Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III gave me exactly the sort of Hollywood-style shooting I wanted from an action game. It moves quickly, throws you into loud firefights and knows how to make a set piece feel like an event. The story is much less memorable. It feels familiar and uninspired, but I still had a good time playing through the action around it.

The campaign’s best moments are the ones where the game gets out of its own way and lets the shooting carry the scene. The weapons feel punchy, the environments give the action a blockbuster scale, and the pace rarely sits still for long. I enjoyed the straightforward spectacle of moving through a mission, clearing rooms and seeing what the next sequence had in store. It is a comfortable formula, but when it is working, it remains a fun one.

The opening prison infiltration shows the more tightly staged side of the campaign. Darkness, a clear route and a team moving toward an immediate goal give the action a sense of purpose before the louder scenes arrive. It is the sort of direction I enjoy from Call of Duty: the mission controls what I can see and when it reveals the next threat. The broader Open Combat maps take a deliberately different approach.

Open Combat missions give you objectives within a larger area and let you scavenge weapons and equipment before deciding how to tackle them. That makes stealth, a direct assault or a change of position more practical than in a corridor. The freedom is useful, but the trade-off is weaker pacing. Searching for gear does not always produce the same excitement as a carefully timed reveal, even when both approaches end in a satisfying firefight.

The story never reached the same level. The characters and stakes did not give me much to hold onto, and the plot felt like a collection of familiar beats rather than a particularly compelling new chapter. Some missions also trade the tighter direction of the series’ strongest set pieces for more open-ended objectives. That approach can offer choice, but it did not always give me the same sense of momentum or clarity.

The launch multiplayer map pool brought back all 16 original Modern Warfare 2 maps, including Rust and Highrise. Faster sprinting and sliding change the pace on familiar layouts, so returning players have recognisable routes to learn again under different movement rules. That nostalgia is a real part of the package, though it also means the initial selection offered fewer entirely new places to discover.

Zombies uses a large extraction map where squads complete contracts, gather equipment and decide when to leave. It is a different proposition from the enclosed, round-based mode associated with earlier entries: the pressure comes partly from how far you push an outing before extracting. That gives the package another substantial mode, although my assessment centres on the campaign. Its presence does not make the campaign’s story or open missions any more compelling on their own.

Replaying an Open Combat mission gives its freedom a clearer purpose. Finding equipment and learning the space makes a different route possible, so the map is not exhausted by the first completed objective. That is an appealing idea for players who enjoy testing approaches. It is a different reward from seeing a surprising scripted scene, though, and the campaign does not always make the transition between those pleasures feel natural.

The campaign is short, so its less memorable scenes occupy a noticeable share of the journey. I enjoyed the immediate business of firing a weapon, moving through a room and reaching the next set piece. The plot gave me less to think about afterwards. Its best-directed missions made me want the next encounter; its weaker stretches made me miss the momentum that a more deliberate route can create.