The Explosive Mic Drop of Infinity Ward’s Epic Saga
I really hate that I have to call Modern Warfare 3 (2011) the “original,” like it’s some ancient artifact. The newer MW3 from 2023 is just the MW2 Remake wearing a fake mustache. It’s not even a full game (No I didn’t play it) – it’s a glorified DLC that somehow shipped with a $70 price tag. Seriously, fuck all the way off!
But we’re here to discuss the OG. I remember being unsure if we’d even get a follow-up to Modern Warfare 2 (2009) with all the drama going down at Infinity Ward at the time. Lawsuits, mass exoduses, and enough behind-the-scenes chaos to make a reality show. It felt like the series might have peaked right as the studio imploded. But money speaks louder than any schoolgirl gossip and sure enough, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was announced, promising bigger battles, more explosions, and a multiplayer experience designed to consume every free second of our teenage years. Millions of players strapped in for one last Michael Bay-esque ride through collapsing cities, explosive betrayals, and enough slow-motion door breaches to make a feature film out of. While some saw it as the epic conclusion to a legendary trilogy, others felt it was more like reheated MREs – still filling, but a little too familiar… and grey. It was still riding off the coattails of the massively successful MW2. Some saw it as a triumphant finale, others felt like it played things a little too safe – but over a decade later, was it the send-off the trilogy deserved, or just a well-polished encore?
Before you even start the campaign, they hit you with another “Offensive Content” disclaimer, so naturally, I was bracing myself for the next spicy mission to top “No Russian”. But instead, it felt like such a fucking tease. (SPOILER ALERT- Little girl gets blown up by a corrosive gas-filled ice cream truck while you (the dad) is taping)… YOU don’t even get to feel the satisfaction of wasting the innocent family yourself. It’s basically all done in a cutscene. What a rip! After gunning down hundreds of civilians in an airport in the last game, I half-expected MW3 to have us playing as Santa Claus with a flamethrower, burning down a Romanian orphanage on Christmas Eve.
Modern Warfare 3 picks up right where MW2 left off- no time for breathers, no time for logic. World War 3 is in full swing! Russia has decided to invade the world! Really taking up the “Russian bad-guy” trope to a whole other level of cartoonishness. Everything is bigger, louder, and more batshit insane – skyscrapers crumble, entire cities get turned into warzones, and the explosions are so massive they make your testosterone levels spike just by looking at them. It’s like if a grenade had a baby with a jet engine, and they decided to start a family in the middle of a city. It’s absolutely bonkers and I adore it. After Soap is revived like some kind of action-hero Lazarus, you switch to the Americans and dive straight into the madness, literally fighting enemies on Wall Street and shooting your way through the New York Stock Exchange; this game sure knows how to make an intro. Task Force 141 is disavowed just like Tom Cruise in every single Mission Impossible movie, and Captain Price and Soap McTavish are wanted global fugitives on the run!
While we do get plenty of high-octane action with Price and Soap tearing through 3rd world poverty stricken shantytowns with no pause, the narrative sometimes feels quite crammed, like they were trying to fit in every epic moment they could, regardless of flow. The pacing is kinda shit. One minute, you’re in a full-scale battle on the streets of Prague, then you’re parachuting into a snowy Russian landscape, only to be whisked away into the heart of Paris, diving through the catacombs like fucking Indiana Jones with a machine gun, before blasting through the streets of Berlin in a tank – all in the span of just a few missions. It’s like Infinity Ward had a list of “cool shit to do” and decided to just check them off, even if it meant the story took some wild, jarring turns. It feels like whiplash. While this results in some truly sweet set pieces, it can feel like a whirlwind where you’re barely given time to process what just happened before you’re thrown into the next insane firefight. Regardless of how disjointed it gets, it’s all still very enjoyable. That London Subway mission and the Russian Secret Service airplane missions are fucking awesome! If you thought blowing up the International Space Station in MW2 was stupid, strap the fuck in for this, my guy!
The MW3 campaign is a rollercoaster of explosive set pieces, wild twists, and a global war that takes you all over the map. Packed with plenty of highlights, offering just the right balance of explosive action and some surprisingly heart-wrenching moments. It’s a sweet popcorn thriller, where you can switch off your brain, crank the volume, and just enjoy the ride. The final mission, however, must be stated- IT IS PERFECT! It might be the best in the whole series. Without going into spoilers, it’s the perfect sendoff for our hero Captain Price. Everything about it screams badass, from the heart-pounding action, the banger soundtrack, to the emotional payoff. It’s the ultimate, no-holds-barred climax that ties up the trilogy with a bang, leaving you with a fist-pumping, “Hell yeah!” kind of satisfaction that you can’t quite shake off once the credits start rolling.
The multiplayer was fine, nothing groundbreaking, but let’s be real – no one’s even playing it anymore. That said, it’s worth noting MW3 introduced “Kill Confirmed”, which has since become a CoD mainstay, so it gets points for that. It’s a solid mode that added a bit more strategy to the chaos, but let’s face it: we all know the real star here is the campaign. Honestly, I’d love to see this campaign remastered just like the other two. This was still Call of Duty during its golden years even if the formula was beginning to feel a tad stale. This campaign, while nothing Game of the Year worthy, is still a fairly satisfying conclusion overall with peak sound design and engaging combat; and that “Dust to Dust” ending mission alone deserves to be experienced in glorious 4KHD – just so we can hang around with Makarov one last time.
It’ll only take one…
Mikhail
Verdict: 8/10
https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_3