Right around this time of year the video game industry always polishes up their big titles just in time for the holidays. Some of the big games people have been waiting for include the fifth Elder Scrolls installment: Skyrim, the latest Battlefield 3 and of course Activision’s Call of Duty (CoD) series is no exception to that with Modern Warfare 3, the eighth full installment of the series, which was released today (11-08-11)
There have been a lot of mixed feelings on how the game will be received, with plenty of people arguing that every year there is another version of the same game coming out with minor graphical changes and a bit more story line. This seems to be a valid point just by looking at the System requirements for Modern Warfare 3 (MW3):
OS: Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7
CPU :Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 or better
Ram: 2GB RAM
HDD: 16 GB free
Video Card: 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 8600GT / ATI Radeon X1950 or better
Shader 3.0 or better
DirectX 9.0c or better
Digging up my copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the last game in the series, it says the exact same thing on the box. So does that mean were spending another 60 Bucks on the same game? I mean even the graphics engine is the same, granted they call it the 5th version but basically they have been re-polishing the same graphics since Call of Duty 2. Just looking at the game definitely doesn’t blow you away even with everything turned to High. It’s not terrible and up to date, kind of along the same lines as anything else that has been released for game consoles like the PS3 but if you want Eye candy, Battlefield 3 is definitely a better option for you. However CoD:MW3 definitely has a cooler trailer with a life action sort of adaption with Jonah Hill and Sam Worthington:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuzaxlddWbk]
After playing the campaign mode for about 20 minutes my first impression definitely says the same thing: same game, a bit better graphics, more of the same basic recipe as before. However is that really a bad thing? As far as the single player goes I always liked the Modern Warfare series, the story wasn’t amazing but it kept me entertained enough to play through all of it. MW2 I though was one of the better first person shooter single player campaigns to come out in some time, even though it was a bit short.
Granted the bar hasn’t been set very high as of late with most games focusing more on the Multiplayer part. MW3 is still very much scripted, there really aren’t any surprises. In the first scene you basically get thrown straight into a war zone with everything exploding and 100s of Russians shooting at you in the middle of a burning Manhattan, but I dint feel very overwhelmed.
The idea is the same as in any of the previous game, go down this hallway /ally /street /forest patch, shoot at everything that moves and press the “F” button occasionally if you need to open/blow up/ or use something. Essentially there was no learning curve at all. If you have played any of the previous CoD games before you might as well bump the difficulty to the highest setting, enjoy the maybe 2 hours of story line and just sort of cruise along with the game.
To sum the game up: Same soup as yesterday, reheated but still pretty good. The single player campaign qualifies as mildly entertaining but Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is meant as a multiplayer game, like the previous ones before it. So if you were able to play Black Ops, you can play this one without problems as well. A basic $500 computer with a mid-range $150 video card should be able to the trick. Battlefield 3 however requires quite a lot more. So if your computer isn’t the newest extreme gaming rig, you should probably stick with Call of Duty over Battlefield [Plus you don’t have to deal with Origin].
If the single player is able to keep me interested enough to play some more we will post a short gameplay/first look video later on to show a bit better what I mean by “scripted” and “no surprises”.