The Call of Duty franchise remains at the top of the first-person shooter mountain, despite the Modern Warfare 2 cycle failing to live up to the game being branded as a “new era” for Activision’s shooter series.
With attention turning towards the impending launch of Modern Warfare 3, the beta has provided hardcore veterans and relative newcomers with a chance to play Sledgehammer Games’ latest offering before the full build launches in November. Having struggled to find any positives with its predecessor, I was looking forward to seeing if a wealth of movement changes and a health buff to increase the time to kill could draw me back in.
While there are plenty of positives with the early build of Modern Warfare 3, I couldn’t help but notice one glaring issue that’s hindering the game from becoming arguably the best Call of Duty to release in the past five years.
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+ 2One of the very few things I loved in Modern Warfare 2 was Infinity Ward’s impeccable gunplay. Each weapon in its extensive arsenal possessed unique characteristics that allowed them to feel unique from one another. In Modern Warfare 3, all of the weapons feel flimsy and struggle to convey any sense of power when you fire them. The MCW assault rifle, for example, heavily resembles the iconic ACR from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2, and after using its new replica, there’s no bass as the bullets leave the muzzle at breakneck speed, resulting in the rifle feeling more like a pistol instead of something I can control the central tower of Rust with.
It’s not just assault rifles that suffer from the lack of feeling either. I selected the Holger 26 light machine gun, which looks incredibly familiar to Call of Duty 4’s G36C, and after expecting a slow aim-down sight speed and the movement speed of a snail, it was strange to be competing with submachine gunners in a movement duel and actually have a chance to react in a fight I had no right competing in.
Despite the lack of substance in the weapon arsenal, I was instantly transported back to 2009 thanks to Sledgehammer Games’ excellent recreations of all 16 launch maps from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. The likes of Rust and Favela were exactly as I remembered them, complete with all the crafty sightlines and jump-ups that provided a perfect overview of the surrounding action.
A fresh coat of paint for the small selection of battlegrounds brings them into the modern-day. Even the inclusion of those pesky doors couldn’t detract from the enjoyment of hurtling around Skidrow with a fully-equipped SMG mowing down anyone who stood in front of my crosshairs.
click to enlarge + 2Spawn logic has always caused debate among players and in this small portion of Modern Warfare 3, it’s no different. Hardpoint and Domination matches are plagued with inconsistent spawns that often result in players spawning on opposite ends of the map, disrupting any kind of fast-paced flow that was achieved in previous Call of Duty titles.
During my several hours of game time, it became increasingly frustrating when an opponent spawned behind the Hardpoint hill controlled by my team or a Domination flag that I’d secured in the opening seconds of a match.
The plus side of uncovering these issues in the beta is that it enables Sledgehammer Games to fine-tune the logic to enable players to anticipate the location of nearby enemies in addition to preventing fights where one player has a significant advantage over the other thanks to a fortunate spawn location.
Overall, Modern Warfare 3 is a real return to form for the Call of Duty franchise after Modern Warfare 2 failed to deliver the fast-paced action many had hoped for from a new era. The new yet extremely familiar map pool combined with lightning-fast movement speeds injects plenty of pace into matches.
However, the flimsy combat detracts from what’s otherwise a solid baseline for the developers to build what could be one of the best Call of Duty titles released since 2016’s Black Ops 3.
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