Summary
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions lack originality and reuse assets from Warzone and multiplayer, resulting in a generic and unexciting gameplay experience.
- The objectives in these missions are unoriginal and disconnected from the game's overall story, with little character dialogue to enhance the immersion.
- Despite the potential for different playstyles, the mission structure and objectives mainly encourage stealth, making the option to swap loadouts feel unnecessary and underutilized. Additionally, the high number of Open Combat Missions disrupts the pacing of the campaign, leading to a lack of progression in the narrative.
Each and every Call of Duty has had some kind of new gimmick to bring to the table in an attempt to stand out from the ever-growing number of entries that have come before them, and the success of these gimmicks has varied wildly over the years. While gimmicks like the original Modern Warfare's create-a-class system and 2019's Modern Warfare's lean mechanic have since become staples of the franchise, there are double the number of gimmicks that have been forgotten over time. Unfortunately, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's main gimmick may belong to the latter camp.
While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 brings a handful of new features to the table, its most prevalent can be found in the campaign. Sandwiched between standard Call of Duty missions is a new type of level called Open Combat Missions. These Open Combat Missions see players approach a handful of objectives in a variety of different ways, and while that sounds like a great concept on paper, its execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions Just Aren't Very Fun
Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions Feel Very Generic
By all accounts, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions are a massive letdown, and by far one of the most critiqued elements of this entry's campaign, which on the whole is being panned across the board for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest issues with Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions is their lack of originality, and that can be seen from the get-go, as most of the vast majority of these missions simply reuse Call of Duty: Warzone and multiplayer assets, with the most obvious being map layouts and locations.
It doesn't help that the objectives inside those maps are also pretty unoriginal and quite generic. Most Open Combat Missions will task players with sneaking around an environment, reaching a few specific areas, interacting with an object, and repeating that process until the mission ends. It's very rare that these objectives actually feel tied to Modern Warfare 3's overarching story in a significant way, and the lack of character dialogue during these missions doesn't help that.
Another big issue is that, on paper, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions can technically be approached in a few different ways, and are thus replayable. But in actuality, players are given very few incentives to actually do that. Players are given the option to swap loadouts at the start of the mission, and can find crates littered across the map containing weapons that can then be swapped out on future playthroughs, but the actual mission structure and objectives don't really encourage players to use a gameplay style other than stealth, making the appearance of a loadout instead feel just a little tacked-on and cheap.
There Are Far Too Many Open Combat Missions in Modern Warfare 3
Perhaps the biggest crime of all when it comes to Modern Warfare 3's Open Combat Missions is just how many of them there are. Of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's 14 missions, a total of six are Open Combat Missions, and with these missions ranging from anywhere between 10–30 minutes depending on playstyle, the pacing of the entire campaign can be dragged down significantly.
Players will go from playing a standard CoD formula mission that's over in 10 minutes to playing two Open Combat Missions in a row, causing some pretty severe pacing whiplash. And with these Open Combat Missions not feeling very story-driven, it means that players won't feel like they're really progressing Modern Warfare 3's narrative for sometimes an hour at a time.
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 58 /100 Critics Rec: 14%
- Released
- November 10, 2023
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Developer(s)
- Sledgehammer Games
- Publisher(s)
- Activision
- Engine
- iw 9.0
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
WHERE TO PLAY
The war has changed. Call of Duty returns with an all-new campaign, modernized versions of classic Multiplayer maps and an open-world PvE Zombies experience. The campaign, a direct sequel to the record-breaking Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, sees Captain Price and Task Force 141 face off against ultranationalist war criminal Vladimir Makarov as he extends his grasp across the world. In Multiplayer, the 16 maps that launched with Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 return with upgraded graphics, new modes and innovative gameplay features. In Modern Warfare Zombies, team up with other squads for the first time ever as you work together to survive in the largest Zombies map yet
- Franchise
- Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
- Genre(s)
- First-Person Shooter
