters. The player will use a variety of weapons to kill enemies. Hits from non-explosive weapons will result in a splatter of blood coming from the target and that blood can land on any nearby surface.  Take the stairs. Explosions will cause enemies to fly a short distance in a given direction but will not result in any gore. Enemies do not ever lose limbs. There are some specific examples where the violence level increases, but these are relatively remote. For example, once in the game the player has to sneak up on an enemy sniper and, using a knife, stab the enemy in the neck. The idea is for the player to remain undetected by the enemy, but the resulting shower of blood should have tipped someone off somewhere.  I have it on good authority that this almost never happens. Late in the game, the player has to hijack a helicopter by killing the pilots. The player stabs one of the pilots in the throat. Lots of blood gushes.  Dude that's the pilot! Now who's going to fly this bird? The player eventually has to kill the main antagonist. This is done by wrapping a wire cable around the antagonist’s throat and breaking the glass that the two are fighting on, hanging the antagonist.  Hang 'em high. The player will run into “dogs” in certain levels and scenarios. I put that in quotes because sometimes the dogs are actually hyenas. Evidently Somalians have trained hyenas to be like attack dogs. If the player is jumped by one of these dogs, he will have a very brief window to snap the dog’s neck.  Dog or puppet? There are other examples with similar levels of blood and violence, but they are all either at the same level as the above examples or, in many cases, less violent.
 I think I want a second opinion. Alcohol can be seen in numerous missions throughout the game. No one is ever seen drinking, however, so at most it is a destructible part of the environment.  Shots. Shots. Shots. Captain Price, a recurring character in the Call of Duty series, occasionally smokes a cigar. He lights one up after a couple of missions in Modern Warfare 3. In the final mission of the game, the player plays as Price. At the end of this mission, the player will light and smoke a cigar in first person.  Where's the Surgeon General's warning?
3. Other Factors
 Better pray that they don't have a tank. Or missiles. However, given how many churches and basilicas are in Europe, this shouldn’t be that out of place. Specific references to religion are never made.  That's as specific as it gets.
Anyone familiar with the Call of Duty series should be relatively familiar with the online community for the game. However, things seem to changed slightly from the previous games. Previously, the game had a small but noticeable group of highly-skilled gamers and an extremely large group of unskilled gamers. This would often result in seriously one-sided matches, especially if the skilled players were in a group together.  A good team sticks together. Modern Warfare 3 seems to have shifted a bit. There are now three tiers of skill level. Those who are highly skilled are now almost always in some sort of clan (groups of gamers who choose to play together), which means that these individuals are much more likely to be found in groups. The mid-tier level is occupied by players who are skilled enough to be in clans but choose not to join a clan or members of a clan that are not as serious as their more dedicated counterparts. The third tier is composed of a much smaller group of unskilled players who regularly get massacred in a given match. This can result in an extremely frustrating experience for anyone who is not a member of a clan and does not have hours to dedicate to training. It almost defeats the point in joining a game if you’re going to get killed by vastly superior players every few seconds. While I consider myself in the second tier of gamers, I frequently find myself completely outmatched by clanners. It ruins the fun of the game even if my team somehow manages to win. What’s worse, the most skilled of clanners know how to exploit the mechanics of the game to give themselves more kills and thus more experience points. They will purposefully throw certain matches just so that the game can go into overtime so that they can get more kills and further massacre opponents. The PC version of this game also has a serious problem with hackers. This is mostly only a problem on Steam’s “Free to Play” weekends where gamers can create false accounts and use whatever hacks and cheats they desire, but hackers do occasionally pop up at other times as well. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the most skilled players sometimes seem like they are hacking when they are actually just really, really good.  Getting shot in the head after spawning through a wall is usually a good indication that someone is hacking. While I definitely like playing Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer, it’s the kind of thing that I would be unable to play for more than a few matches per day. The work / reward ratio is simply too small even for me. I can usually get in the top 5 on every match, but even in these matches I may be completely outclassed. It’s not much fun to get constantly killed time after time. If you or your child would not consider yourselves “hardcore” gamers (meaning you don’t play at least 2 hours per day), you may want to avoid the multiplayer section of this game. It’s worth testing the waters for a couple of matches, but if you find you’re not having fun move onto a different game mode or a different game. Cyber Bullying Cyber bullying has been around for quite some time. Anyone who has played multiplayer shooters like Counter-Strike can tell you that there are some gamers who love to “troll”, or just act like morons in an attempt to make people angry. Modern Warfare 3 is no exception. While the PC version is relatively quiet (hardly anyone uses microphones), the Xbox 360 version is rife with bullies and trolls looking to get a rise out of people. Sometimes the conversations can be absolutely hilarious (i.e. one kid started calling another one “you little booger”), but frequently there are players who just can’t accept defeat without finding someone to blame (other than themselves, of course).  Sometimes, kid, you just get outflanked. The resulting scenario can take one of two forms. Either the player says that the entire rest of his team sucked (even though this player usually did little to contribute to the strength of the team) or the player(s) will jump on a particular individual. Usually the individual is the one with the lowest kill / death ratio on the team. It’s not really a fair assessment (sometimes people just have bad matches), but either way it results in a negative environment that doesn’t make anyone feel good. Another common scenario is when one player feels like another player on the opposite team is too good and gets angry at that player. They usually start out by accusing the player of cheating (even though the allegation is hardly ever true) and then it just degrades into a series of profanity and slurs. Policing in the game is difficult, so usually these crimes go unreported or unpunished. These examples are actually somewhat rare, but the few times when they do occur seriously negatively impact the fun of the game. If your child is especially susceptible to bullying, I highly recommend encouraging your kid to play the cooperative game modes with close friends. They are much more fun and much more rewarding.
 I love the A-10! There are plenty of other similar acts with varying levels of danger and difficulty. Parachuting in the middle of a rainstorm is one of the less extreme tasks the player will have to accomplish.  Something about this seems like it wouldn't work. Did I forget to mention that the player has to use the parachute because Captain Price decided to drive a jeep off the side of a cliff?  If the game hadn't told me that I had a reserve chute, I would have fallen to my death. I seriously didn't know. In one section, the player will be required to jump off of the top of a building and catch a rope in order to make a controlled descent onto the ground below.  That's what I'd do too.
Since it has been a few years since the first Modern Warfare game came out, the game does recap the events of the previous two games. It specifically shows the nuclear explosion from the first Modern Warfare game, although it is only a brief out-of-context glimpse.  Unsurprisingly, you want to kill that guy. The more prominent example of WMDs occurs in the middle of the game. The terrorists detonate chemical weapons in a number of major cities across Europe including London and Paris. These result in the deaths of thousands of civilians, police officers, and military personnel. More detail is given in the “Civilian Deaths” section below.  This makes me seriously consider getting a gas mask for my home. Execution In one of the missions the player will be required to stealthily infiltrate controlled enemy territory in Prague in order to try and assassinate the enemy leader. During the infiltration, the player will watch as the Russian military executes civilians. There is nothing the player can do to stop these executions.  Flash of lightning, one gunshot, and a dead civilian: A recipe for a classic mystery novel. In another mission, the player will be on a stealth mission in Somalia. The player will have the opportunity to prevent militants from immolating a civilian. In one multiplayer level, a gallows with people who have been hanged can be seen. It’s in an odd place on the map and is easily missed. It was quite a while before I noticed it.  Huh, that's a bit random. Civilian Deaths Before I go on, I must specifically mention that the game does allow the player to skip this section. When Modern Warfare 3 is first loaded, the player has the opportunity to skip unspecified “offensive content” that is included in the campaign. The player must say (twice) that they wish to see the content and that they will not be offended. If the player chooses to not see the content, this cinematic will be skipped and nothing will be lost to the overall story.  No, I'm sure that I'm positive that I agree that I definitely, positively will never be offended. That being said, upon the conclusion of the mission in London to stop the terrorists from delivering unknown materials, the game will cut out and switch to something called the “Davis Family Vacation”. The player plays through the eyes of a father on vacation with his wife and young daughter. The player walks the father forward while videotaping his daughter playing on a street in London. The player watches as one of the trucks that the terrorists were driving parks on a nearby street corner and the driver gets out and runs away. Then the truck explodes, immediately killing the daughter, wife, and presumably the player. Colored gas is seen emanating from the smoke.  Landshark! The cutscene is a way to show the player exactly what happened and make the situation seem more real and more grave, but to me it made no sense and could have been done in a much better way. Immediately before the cutscene, the player (playing as a member of the British military), manages to stop a different truck. It would have made more sense to me for that truck to explode and have the chemical weapons be released. The Davis Family Vacation cutscene seemed like an unnecessary attempt at shock factor and overall in bad taste. The player already knows that the terrorists are evil and that the detonation of chemical weapons would have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands (if not millions) of civilian lives. There was no real justification for this particular scene. Kidnapping Part of the plotline is that the main antagonist kidnaps the Russian President and the President’s daughter. Eventually the player has to rescue both from the kidnappers.  Heroes.
2 Comments
ferguson
5/24/2019 09:28:22 am
My Parents only care about Language. How much is there?
Dylan
5/27/2021 01:16:39 pm
Hello is there alot of laungage in this game because thats a big part of my parents. Leave a Reply. |
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