Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Zombies Review in Progress

ign.com:

This is our Zombies review in progress for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Check out the single-player review for our thoughts on the campaign or the multiplayer review for our thoughts on PvP.

Like a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, this year’s Zombies mode has undergone what might be described as a "Warzone-ification," forcing its traditional PvE elements into a larger, more open map. But as popular as the Warzone side of Call of Duty (or in this case, the extraction shooter mode, DMZ) might be, mixing it together with Zombies just dilutes both. This is less a new take on Zombies than it is a DMZ reskin, and with disparate elements cherry picked from both modes mashed against one another. It has had some highlights in the first few hours I’ve played across eight or so matches, and I still have lots more to see, but so far it’s more often been slow, a bit dull, and at odds with what has usually made Zombies fun.

Operation Deadbolt, the name for Modern Warfare 3's Zombies mode, takes place on a version of the upcoming Warzone map of Urzikstan. Gone are the usual wave-based battles through smaller, dedicated maps that you explore and unlock as you go. Instead, the moment-to-moment gist of the mode is almost exactly what you encounter in DMZ: Head into the map, search for cool stuff, and call a helicopter to escape with it before you're either overwhelmed by enemies or the 45-minute match timer expires. On its face, there's not even much to identify this as a Zombies mode other than the zombies themselves, at least in the early hours.

Though its loot-and-escape mechanics can create both exciting situations and a lot of risk-and-reward calculations for you and your squad of two others, they feel opposed to what