Review in progress: Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is a series low point

videogameschronicle.com:

If we didn’t already know that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 began life as a DLC offering to 2022’s Modern Warfare 2, this year’s single-player offering makes it glaringly obvious.

Calling it a single-player campaign at all feels generous, as outside of a strong opening mission, and some interesting ideas about how these games could be structured in the future, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3’s solo offering is shallow, short, and feels like a release of obligation.

The biggest change is the open combat missions, which see players dropped into a larger-than-average map, with some objectives they can tackle in any order. These missions also have Warzone-style equipment boxes littered around the area for players to change their loadout, or use killstreaks. While this is an interesting approach to a Call of Duty linear campaign, in execution, they’re unfortunately poor.

It feels like you’re being dropped into an area that’ll be used for the new Warzone map, and then you’re rushed by compromised AI in sequences that feel more like DMZ mode with cutscenes, and less fun. The objectives are also insultingly simple, with some open combat missions able to be completed in a matter of minutes.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 reeks of a game that had a series of environments at its disposal, that then had a storyline roughly strung together around it, to facilitate the campaign.  Makarov, a returning Modern Warfare baddie, is utterly wasted on a story that functions more as a way to show off what Operators you’ll be buying in Warzone when the new map arrives.

Call of Duty campaigns in the past were never RPG-length, but you could at least rely on them for some big-budget set pieces and a daft, pulpy campaign that you could get through in a