Game publisher Activision releases a game that is virtually the same year after year, and just like every other year, it has sparked controversy in its player base. The 6v6 first-person shooter Call of Duty utilizes its arcade-like entertainment to keep gamers coming back for more. Each time a new Call of Duty is released, they experiment with new concepts to drag players in. Despite the continuous similarities in terms of gameplay they are able to make great revenue every time.
Their latest installation, released on November 10, 2023, Modern Warfare 3 (2023), brings back a multitude of map recreations. Maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 (2009), such as “Highrise”, “Terminal”, and “Quarry”, have been remastered and included in Modern Warfare 3 (2023). Their goal was to bring back their early audience using nostalgia, and this idea is even more reinforced with the comeback of the “zombies” series.
“Zombies” has always been a round-based game mode where players would fight off waves of zombies and progress in a medium-sized area. However, to many fans’ disapproval, Call of Duty first started introducing the open-world genre to Zombies with Black Ops Cold War in 2021 and fully implemented it with MW3. Open-world games take place on a vast open landscape and give players the freedom to do what they want in whatever order. There is a large majority of players who find this type of setting to their liking, but even they dislike the idea of applying it to Zombies. The community’s attachment to the original concept directly clashes with this new integration.
MW3 is largely made up of reused game assets, and Activision has received intense criticism over it, with some players describing it as lazy. The Zombies mode strongly resembles Modern Warfare 2 (2022)’s “DMZ” mode, and the entire game includes essentially everything from MW2 while adding extra content, so much so that MW3 is often labeled as a “DLC” ( or additional content) for MW2. The nature of being additional material arguably should not be a bad thing; however, its price tag of $70 may shut down that opinion.
In spite of it all, there seems to be one section of the game that the players have relatively the same opinion on: the campaign. Spanning from the most credible public figures to the most obscure Redditors, they have all agreed that the campaign was quite possibly the most underwhelming experience they’ve ever had. Despite requiring the shortest amount of time to complete out of its predecessors, it contained just as much action. Thus, the effort spent matching up to those numbers naturally led to the neglecting of its ending. The entire story was built in a way to set up for the next game and sacrificed its narrative through its unsatisfying ending which left many plotlines unsolved.
Players will form new views on MW3 as Activision provides support for their new live service, and the game will serve as yet another subject for reviewers to compare.
