[ZeRoY]

After completing the SP at the weekend and playing a little more MP …

here’s my review ** some spoilers ahead! **

SP Campaign:

This was for me the primary reason to get MW3 in the first place and I can now say I am on the fence on this one. On the plus side the Level design and general scripting is overall top notch with some serious creativity when it comes to the underwater level or the airplane sequence. I actually felt bad for whoever designed the Paris level as i can see how nicely detailed and close to the real thing it is but the level is such that the player just don’t get to see anything, it goes so fast! I’ll have to take some point off for the over usage of the following scenario which is re-used half a dozens time in the game: Sudden Explosion/crash/incident > Black screen > blurred screen > looking at your hands > slowly get up > on with the game — Just gets a little boring after a while. Now the low point to me on this campaign was simply the total incoherence of the plot….. one minute you are in Africa, the next in Germany somewhere and then in a mine in Siberia? The all thing was going fine up until the 50% mark to me. Up until then i thought the build up was quite good but then it all fell sort of flat after that Castle level (probably my favourite level, i love stealth missions!) and the game seemed to have been rushed from there on and 1-2h later it was done. Oh and what a crappy/boring ending for such an ambitious game

SPECSOPS / SURVIVAL:

I Only got to try this on the Xbox with my son but i guess it would be the same on PC anyway…. Survival was surprisingly fun i guess, played several round and by the end of the 2 game i was getting used to the mechanics. Its a spin-off from Treyarch’s Zombies really but the buying of weapon/killstreak, etc. makes the game somewhat interesting each time.

I only tried one specsops mission in the Submarine but it was good fun too. Overall this is a good addition to the overall package.

Multiplayer:

OK so this is the big part of MW3 i guess, the one most everyone is buying the game for… in short: If you liked MW2, you should like this one! For me, no thanks – or at least I should say, not in its current form. Firstly i’ll go straight to one huge stopping problem: The FOV / FPS locking. On console, fair enough. On PC? WTF?! A no go zone that once more (MW2 was same if not worst) we have to endure. I play at 1920*1080 on a 23Inch screen that’s right in my face, i want to have at least FOV of 80 if not 85. Hoping they patch this because im getting sick playing the game having to constantly check my angles to not get flanked. And the FPS cap (i think its at 60) needs removing too.

But the biggest problem i have with the game is in what IW/SH have done to it over this last 2 iterations… The player’s skills are barely involved this time again as Killstreak and care package stack up to make every round a flying helo feast with additional turrets, robots and other gimmicks that take away the entire purpose of what I knew COD to be: Me and my rifle. The concept from MW2 is there again, despite whatever was publicly said, im yet to see someone using the support package which is meant to be more “team-orientated” (my eye). Same goes for “kill confirmed” a gametype anti-campers – fair enough – but the result again is a perk/killstreak feast making it impossible for anyone to go in the open and get those tags or you get killed yourself. The source of most the problem has already been highlighted by many already, the maps are simply “shoe-boxes”. So small in fact I found myself playing some alone in Private match to make sure i wasn’t missing something while playing online, but no, the maps are tiny and have too many paths. This means that killing someone almost always means get kill by someone else behind you – I felt like chasing my own tail most round.

Note that all of the above was my experience in Dedicated Servers as IWNet (round 2) is still as cr*p as ever and for someone outside of a major country has to seat there for minutes on end before getting matched to players with 150ms Ping or more! A total waste of time of course which means that my rank is and will remain “1″ while playing on Dedi (Dedi uses your Rank from P2P matches). By now everyone knows that Dedicated Servers are unranked, the direct result is that practically no-one plays on them (just about 1000 players at peak over the weekend while 50k + players were in P2P). Good thing about the Dedicated server: servers can have all weapon unlocked (use create a class from private matches) and certain things can be switched on/off too. Already i spotted some sniper only servers and tactical servers also.

In summary I’m not liking this Multiplayer at all – Ranked especially. For Dedicated servers, IW/SH has to give us Mod support and unlock all dvars – as its unranked they cant start to talk about “security”; One problem with this though, the fastfiles have been encrypted like crazy this time around which makes me think that they have ZERO intention in wanting us to get our hands on the game GSCs scripts… Thanks to the Hackers/Modders that is

Review Scores:

Graphics: Slightly refine but still lacking new technologies making it look dated in parts = 7/10
Sound: Miles system is nothing to go mad about, lack of 3d positioning also = 7/10
SP: Great Level design, scripting – story too predictable and repetitive, plot holes = 8/10
SpecOps: Good fun, good re-playability and variety = 9/10
MP: Far too “noobish” for me, maps too small, too many gimmicks, half-ar*ed Dedi servers = 6/10

Total: 7.4/10
Would I recommend you buy it?

For me its that simple… If you liked MW2 then yeah, you should buy it. Its more of the same, think of a better/tweaked MW2 version. While not ground-breaking imo, MW3 is a solid/reliable Shooter.