cod: mw3

Yesterday I mentioned I’d talk about Liverpool tomorrow, because today I’m going to give a few thoughts on call of duty: modern warfare 3.

I went into the weekend wondering what I was going to do, but then MW3 turned up and basically absorbed a whole chunk of my spare time.  MW3 is the third in the modern warfare series and I played through the whole campaign and a few of the spec ops missions over the weekend.

It looks as great as ever, although I have to say the basic graphics engine doesn’t seem hugely different to that used across the rest of the series, but then I think there’s a very good reason for that.

You see, the modern warfare series is really one thing in three parts.  The first was done in such a way that a sequel wasn’t essential (presumably in case it was a flop) and so it was actually a bit of surprise that mw2 picked up directly after mw.  Indeed, I wasn’t hugely keen as it had been so long since the first part I felt a bit disjointed.

I don’t know for sure, but the gap seemed smaller this time.  Even if it wasn’t, I was prepared for a direct sequel this time, so I didn’t get that same disjointedness.

But, more importantly, it occurs to me that the call of duty games pre-cod used to have really long single player campaigns.  The campaigns in the mw series have actually been pretty short.  I mean they’re not so short as to not be enjoyable, but certainly I can remember it taking several weeks to get through the campaigns in the old cod series, where the mw series you could play the entire campaign in a single lengthy session if you wanted.

I guess it helps them make he games “bigger” in the sense of being more complex set pieces and stuff, but it’s also a way of getting more cash for the same amount of story.

One thing that the cod series has always used in pre-scripted sequences.  These always work well and I like them, but I will admit they're quite old hat. Also the other thing they do that is very old school is enemy spawn points and waves of enemy.

The idea is you keep moving forward and thereby pass points that switch these off and if you remember that you can lessen the effect, but it’s still very old hat.  It’s also quite old hat that the levels are very fixed, guiding you along a single path through them.  This last one I also don’t mind, though.

Anyway, overall I quite liked it.  I thought the story was a little simpler his time compared to mw2, which actually helped.  It also seemed to come to a pretty solid conclusion, so I’m guessing if there is a MW4 it will be a different story.

So yeah, enjoyable enough, but could have been a bit longer.