Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)
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 Another classic example of what happens when greed takes over what was once considered to be a fresh idea.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is a 2023 first-person shooter action game developed by Sledgehammer Studios and Infinity Ward. The campaign was released on Early Access via pre-orders on November 2nd, 2023, while the full game was released on November 10th, 2023. The game received mixed to negative reviews, (especially the campaign) and is considered one of the worst Call of Duty campaigns ever made.
Plot
Task Force 141 must track down Vladimir Makarov before he launches World War III.
Why It Should Be Buried
- Rushed game development and Executive meddling: The game was supposed to be an expansion of Modern Warfare II, featuring a new story that would continue said game's story, along with new content for the multiplayer, but Activision rebooted the project into a full-fledged sequel to Modern Warfare II. To make matters worse, not only did the game take a year and a half to develop (which is half of how much time Call of Duty takes to develop, which is 3 years), but many Sledgehammer Games employees said that they had no clue about Activision's decision, which led to a rushed development schedule filled with crunch culture. However, Sledgehammer denied the game was rushed and crunched, calling it "a labor of love."
- Due to the game being originally planned as an expansion pack of the previous entry, it is essentially a reskin of said entry and barely changes anything from it. Somebody reported a glitch that the game says that a disc for Modern Warfare II on the PS4 is required to play the game despite being a full-fledged game, which shows that the game was initially meant to be an expansion.
- Like any Call of Duty campaign, it's short but even worse, it's even shorter than the usual 6-8 hour campaigns, with it lasting 3-4 hours, which is almost half of that amount.
- The campaign is terrible, with very rushed and shallow writing.
- The game is a prime example of nostalgia pandering, as it makes tons of references from the original Modern Warfare trilogy. It tries to recreate those scenes but lacks the excitement and suffers from shallow execution, possibly due to the game trying to be as "realistic" as possible.
- Alex and Graves, while they’re not unlikable in particular, are both suddenly alive, and working for Farah requires players to play the Warzone seasonal events, something many players are unfamiliar with, thus leading to confusion on how they are alive and working for Farah. (Alex lost his leg from blowing up Barkov's factory in Modern Warfare 2019 and Graves wasn't in the tank when Soap and Gaz proceeded to fight him in Modern Warfare II.)
- Adding onto that, Graves suddenly works on the protagonists' side with no moral buildup on why he switched sides, especially if one considers his and Shadow Company's betrayal of Task Force 141 in the previous game.
- The Passenger mission (which is based on the infamous No Russian mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)), looks barely like it’s based on the aforementioned mission from the aforementioned game as you play as a former ULF member named Samara Jalal who is sitting next to an unnamed person who turns out to be the guy who texted Makarov from the Modern Warfare II credits cutscene, trying to take Samara hostage, but (if the player takes him down), he fails, and Samara takes his gun to take out the terrorists on the plane before being stunned by a flashbang and taken hostage and blown up with the plane, this can't even be called a mission since for the most part it acts like a cutscene, and you don't do anything there, aside from shooting enemies till you get flashbanged. It's also not as graphic as the No Russian mission, with a Twitter user comparing that mission to a "kindergarten's interpretation" of it.
- Makarov is inferior to his original counterpart. While his original counterpart participated in the mass shooting in the No Russian mission and knew his comrades Joseph Allen and Yuri were undercover agents leading to him killing the former and wounding the latter, here he uses Samara as a scapegoat to bomb an airplane.
- Immediately after, Farah and Alex were able to delete evidence of the ULF's involvement with the attack, causing any tension or conflict of them being fugitives to be thrown out the window.
- Yuri barely gets any character development and screen time, especially if one were to compare his original counterpart where he once worked for Makarov.
- The ending is a poorly executed emotional cliffhanger as Makarov just kills Soap with no build-up or payoff and escapes. You don't even kill him by the end, essentially making him a Karma Houdini.
- General Shepherd’s betrayal before the last mission is far from memorable compared to his betrayal in the 2009 game. He's more of a corrupt general trying to cover up illegal arms dealing rather than intentionally starting World War III to unite the Americans against the Russians.
- Price killing General Shepherd is far from being memorable as most of it happens in a post-credits cutscene, was off-screen, and anticlimactic rather than a full mission where Price and Soap chase him to his base, with Soap being stabbed by the general and throwing the knife he was stabbed within Shepherd's eye while he was beating up Price like in the original Modern Warfare 2.
- Some of the open combat missions are horrible and are botched by the stupid AI. There's no reward for playing stealthily, it's very hard to remain hidden, and there are reskins from Warzone/DMZ maps. these missions also feel like open-world spec ops missions, albeit done poorly.
- In addition, the campaign just feels like a tutorial for the Warzone and DMZ game modes, especially with the open combat missions.
- While it is nice to see the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) maps back, (especially Terminal and Rust) it has been confirmed the only maps available at launch for this game are the aforementioned maps, which come off as lazy.
- The game is rushed, so it's riddled with bugs and glitches, and while they don't make the game unplayable, they are annoying.
- At launch, players reported missing letters on the defeat and victory screen.
- While not as awful as Forspoken, the game still requires at least over 200 GB of space to download, although that's only if you are also playing multiplayer and Warzone along with the campaign.
- The armory system, while a cool idea, is very underwhelming.
- The game costs $70 at launch for all versions even the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One version, and considering the lack of content, it's way overpriced.
- The new Warzone Gulag cutscene for the new Urzikstan map is just plain generic. You walk towards a train to the gulag and a soldier hits you with his gun on the way to the train and you just get put on the train and the cutscene ends there. Remember how detailed the Al-Mazrah warzone gulag cutscene was?
Unburied Qualities
- Seeing a zombie mode in a Modern Warfare game feels nice.
- Soap's death was an emotional moment, despite being poorly executed and not being as memorable as the 2011 game.
- The linear missions of the campaign are surprisingly fun.
- Despite being the only launch maps for this game, it feels nice to see the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) maps in the game, as mentioned above.
- The much disliked weapon tuning from Modern Warfare II is removed in this game.
- Any weapons, attachments, camos, blueprints, loading screens, operators, and gun screens you earn in Modern Warfare II are transferred to this game.
- The graphics are good for 2023 standards.
- The movement is great, as the slide canceling is back, and all the movement additions that Modern Warfare II (2022) brought to the table return here.
- The Multiplayer mode is still fun to play.
- The new mastery camos look great and radical, with Interstellar looking the best.
Reception
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III received mixed to negative reviews from critics and was torn apart by gamers, criticizing the campaign, its open combat missions, and the lack of new features. and is the first time a mainline Call of Duty entry would receive negative feedback from critics outside of the spin-offs.
Angry Joe listed this game as one of the worst games of 2023.
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