What a long strange trip it has been…Modern Warfare 3 INU Review

Image Credit to:

http://www.callofduty.com/mw3/images/mw3-image-2011-001

Let me start from the beginning. Back a few years ago…2007, I didn’t have an Xbox 360 yet. After some begging, I finally convinced my wife that it was time to upgrade to the next generation of Xbox. My background in video games has always been the favorites that I had grown up playing; platformers, beat’em ups, and the occasional RPG. I had played Doom and Wolfenstein in their prime when FPS first arrived on the scene, but was always a little put off by the first person perspective.

Well before I started to work with another member of the SWS I was playing some titles with RageInu on his Xbox and he had a thing for this series called Call of Duty. Military shooters weren’t my first choice in the games I like to play. I wasn’t really attracted to the series much at all. I bought my Xbox for more than anything; Guitar Hero 2. Then I started to work with a guy, code named Ranvier (changed to protect his identity). First it was RageInu, “dude you really need to buy Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.”

My response, “I don’t like first person shooters.” Then Ranvier, met RageInu and they started to play together. Then I would get told on nearly a daily basis that I was a loser for not having COD 4 and should really go get it. After about a month of this BS, I finally caved and decided I was going to buy it. I was going catch so much hell from my wife if I were to outright buy it. I spent an hour rummaging around in all the boxes were I had old Xbox games, Nintendo Gameboy games, Gameboy Advance, Playstation games everything I could scavenge for this purchase…because of peer pressure; F*ckers!...but also, thank you.

I rushed down to GameStop down the street to see what pennies they would give me for all of this stuff. They had a used copy of COD 4 MW for 45 dollars and I ended up having to pay 7 dollars for it. You should have seen the stack of shit I had to trade in, to just get that much taken off. F*cking GameStop.

That is how this little hobby of Call of Duty game playing started with me. I didn’t know the controls or anything such help and was thrown into multiplayer like a rabbit with a broken leg. Doing that scream that rabbits do when they are in pain.  If you never heard it, it isn’t the most comforting sound. Shot to shit every round and ‘that’s me at the bottom of the lobby once again.’ I had about given up when I decided to play the single player campaign.

This was different than anything I had played before, grit, grime and solid game play. The story was something to behold, I was taken into a trance of awe and amazement from the cut scenes and the Quentin Tarintino-esqe progression of the story. The relevance to current events was just uncanny. Then there was Price: the bulletproof, old codger who wouldn’t die and had a mean streak, if you pissed the Captain off. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was awesome. Looking back, COD 4 had great story and great multiplayer.

Then there was Modern Warfare 2, “what the f*ck happened!?” I don’t know what the former Infinity Ward was thinking in this game. They brought new elements to the table but it didn’t have the heart COD 4 had.
Disjointed missions and Price went batshit crazy and you pretty much asked yourself after finishing a mission, “why did I just do that or what the hell is going on.” New characters were shot and the story did little to explain itself. It was a 100 miles a minute with this title and we all know how broken the multiplayer was too.

After the fallout of Infinity Ward crumbling, Activision went on high alert to save their beloved cash cow and enlisted the help of numerous studios to help rectify the broken leftovers of Infinity Ward. Sledgehammer games, Raven software, Neversoft, Treyarch studios and Beachhead software all became involved in Modern Warfare 3. I just want to state right now, they succeeded. Many took a decidedly negative stance on Modern Warfare ever becoming what it once was…Ranvier; (though he changed his mind rather quickly after seeing a few videos.)

I’m not going to give the story away but I will say this is the best thing that the developers could have done for this series. They make numerous references to past games that introduce, involve and tie-up the overarching story from the series. Bravo, I say, Bravo! Cut-scenes invoke the events and the love you had for the other titles in the series.

Game play has once again become solid and I likened it much to COD 4’s. Multiplayer is back to its former glory of COD 4. Story progression is tight and fluid without a lot of events that question the integrity of the story. You feel this is the close of the story and like Ranvier said when he started playing it, “it’s a Michael Bay movie.” It ends much the way COD 4 begins, with a smile on my face and tear in my eye…

4.75 INUs.

SWS out.