Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3‘s campaign has been available for early access for those who have pre-ordered the new game since November 3. We know what you’re thinking: who is playing Call of Duty for the campaign?
Well, way back when, that’s how this juggernaut gaming franchise became famous. Back in a time when adding aiming down the sights was revolutionary, as were: pivoting away from historical conflicts into a modern warfare setting; forcing players to use cover, rather than go in all guns blazing; and of course, there were those pesky, almost invisible grenades that would instantly kill you.
Later came the interactive cut scenes, which would also give way to debacles like the ‘Press F to pay respects‘ meme in Infinite Warfare, time-jumping plots woven with a retro Vietnam haze in the Black Ops franchise, and of course, a swathe of megawatt A-listers, giving their likenesses and names to supercharge the cinematic quality of the story mode.
From Avatar’s Sam Worthington as Alex Mason in several games, to Gary Oldman in Black Ops and World at War and Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harington in Infinite Warfare, no expense was spared. Even Idris Elba appeared in the original Modern Warfare 3 campaign back in 2011, and you can catch him in Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC nowadays.
Sadly, 2023’s sequel doesn’t evolve the formula quite as much as we’ve seen before, even in the hugely popular ‘modern’ Modern Warfare reboot, which began back in 2019. Back then, we gained tight, corridor-based clearing in claustrophobic settings via night-vision goggles and flashlights, guiding civilians to safety via CCTV, as well as rebuilding Task Force 141, led by everyone’s favourite combat cockney, Captain Price.
In the 2022 follow-up, we had genuinely inventive missions, with John ‘Soap’ MacTavish concocting make-shift weapons to escape a heavily armed area, dialogue options to speak to comrades, and incredible, show-stopping recreations of Amsterdam.
There were intense house-hopping missions in Mexico with new ally Alejandro from the border force, as well as standout missions such as ‘Violence and Timing’, which saw you leaping between moving vehicles and taking control of the cars and trucks. The campaign also added swimming and water combat, ahead of similar changes in Warzone.
This time around, there are certainly changes to the seven-hour campaign, just in moderation. ‘Open Warfare’ missions give you larger maps, with multiple optional weapons and equipment drops, such as rope ascenders and night vision goggles, which allow you to approach missions all guns blazing or stealthily.
You can also collect kit for future replays, similar to Spec Ops missions, allowing you to potentially do better next time, but we feel like this is more for die-hard fans only.
The best versions of these are Soap’s infiltration of an island to get to an oligarch’s financier – it’s littered with gun-toting guards, multiple routes, as well as killer drones and feels akin to something we’d expect from replayability in the Hitman franchise. Another highlight is the mask-wearing sniper Ghost and his starring role in defusing bombs via parachute in the ‘Gora Dam’ in Verdansk. Plus, there’s ‘Danger Close’, a classic ‘shooting tiny enemies from a gunship’ mission, which is undeniably still fun all these years later.
There are far fewer dialogue options this time, and it’s unclear whether they provide much of a branching path, while some timed objectives help shake things up slightly. There’s some enemy variety, but we would have liked to have seen more. The heavily-armoured juggernauts return, and the best new addition is armoured snipers, who have thermal camo creating tense sniping sections in a snowy mission, ‘Frozen Tundra’.
Sadly, some of the potentially coolest moments such as ‘Deep Cover’, where you play as female CIA leader Kate Laswell while undercover on an army base, have limited options for exploration, and this could have been a great chance to replicate the incredibly intense, multiple-objective infiltration of the KGB Headquarters in Black Ops Cold War in 2020.
However, the horrifying gas attack conclusion to this new mission was definitely arresting, but could have been extended or been the focus of a whole section, as it was one of the moments that stuck with us the most from our entire playthrough.
Similarly, an attack on vehicles travelling across frozen water while decked out in scuba gear ends too quickly in ‘Frozen Tundra’, and has the feel of more of an interactive cutscene with some small button presses added, than a fully scoped-out, exciting new mission format.
If you’ve got the patience, you can explore multiple routes to complete many of the missions, but there’s little incentive to do so, as you can normally shoot your way past the alerted enemies. Meanwhile, we didn’t discover any intelligence collectibles or items that made the exploration any more worthwhile.
We also see a lot of key locations from Verdansk on repeat, from the stadium to the dam, which might have been intended as a nice narrative nostalgic throwback, but feels like a PTSD flashback for a player that spent more than enough time in those locations during Warzone battle royales over the past three years.
In terms of the story, unless you’ve diligently followed the branching Warzone twists and turns, you might be somewhat confused to see the likes of Phillip Graves and Alex Keller alive and well. However, the return of The Boys‘ Claudia Doumit as Farah Karim is very welcome as she subverts a lot of the franchise’s stoic, macho military-man tropes, but sadly, she’s fairly underused in the plot. Meanwhile, classic villain Vladimir Makarov still packs punch all these years later.
Despite playing all three heavily convoluted geopolitical plots in the new Modern Warfare trilogy, along with lots of Warzone playtime and multiple YouTube explainers, it’s hard for this Modern Warfare 3 campaign not to feel like a simple snapshot that will really continue in some way in the Warzone 2.0 updates or perhaps a future Modern Warfare 4 sequel.
But is that even a problem? Is anyone playing Call of Duty for the campaign beyond the hardcore CoD crowd? To date, our favourite recent campaign is the mind-bending adventures in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and perhaps what’s most interesting is where the franchise goes next year.
MW3 closed the trilogy back in 2011, so have publisher Activision run out of titles to reboot and remix? Unless they end up exploring the likes of Ghosts, Infinite Warfare, or Advanced Warfare. Those titles weren’t quite as popular at the time of release, and led us on the path to reboots that we’re on now.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign review – conclusion
Overall, the Modern Warfare 3 campaign feels like it might have been rushed in terms of new gameplay developments, as well as narrative payoff, although there is a helluva shock in there for fans. It feels like it needed more time to evolve what’s there, which is always going to be hard with a yearly franchise, and perhaps not allowing Modern Warfare the customary two years off for development made it harder. Also, the fact that it’s being offered as a pre-order bonus gives an indication that the real thing everyone is waiting for is the multiplayer, the open-world zombies mode, and more Warzone 2.0 updates.
If you play Call of Duty for the campaigns, you might be disappointed, but if you’re like pretty much everyone else and play everything else the smash-hit franchise has to offer, it might be a fun distraction. However, if you’re totally new, it’s probably not worth your time just for this. In fact, the question is more likely: does Call of Duty even need a campaign mode anymore?
Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III releases November 10 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.
