Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Review (PC): A Rush Job With a Tragic Development Story

WHAT HAPPENED BEHIND THE SCENES?

One of the biggest scandals surrounding Modern Warfare III is the short and subpar single-player campaign. So what happened that led players to finish the main story in just 3-4 hours? Usually, you'd get five to six hours in a CoD game, or even eight, like last year's Modern Warfare II.

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, one of the most prolific insiders in the video game industry, wrote an article about what the developers at Sledgehammer Games had to say about the game's production. He was also the one who first outed one of the most significant pieces of information about Jason and Lucia from GTA 6 in July 2022.

Schreier sat down with some devs who spoke out of NDA, revealing that Modern Warfare III wasn't even supposed to come out in 2023. The devs were already working on a stand-alone spinoff to Modern Warfare II.

Apparently, MW III was initially presented inside the studio as an expansion. At some point in the summer of 2022, the corporate heads at Activision basically made them shift to a direct sequel.

Why this short-term change of heart? Well, according to Schreier, another undisclosed CoD game was supposed to come out in 2023, but that got delayed, so it would have meant a gap year. For a game that's among the top five best-selling titles of the year, this doesn't bode well with shareholders.

The beast had to be fed, so we got stuck with MW III. Someone had to make those billions of $$$.

Sadly, this isn't the first time Sledgehammer Games has gone through this ordeal. Under normal circumstances, production for a CoD game lasts three years. Call of Duty Vanguard from 2021, made by the very same people, was given only two years to ship.

And for MW III, the devs only had a measly 16 months. You can't shave off 20 months from a production cycle and expect miracles.

It doesn't work that way in game development, and you will heavily compromise quality-wise. Hence, the awful reception by players and critics alike. At the time of writing, Metacritic gave it a 55 and OpenCritic 58.

This being said... in reality, all that matters is the cash intake. If that's going to be affected, Activision will feel the sting and maybe start reassessing things.

But while the publisher is counting its billions, the real victims here are the devs because they are the ones living with vast amounts of stress day in and day out. They are the ones putting in overtime and weekends, neglecting and damaging their quality of life and families, all because upper management couldn't get their stuff straight. The most horrible part is that this is the second time it happened to them.

STORY

The most often heard complaint about the game is the campaign's short length. However, it didn't seem that way to me because I found it so formulaic and sterile that I almost instantly got bored, and it became a chore to finish. It honestly felt neverending, like having to sit through algebra in high school, where one hour turned into four.

First of all, the story was dry, and the characters were void of anything human. They were all saying the exact same things, only with different words and by taking turns.

I completely get it's a military shooter, and you shouldn't expect "The Last of Us Part III" from a CoD game, but the story felt like my brain was chewing wet drywall. Speaking of dried up things, there's the main villain, Makarov.

He looks like a spoiled Harvard kid from a mediocre 2000s movie where he's evil simply because his parents were rich and he grew up to be a douche. Like Obi-Wan would have said, "This isn't the character depth you are looking for."

GAMEPLAY

I'm not saying the single-player experience is beyond redemption because it's not horrible. It's just bland. The gameplay isn't bad, but it didn't really move the needle for me, either. It feels snappy and as accurate as ever, which is excellent for a shooter like CoD.

The sound design is excellent, and when you pair it with the extremely accurate gunplay and weapon control only made possible by a mighty PC capable of running the game at 144fps in 4K, everything falls into place. The feeling is as great as ever for my casual tastes. I'm not a hardcore fan, but I play every new CoD for about a month each year.

As for the game design itself, it was split into two main parts. The first half features the typical linear mission design, where you keep walking and shooting until you reach the next briefing, only to do it all again. But new to the single-player series is the DMZ type of missions.

If you never played DMZ, think of it as an open-space area where you have different objectives and choose how to tackle them. Although they're leagues ahead, the most similar games that do this are Far Cry when you're clearing outposts or Metal Gear Solid 5.

While I barely dabbled in the DMZ mode from MW II, I found them refreshing in MW III's campaign, and I think they're a step in the right direction for the linear shooter.

This is the main jist of the single-player experience from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, which is mediocre at best, unfortunately. The developers are severely talented and deserve much better treatment from their employers.

It's simply a shame this kind of corporate mistreatment led to an underwhelming game.

ZOMBIES

The Zombies mode isn't half bad, and I was pleasantly surprised by the open world where it all takes place. The bad part for MW II DMZ players expecting something else in MW III... is that this isn't a fresh take on the mode. Aside from the military NPCs (non-playable characters) being replaced with zombies, nothing changed much. It's basically a copy-paste experience from the standard DMZ.

However, for me and others who haven't dabbled in this experience in the previous game, it's all sugar, spice, and everything nice. I'm having a great time with Zombies. Especially when I team up over voice chat with a friend. Then it goes from a fair seven to about an eight and a half.

You share a vast map with 20-something other players, and the whole infrastructure is cut into three main concentric hotspots. You can move either by foot, SUVs or other military-grade armored vehicles you find along the way, just like in Warzone.

I'd suggest running over every undead you see with as big of a truck as you can possibly find.

The outer layer has level one zombies that don't pose a big threat, and when you earn enough cash, you can level up your weapon at a workbench apparatus.

Then, you move further toward the center of the map to level two, where you won't survive unless you quickly upgrade your gear to level two. Then, you have the third and most dangerous zone, which I couldn't reach yet, but it's a rinse-and-repeat sort of thing.

The zombie experience isn't groundbreaking, but it can be pretty fun under the right circumstances. I foresee 20 hours before I'm done with it after finally beating the 3rd area and exfilling in a chopper.

MULTIPLAYER

CoD made its bones with its fast-paced, show-no-mercy online multiplayer mode. Luckily for me, it's as entertaining as ever. Leveling up, capturing objectives, racking up multi-kills, and bombing the other team with killstreaks feels like it should for a casual player like myself.

You can play six main modes: Quick Match, Hardcore Quick Play, War Mode, Cutthroat (3v3v3), Ground War, and Invasion. In Quick Match, you can opt in or out of Team Deathmatch, Free-for-All, Domination, Search and Destroy, Kill Confirmed, hardpoint, and Control. More will be added over time.

My favorite online modes are Ground War and Invasion. The latter is because it's a medium-sized team deathmatch akin to the "push to the tank" mode from Overwatch. Ground War, however, is where it's at. Vehicular warfare dialed up to 11. Granted, it is not akin to the GOAT, Battlefield 4.

However, using SUVs, heavily armored trucks with machine guns on top, helicopters, tanks, dune buggies, or even ATVs is quite the accomplishment for Call of Duty. I must insist; it's still not even close to BF4, but it's the closest we'll get in a CoD game. If Ground War featured destructibility on a mass scale, it would be an entirely different conversation.

CONCLUSION

It's not hard to find something wrong or lacking in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Thanks to investigative journalists like Jason Schreier, at least we know the story behind the turmoil at Sledgehammer Games. But at the end of the day, Activision still charges $70 and $100 (Vault Edition) for the game.

While it's not the devs' fault, the end consumer also can't be blamed for having high expectations from such an excellent series. Hopefully, next year's installment will have had enough time in the oven to come out as a fully-fledged sequel and not a rushed patch job like Modern Warfare III.

Rating: 60/100