Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Thoughts on Multiplayer
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for that last few days, you know along with millions of others, that CoD:MW3 is out and hogging high speed internet connections everywhere. Modern Warfare 3 may very well be the most anticipated release ever, and according to Game Informer, is the biggest Xbox franchise in history. That statement surprised me as I would have assumed it to be Halo, but I can see where CoD may have taken over that first place spot.
So enough mindless drivel…lets talk multiplayer. Immediately upon booting up your game, you like most, will bypass the recommendation to play the campaign first. Screw that. We all know how to play CoD right? Got no time for campaigns when there are prestige’s to attain! The first thing you’ll notice is the Xbox Live interface runs much more smoothly and quickly than Black Ops did. Everything is mostly similar, but let’s look at some quick differences.
Prestige is at a much higher level now and can be done only ten times verses the fifteen of Black Ops. This is an interesting method to integrate more un-lockable gun features. Unlike the previous incarnation of the franchise, MW3 doesn’t work on the point system where you can buy unlocks, it’s back to MW2 style earning the gun specific unlocks by simply using the gun.
They’ve branched the killstreaks into three trees: Assault – these all build on each other with kills from streak counting to the next…going to see lots more shooty things than in Black Ops. Support – these are you UAV’s, flak jackets, Recon, etc that help the team. Your kills continue counting even through deaths, so you run up the tree of selected streaks. Finally there is Specialist – this branch allows you to add in extra perks to you game play as you build up kills. Interesting options…
Game play certainly has a different feel from Black Ops, while still maintaining Modern Warfare 2 elements; the developers have managed to present a different game play, though not necessarily better. It seems the designers took a note from Battlefield in terms of environmental effects. Every bomb, missile, rocket, or pave low that comes through shakes everything and throws dust and smoke all over the place. Almost to a point of irritation as there seem to be many more killstreaks coming through because of the building progression of the trees.
On that note the frequent availability of killstreaks also seems to be potentially a game changer in terms of how it will affect a players approach to the game. A team now needs to be much more considerate of how they run killstreaks in an attempt to build up their own team’s resources while weakening or crippling the opposing teams. Currently it seems the support tree is the most popular, but that shouldn’t be a surprise as new players realize their K:D will be low as they familiarize themselves with the maps.
Maps…yes…here we move on to a source of contention. It seems either you love it or hate it. The maps for MW3 are a definitive departure from both Black Ops and MW2. After a couple of days of play only a couple of the maps allow any real sight lines as they all are overly congested with terrain, obstacles, and buildings. The multi-player feel is much quicker, frantic, and congested. Currently rushing classes seem to be taking front stage due to the need to constantly circle maps to keep from getting flanked. And let me tell you flanking is easy in MW3. The spawns have been less than ideal as more than once players will find themselves spawning next to, beside, underneath, or in close proximity to opponents. This is partially due to the game engine I believe, but also due to the nature of the maps.
This leads to my final thought, MW3 will redefine the approach to multi-player gaming for an FPS. In this incarnation of the IP, to be successful players will have to work together by ferreting out opponents, securing all fire lanes, and supporting each other with appropriate ordering of killstreaks. Because of the game elements that seem to be directing game play in this direction, I think it’s a shame that Infinity Ward didn’t include a Clan Wars, allowing clans to compete directly in their own lobby against other clans. With everything put together, Modern Warfare 3 is the ideal platform for direct competition between clans.
All in all, it’s a good game. Sure it’s different, and I can already see the importance of different map design types, but if you like CoD, you can’t go wrong with this version. Just make sure you bring an open mind.
