Every November a new Call of Duty arrives, and with each game there are always major and minor changes that can disapoint or annoy gamers who have been playing the previous installment right up until launch night. Ignoring the usual server errors that occur when a few hundred thousand people all arrive home and go online for the first time, it’s usually a case of getting used to new maps, new weapon weightings and changes to killstreaks.
All of that is true with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which not only reverts back from Treyarch’s Black Ops approach, but also makes some significant changes to what we were used to in Modern Warfare 2. Different perks and kill streaks, particularly the new Support streak which stacks up whether or not you’ve died in the progress, have made big changes to the feel of multiplayer.
But having felt uneasy since first playing MW3 on launch night, I’m now convinced that Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer have made a big error, regardless of initial sales figures.
Where Modern Warfare 3 goes wrong:
It isn’t the single player campaign, which although feeling a little disjointed, is still enjoyable and fun. It isn’t in the Spec Ops Missions or the new Survival Mode, both of which are great, although it would have been nice to have had up to 4 players for survival mode.
It’s in the key area for Call of Duty – Multiplayer.
Initially I couldn’t work out why I felt so unsatisfied after an evening of MW3 multiplayer. After all, I’ve played Call of Duty pretty much constantly since the original Modern Warfare, and no matter how bad my performance or the occasional lag issue, I’ve always managed to at least come out of an evening with a few good games.
But when I thought about the structure of multiplayer I realised the problem. It’s all one note.
‘One note gaming’? This ain’t Guitar Hero
What I mean by one note is that great films, music and novels all have moments of quiet to contract with the moments of action. Even blockbuster action films like Con Air or Bad Boys 2 allowed for a bit of character interaction and reflection before the next huge gunfight and explosion sequence, and that’s necessary, because otherwise you just get bored. It’s the same in music, whether you’re talking about a classical orchestra, or The Pixies, Nirvana or Metallica.
But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is all noise.
The stated desire in development was to have players able to quickly get into the action, but the problem is that you can’t choose to get out of it, even for a moment. Essentially the maps, weapons and killstreaks all end up feeling like you’re trapped in 101 variations of Nuketown.
And even worse for many of us, the two set-ups which are currently working well are the ‘run and gun’ sprinting around approach with an SMG, or the ‘no-scoping’ with a sniper rifle.
That’s pretty frustrating for anyone who enjoyed wandering around with an assault rifle, trying to balance movement with some type of care for their self-preservation. It’s also annoying if you’re not on a hyper-fast broadband connection, as previously you could play around the problems to some extent by sneaking, flanking and catching players from behind.
That’s all gone. What you’ve got now is a multiplayer for the most extreme elements of hardcore players, that enjoy relentlessly running round at ridiculous speeds and endlessly no-scope their way into killstreaks in mechanical fashion.
I don’t know the exact set-up at Infinity Ward before Zampella, West and a number of other employees left, but it makes me feel like Modern Warfare 3 is the result of the kids being left alone with sugary sweets and fizzy pop when the parents have gone away.
I’m not suggesting that small maps and frantic action aren’t a lot of fun, but there needs to be some balance – for every Nuketown and Firing Range, you should have a WMD or Jungle. For every Rust and Highrise, you need a Derail or Underpass.
And for every absolute hardcore gamer who whined like crazy at the thought of no-scoping, you need to consider the silent majority of gamers who are getting disillusioned with Call of Duty after jumping into MW3 games to find themselves constantly spawn-killed with no chance to collect their thoughts.
It’s ironic that Battlefield 3 set itself up foolishly against MW3 – akin to Michael Mann pitching Heat (Wait for ages, have one awesome shootout, wait for ages more), against Die Hard (Quick set up, then shooting and explosions all the way). If they’d actually pitched it as an alternative, I suspect that many more people would be trying it right now, as the reaction of the majority of the dedicated Call of Duty players I know is that they’re feeling tired of the franchise at this point, and as they’re all people who have put in 15-20 days of time on Black Ops and MW2, it’s not Call of Duty which is grinding them down. It’s the one-note, constant fighting multiplayer.
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