Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

To say that there was a huge amount of pressure on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III's multiplayer and Zombies offering would be an understatement. The campaign that has been included has managed to disappoint in pretty much every conceivable way, and while this is my full review of the latest Call of Duty title, to save me from repeating myself, you can head over here to find my full impressions and thoughts about the single player and story parts of this game. Here instead, I'm turning my attention to the multiplayer and Zombies additions, which have been available ever since the game fully launched late last week - and I'll be addressing both separately.

Multiplayer

If you're hoping for a fresh and unique feeling Call of Duty, this isn't the game for you. I had many concerns with the multiplayer after checking out the beta a few weeks ago, and to me, these concerns have been mostly confirmed.

To claim that this game is a brand new instalment into the series is a misconception. Due to the parity that it shares with last year's also full-priced title, the majority of weapons, items, attachments, and so forth in this game come from last year's Call of Duty. There are new weapons and items to earn, but compared to what we usually get for a 'new' Call of Duty, this year's slate of additions is a fraction of that at best.

Then comes the maps. This is perhaps the entire main selling point of this game: its nostalgia factor. While I won't deny that 2009's Modern Warfare 2 had some of the greatest and most iconic Call of Duty maps of all-time, nostalgia does the heavy lifting for many of them. Activision has put a huge amount of effort and care into bringing these maps back as accurately as possible, and that shows, they all look fantastic and have meaningful modern improvements, but at the same time, following an afternoon of multiplayer action, the thrill of loading into Sub Base, Rundown, Wasteland, and the likes begins to fade. Would I prefer playing these maps to some of the abhorrent additions that we've seen in other CoDs? Absolutely. But do these maps imbue me with that same love and thrill for Call of Duty that I had in 2009? No, although there are many other reasons for that.

You see, the limited additional content and the reused portions are not at all this game's biggest enemy. Call of Duty has been on a UI/UX, progression, and matchmaking train to hell over the past few years, and Modern Warfare III may just be the point of no return. Unlocking new weapons and items is a nightmare to understand, the sheer number of attachments make weapon customisation a science and not a way to enhance your style of gameplay, and the Call of Duty HQ system is one of the biggest crimes in gaming to date. Every part of this game feels poorly designed in a UI/UX sense, to the point where after only a few minutes you start losing the will to live trying to navigate and understand every part of it. If Activision seriously wanted to deliver on the nostalgia factor for Call of Duty, it should have started first and foremost by cutting the fat and trimming down the countless unnecessary additional features, not adding more like Aftermarket Parts and the likes.

But assuming you have more willpower to wade through the murky waters that is the Call of Duty HQ and Modern Warfare III progression (which sees certain attachments and items only unlockable by completing daily challenges for some godforsaken reason), you then have to be prepared to actually play the game. I don't usually pay much attention to the criticisms of influencers, but it's unavoidable to not side with them anymore: skill-based matchmaking needs to go.

For anyone unfamiliar with this, essentially Call of Duty looks to matchmake players by looking at their in-game data. Sounds like a good idea, right? The problem is that if you have one really good game, your stats will be skewed and you'll be facing off against players running THE meta build for pretty much every game following that. There's no room for error in this game anymore, you cannot try different guns or different builds, else you will get absolutely battered by the Call of Duty elite who want nothing more than to run the latest overtuned weapon combination. If you've been playing over the weekend, you'll notice at the moment that means the Holger or the MCW.

If the fact that Call of Duty can truly no longer be enjoyed as a casual FPS title doesn't phase you, the other thing to be aware of is the poor servers for this game. Yes, it has been launch weekend and yes, this does mean that the server quality should improve as it further stabilises, but the fact that you will be booted out of games and have to deal with shots not landing, for example, due to the poor server quality is something that just shouldn't be acceptable for a game of Call of Duty's size, scale, and support in the year 2023.

Yet, and here's the real catch: Modern Warfare III, as far as multiplayer experience goes, is still an incredibly well designed and built game in a gameplay sense. The gunplay and movement is excellent, the range of modes and customisability options are broad (often too broad), and yes, the maps are a blast from the past. But they are going to be because this is a game that features solely fan-favourite content using a platform that Activision essentially first put into the hands of players a year ago. In a way it was bound to succeed, even if it has a huge list of pitfalls.

Zombies

The Zombies is a whole other can of worms. We've seen over the past few years that Activision has been steadily moving away from the traditional linear round-based Zombies format for more open levels. I've never necessarily been against exploring this new avenue, but in Modern Warfare III, Zombies is more of an extraction game mode than anything, something that reminds of Warzone 2.0's DMZ game mode.

What this means is that Zombies basically doesn't have a coherent story any more, lacks any form of pressure or challenge, and that due to the entire mode being based on a version of Warzone 2.0's Al Mazrah, you spend a huge amount of time wandering around a fairly empty world looting and completing contracts just for the sake of it. This doesn't feel like a mainline Call of Duty Zombies mode, it feels like a Warzone Zombies mode, and if anything I can point towards more comparisons between this and the limited time Halloween mode than anything we've seen in the past in Black Ops and World War-themed Call of Duty games.

There are a few ideas that I appreciate from this mode. I like that you play in a big lobby and can meet up and team up with other players outside of your squad. The various enemy types are also fairly interesting, and the fact that the map is split into various portions of increasing difficulty/reward keeps things fresh. But the lack of a major Easter egg, Zombies that don't feel in near any way challenging, and the fact that this game mode is now an extraction style experience and not a round-based horde mode makes me far less compelled and interested to return to it when there are so many other better and more fulfilling Call of Duty modes available these days.

In summary

It's very clear to me after playing the game for the past ten days that this was not meant to be a full-scale Call of Duty title. It is severely lacking in content and shares far too much parity with last year's game to be valued at the typical premium price point. The campaign is a very tough pill to swallow, the Zombies mode leaves a lot to be desired, and the multiplayer's main and biggest strength is its nostalgia and the fact that it's effectively the same refined and well-designed game as last year.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is without a doubt the lowest point in this rebooted Modern Warfare series, and one of (if not the) lowest points in the series altogether, but that's not just because of the limited and rushed content, it's also because Call of Duty as a whole has become a user nightmare. Activision needs to scale back on what these games offer, because right now, there is far too much fat and unnecessary content baked in that severely and negatively impacts the Call of Duty experience.