Honestly, we wish we could score Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) lower, but it’s just too competent. Everything about this sequel is cynical and (arguably) mean-spirited. But invariably, just as exasperation sets in at yet another transparent attempt to court controversy or sell players the same experience year in and year out, it’ll drop a genuinely spectacular set piece and impress with its frightening self-confidence.
On the whole, this is not a subtle or tasteful game. Its single-player campaign is mindless and infuriatingly smug, with the same mixture of linear shooting, military jargon and self-importance as last year’s Black Ops and MW2 before that. New York, Paris and London get blown up, civilian casualties are slavered over with an odd mix of glee and mawkishness — which are more offensive for their contempt of players’ emotional intelligence than the death of virtual people — and gameplay consists of shooting waves of enemies as they spawn over and over. But as you race through city waterways with hundreds of ships exploding around you, it’s undeniably breathtaking.
Likewise with multiplayer: it’s absolutely nothing that the MW series hasn’t done before — a half-hearted new deathmatch mode and reorganised perks arguably don’t make a new game and they certainly don’t make a compelling one — but the core mechanics are still responsive, visceral and thanks to a constant trickle of rewards, feel like more than just repeating the same aim/shoot cycle ad nauseum.
Ultimately, it’s hard to love MW3, but compared to Battlefield’s timid campaign, it’s impossible not to respect the developer’s self-belief and find yourself admiring its expertly framed spectacle. Online, however, there’s just no competition to Battlefield 3’s nuanced, gorgeous action.;
