Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

[Zerowinged Vasiliev]

XD

[Agares Tretiak]

Good lord.

[Jayce Iredell]

[Nakita]

Hey Zero,

It's Aurora.

That is all.

(Yeah, I live an hour away from there. We make fun of Aurora for a reason. )

Colfax Avenue :)

[Lanny Ansar]

Colfax Avenue :)

OH DEAR LAWD.

[Eriksson Foxtrot]

... and a a delivery truck in France was tear gassed by two individuals who then proceeded to steal 6 000 copies of MW3 from it. God damn.

[Lanny Ansar]

This is what I saw at Wal-Mart today...

Seems the PC players know where their money should go.

(Wish I had a pic for the BF3 copies, all 1 of them...)

[Guest Afevis]

people buy physical copies of games still? :o

[Cyphre Iredell]

I can get physical copies on amazon, sales tax-free, delivered practically free, at a rate cheaper than Steam nowadays. This appears to be the same for the Brits I've spoken with. Although Walmart definitely doesn't have the reputation, wit their sale of censored CDs and other insanity to meet the needs of the Bible Belt.

[George Reisman]

Someone is apparently going through and screen-capping key points in the game to point out what content is lifted straight from MW2 - which is apparently pretty much all of it.

Can we get a link when that happens?

[Kellervo]

I've already played through and beaten the first few levels of SP (hooray having a gaming cafe on my company's list of benefits). Each is about ten minutes long at most, but works out to around twice that due to the tendency for enemies to literally spawn on you. I've died three times to enemies rifle-butting me when I take cover behind what is apparently a spawn point.

As for the levels themselves, essentially it's the MW2 campaign, but even shorter. The equivalent of the Whisky Hotel level is the very first one (with a helicopter ride similar to the one in MW2), the second level is more or less a slightly longer "Airplane!" level (from MW1), and the fourth is the Favela, only this time it's set in South Africa and the running segments give you a gun.

EDIT: I just realized one of the levels was so fast I pretty much forgot about it. It's pretty much just like MW1's Heat, except your minigun has wheels.

Even some of the cinematic elements are blatantly borrowed from MW2, to the point it's nauseating.

One character you play as gets shot in the chest opening a door (No Russian from MW2), survives, falls over, watches his partner get shot and thrown down beside him, and then gets shot in the head. It's one thing to rip off the sequence, but to portray it like it's some kind of 'subtle' nod to Ghost/Roach/Gaz is again, nauseating.

Oh, and are you sick of QTEs where you make a leap of faith only to fail / get helped by someone else? One in every other level.

The levels are seriously more or less remodels of the above and have some of the same elements, but aren't quite as cheap. The explosions are overdone and by the end of the first level it's pretty much "well, shit, I'm surprised that didn't explode". You can tell this isn't the old IW as the explosions don't even pack that much 'wow' to begin with. It feels like every scene thus far has been a retread of everything from MW1, MW2, and even Black Ops. In the span of forty minutes I was introduced to no less then eight characters, and three of them are already dead. Soap and Price are both so flat and melodramatic in their insane bro-love that I kinda wish they would die instead.

And I hope you like quicktime events because there's at least one in every level.

As for the content lifting, I can see why people are thinking that way. Keep in mind this is just through four levels and I apparently have at least eight more to go;

- The Russians in New York are literally just reskins of the Russians from MW2 - but while they wore flashy, distinctive camo in MW2, they look almost identical to the Americans in MW3. It was to the point I got three fails in a row because I shot an American thinking he was a Russian.

- The Russians in the Airplane! level are literally just reskins of Makarov's Mercenaries from MW2.

- The Africans are reskins of the Brazilians from MW2 - they wear drab red / green instead of flashy vibrant shirts.

- The Russians in the second level? Reskins of the Spetsnaz from MW2, with MW1-style gasmasks and SAS hoods.

- The SAS / Seals are literally just retextured from MW1/MW2 - if that.

- The Russian police in the plane? Some of them are just reskins of the airport police from MW2.

The only genuinely new content aside from the weapons? The Juggernaut, who got remodelled into something that doesn't really look that awesome or intimidating anymore. Instead he looks like a reject from Army of Two.

His helmet has a visor on it, and a visor over it. And if that's not enough eye protection, underneath his helmet he still has goggles on. Not to mention all the metal plates which don't actually protect anything.

Don't even get me started on the story.

SO MUCH RAGE. AND I DIDN'T EVEN PAY FOR IT.

[Cyphre Iredell]

I'm hoping to see some actual reviews to circulate throughout the general publications and see what the metacritic numbers come to.

[Kellervo]

My honest opinion is don't spend money on it if you already own MW2 and are happy / content with its offerings. MW3 multiplayer has its potential, but the initial map pack sucks / favors run-and-gun exclusively over any other playing style. Since PC doesn't get the 'full Elite package', we get charged the full $15 for DLC packs, so... yeah. Hold onto the money.

[George Reisman]

Hold onto the money and buy Skyrim.

[Kellervo]

I am watching my fourteen year old cousin play - and even he's complaining about how stupid the story is.

Specifically, one level is in Hamburg, Germany. After detonating bombs in every single European city / military base and invading all of Europe (don't ask how they hid entire invasion-scale forces right outside the cities - there's literally an hour or two between the bombs going BOOM, Russians invading, and the American reinforcements arriving - meaning Russia has gone from kicking America's ass to begging for peace to kicking Europe's ass in literally a span of two hours), the Russians - who are supposed to be at a peace treaty because they were supposedly getting their asses kicked - instead decide to go genocide up in this and start razing Hamburg, Germany.

What does America do? Launches a gigantic D-Day style invasion against a very well entrenched position - with no visible anti-air. So they park all the landing craft and helicopters on the oceanfront and proceed to walk - not run - across a wide open beach.

My cousin took about ten minutes to get through this sequence because the only prompt is "use cover". The game does not tell you you need to move to a specific series of otherwise indistinguishable rocks - it just kills you. It doesn't matter if you're fully hidden behind one set of rocks that other GIs are hiding behind safely - you get picked off by the Russian God Sniper.

But then I realized something.

Hamburg isn't on the ocean.

[Huttser]

They're assaulting across the Hamburg river, and I don't know whats up with your cousin because it was pretty obvious to me how to advance up the beach lol. The forces in Hamburg are only their so quick as they are sent to rescue the US VP. It's essentially the spear tip force consisting of Rangers and US Delta.

[Cyphre Iredell]

Its basically, "They did something right in CoD 1 and 2, lets make a modern D-day because we have enough other types of warfare going on, and we're all out of tomahawks magically"

[Kellervo]

Its basically, "They did something right in CoD 1 and 2, lets make a modern D-day because we have enough other types of warfare going on, and we're all out of tomahawks magically"

Nah, the funny thing is you fly in with helicopters and Ospreys, and just land on the beach beside all the landing craft full of more troops and tanks. And then promptly get cut down en masse.

Also, the main reason my cousins were dying was because they were looking to the right (as opposed to the left) and trying to follow behind the tanks and the pile of rocks on the right side. Sandman's FOLLOW indicator only appeared after they tried going left instead and had to make the sprint to the wall.

But the point still stands that from a plot standpoint it's pretty damn stupid. How the hell did Russia have an invasion force right outside of Hamburg, and level the entire city in half an hour? :[

[George Reisman]

*at Infinity Ward HQ*

Ted: Hey, Jim! Did we ever think to explain how any of the scenarios in the Modern Warfare series are really plausible?

Jim:

Ted: GENIUS!

[Huttser]

Modern weaponry and strike capacity is pretty effective when it comes to rapid, hard hitting strikes. Give me a squadron of B-1 or B-52 Bombers and I'll level a city in ten minutes. I'm not saying the plot's perfect, but then again what plot isn't?

As for them advancing so quickly, the entirety of Europe was pre-occupied dealing the thousands of dead civilians from the gas attack. Bearing in mind the target of that attack was key C3 and Intelligence centres. The Russians had effectively blinded Europe, combine this with fast moving attacks by armoured and airborne attacks by Russian units stationed in Eastern European states (which in the MW cannon are once again part of Russia). Much like MW 2 with its retarded satellite module being the Achilles heel of the US early warning network, the plots not full proof, but neither is it completely implausible.

This is a fiction shooter, not a military simulator. Certain things are done for dramatic effect, which don't really make too much military sense on the face of things.

[George Reisman]

Modern Warfare 3 sucks, but I'll still try to defend it.

Picture of Corsi unrelated.

[Inoue Katsu]

What i like most about MW3 is how its review scores are being kept high artificially everywhere.

10 'critic' websites give it a score of like 90-100, 500 'fanboys' give it a score of >6, 2000 people give it a score of <3 ... yet the listed score is an 8.8 ..hmmmmmmm

[Deadmon]

thats true, but you also have to consider all the battlefield fanboys giving it zeros without touching it. Theres been quite a few :P

[Cyphre Iredell]

Or those who did play it and want to get rid of it entirely and giving it a 0. I didn't quite see any campaign amongst the BF3 forums to destroy MW3 ratings (because I haven't organized it yet ;) ). Fact is, most online professional review sources are normally in sponsorship deals, as was proven by games like Kane and Lynch 2. So I'm just waiting to hear from other more interesting places like X Play, and in-dept reviews on gamefaqs.

[Inoue Katsu]

thats true, but you also have to consider all the battlefield fanboys giving it zeros without touching it. Theres been quite a few :P

True, but thats besides the 'keeping scores high artificially' thing.

What Cyphre said pretty much sums it up.