Less than two weeks ago, we brought you impressions of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III campaign, which were not very positive. It turned out that the developers from Sledgehammer Games reached for changes, which, however, at first glance did not seem like an evolution of the established style, but a denial of what the campaign in Call of Duty traditionally is. Open missions with simple tasks, with the apparent possibility of deciding in which order you will complete them, felt like a fragment of the DMZ mode from Warzone and simply did not fit into the overall composition. Also, the length of the campaign and its end, which is not really an end, supported the feeling that the title was created more like an expansion or an afterword to Modern Warfare II and that there will be others who will retell this miniseries within Call of Duty for the second time. Unfortunately, the other parts of the game, even more important than the short campaign in the overall view, do not seem convincing in our opinion compared to several previous parts, and although we perceive all the behind-the-scenes information about the rushed development with a certain reserve, it cannot be seen in the final form of the product.
Hot needle
As for the evaluation of the campaign, it doesn’t make much sense to go back to it comprehensively. Everything important has already been said, and at this point I can only state that if I were to give the campaign a grade, it would have to be below average. I rely not only on how the story parts of the previous two Modern Warfare parts were handled, but I also return to the work with the subtitle Vanguard, which was set in World War II and is the responsibility of the developers from Sledgehammer. Although we did not evaluate Vanguard – and we are really only talking about the campaign – in any way optimistically, it seems more complex and unique than the campaign in Modern Warfare III. It is not necessary to slip into the repetitive opinions of the players, which often comes in a rather steep plane without trying to perceive the context in which the developers could have been placed against their will, but the dilution of prepared, scripted missions, which are admittedly exaggerated and always exuded heroism and meaning for pompous moments, it’s simply not what I want from a Call of Duty single player.
If the open missions were at least imaginative in what tasks they presented to the players or if the developers prepared new environments for them, I would certainly have a more lenient view, but a variation on multiplayer, even if only within the rules of PvE at this point, is not an innovation that i would call Unfortunately, this also applies to the story, which sounds empty, because the matter around Task Force 141 and Makarov basically does not go anywhere, so even if the developers in their official statements brag that they put love and passion into the game for several years, I will not believe them because, except for one or two moments, the campaign does not fulfill what a significant part of players still buy the game for.
All to all
However, as already indicated in the introduction, impressions from the campaign cannot be considered a review, because Call of Duty traditionally consists of several modes, and even if you are not a fan of multiplayer, it is the main magnet for players who want to spend a year with the game release of another. I respect this, I may have had a different attitude to it before, but the last few episodes have become a place of multiplayer fun for me, as expected, arcadey, brisk and often very chaotic. But you can always count on the installments to maintain a consistent approach to gunplay, which also applies to Modern Warfare III, and the combination of several other influences – such as playing with friends – makes multiplayer fun. So I definitely don’t want to give the impression that you won’t find a good experience in Modern Warfare III, on the contrary, shooting still works, the game is accessible on a controller as well as on a mouse with a keyboard, everything loads quickly, matches don’t take too long and spend hours leveling up your character or unlocking weapons and their modifications is where I want him as a fan of this series.
Modern Warfare III shows that it is taking the path of recycling, which mainly applies to the maps restored from the original Modern Warfare II, but also partly to the game modes.
But everything else is problematic, and I certainly cannot avoid the fact that I will constantly come across the words spoken above about the obvious rush and sewing the whole project with a hot needle, whatever the reasons. If we take good gameplay as a standard, the quality of individual parts is usually decided by the offer of game modes and maps. Here, however, Modern Warfare III makes it clear that it is taking the path of recycling, this applies especially to the maps restored from the original Modern Warfare II, but also partly to the game modes. Although you have all the essentials, from Deathmatch, to Control, to Hardpoint, you expect some changes and something to remember this installment. The developers tried to do this, but the result is not greasy and mainly glaringly draws attention to the fact that nothing new was invented, but a way was sought to assemble the already created and functional units into other game modes in a different way. That’s roughly how Cutthroat was born – on paper, tactical duels of three groups of players, but in reality it turns into a deathmatch of three teams. It doesn’t really matter that you can pick up a knocked out teammate, as the firefights are just as fast as in other modes. The size of the maps on which the mode takes place is also counterproductive, as the size does not support tactics, but rather slows down the entire action. And as a result, you don’t have any sense of uniqueness or something new at all.
In this spirit, we could also talk about the Invasions mode, which for a change is a light version of the Ground War mode, only you don’t have such a big map, you can’t use as much military equipment and mainly only 40 players and a few soldiers controlled by artificial intelligence are against each other. However, neither the helicopters that drop crates of killstreaks onto the battlefield, nor the fact that the AI soldiers are replenished during the battle, change the usual gameplay of eliminating the enemy as quickly as possible. In short, you experience Ground War in a reduced form without the need to fight for clues, which is at least a clearly defined task that even random teammates are able to stick to and fulfill. And then there’s War Mode, again quite an interesting affair on paper, where you and your team have to tackle several tasks that the enemy tries to prevent you from completing, with the roles changing in the second round. Specifically, it is necessary to occupy positions with anti-aircraft weapons so that a helicopter can drop a tank on the battlefield, transport it to the control center of the missile silo and activate the detonation of nuclear warheads in its bowels. Fine, there are quite tense moments, the dynamics of the game really change twice and everything looks good, but Modern Warfare III offers only one single map for this mode with an ever-repeating task, which knocks it down again from a slightly different side than in the case of variations on already played hundreds of times in slightly different variations.
Warzone again?
And although it may seem a bit laughable, the zombie mode ended up being the same. Although it’s nice that the game looks really full thanks to its inclusion, the developers apparently had to speed up the work – again, due to the circumstances that are speculated – and decided to bend this special and basically side-standing mode back into the form of Warzone, or rather DMZ. Instead of scenarios where, perhaps with completely different characters, you defend places from hordes of zombies, open portals, or use unique weapons, contracts on an open map, conquering fortresses or cleaning zombie nests await you. In a trio, with friends, it is of course a completely digestible and often funny or suitably tense affair, but after playing it I just shrugged my shoulders and had to state to myself that it is nothing new. That I’ve already played it, that I’ve experienced something similar many times and sadly remembered, for example, Black Ops IV, where perhaps the last time this mode made sense to me. What’s more, with gameplay grafted onto an open map and tasks not clearly defined on screen, when playing with a random bunch of people, matches tend to descend into utter chaos and disjointedness. You could argue that Call of Duty is only a reflection of the people who play the game, but when you consider that it’s arcade entertainment for the masses that literally anyone can play, it’s really worth taking players by the hand and telling them, what they have to do to actually do it. But that doesn’t happen that often in this mode, which doesn’t add to the good feeling.
We could talk about other things, such as the confusing battle pass, which offers a little less for free, we could talk about killstreaks, which are completely standard, or describe the positives and negatives of individual maps, but we would not come to a different conclusion than the one I outlined at the beginning. In the context of the last few episodes, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III does not come with anything that would be more interesting or unique in any way, and it is from this point of view that Jirka and I agreed that it is a below average episode. You can still play it, you can still shoot well within the set style, but especially this year I doubt that the offer for the 70 euros is really worth it.
2023-11-15 17:33:18
#Recenze #Call #Duty #Modern #Warfare #III #Vortex
