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collinnmckinley · 1 year ago

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Modern Warfare III Review:

Okay so, I finished my first play through last night 5 days ago and ngl… lmao i had to open a gameplay so i could recount what actually my thoughts were at those times because I was confused half the time if not more from the story.

So here’s my unfiltered, filled with spoilers, and honest review.

Before anything let me just say this; I was wrong, my theory was wrong (although a banger if you ask me. Hire me Activision), and nothing I said in that post mattered. I’ll swallow my words… But I am slightly annoyed by it.

Here're the points I had problems with:

The story: it was…. Idk how to put it other than it being super fucking fast and filled with plot holes. Like half the time I was confused as to what was going on or I would forget what needed to be done. I think I blacked out 40% of the playthrough, because I would go into an OCM (Open Combat Missions) and Graves/Laswell would be like “bruh you need to do this we don't got time for stroll on the park get to it” and I’m just running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what are the obj. I think they could’ve made it a bit slow paced, like MWII or MW even. Those had perfect story pace, even after the fact MWII didn’t have good writing. I just thought, MWIII would be impactful in a way the previous MWs weren’t, the ending WAS, but it took them 5 hours to of dragging and stretching one fucking thing, literally one thing. Because if you see the campaign in a way, even the bad guy, Makarov, wasn’t THAT impressive. I legit didn’t give a single fuck about Makarov or what his motives were, I just followed with 141’s intuitions.

Speaking of Makarov’s plans, he just appeared out of nowhere, and he has some beef with Farah and Urzakstan for some reason. Why? They didn’t specify other than he wants to “bring Russia to its old glory”. And of course they had to put fucking Farah into middle of this fiasco because why wouldn’t they. I hate the fact that she’s STILL to this day the center of the fucking MW storyline. She didn’t have much of a role to play in MWII campaign but the Raids took the center part. And that annoyed me tbh. Alas, we can’t have everything we ask for. (I would’ve stanned Farah in the long run but her holding hands with Graves in season 5 REALLY annoyed me but that's for another day).

Operation 627: Misleading. That's what I have to describe this mission, when i read the mission name, I was expecting it to be Price centered mission. I really wanted it to be a Price centered mission because the number 627 is Price’s identity. So to just take the number away and give it to Makarov really irked me if I’m being honest. And the whole marketing for it was misleading too (I’m looking at you barry). Gameplay wise it was okay I guess, typical CoD campaign mission.

Open Combat Missions: now here things gets fucked up. I was not expecting to be thrown right into OCMs right away. And by the end of my 400th try I was just running around and shooting without any care. I tried to do it stealthy, and with the enemies standing around the objectives that you CANNOT avoid it's almost impossible to even go undetected. It’s like a mixture of campaign and DMZ, which BTW is a really bad combination. And also, whenever I try to restart from the checkpoint it starts from the TOP! You have to do it all over again. I just wish they added the checkpoint thing it would’ve made so much easier. I know they want to make it feel like DMZ but it just SUCKS. And I wish it would've been at least a choice that you could make before the mission starts. Basically either you go OCM or just a regular mission, but in this case you’re forced to go to OCM.

(Also Farah’s Arabic sucks ass. At least they casted a good VO for Dena who knew how to speak Arabic properly.)

Reactor: again, another OCM. But this time, it was Price I played as. Now here everything felt off for me. Normally we would be playing as Soap or Gaz in ANY scenario because that would be the logical thing to do. But when the camera angle shifted to Price’s perspective, everything changed. And following this mission, every mission we got to play as Price just gave me a fear of sorts. Same as before, hard not to go undetected but more manageable than “Precious Cargo”. By the end of the mission Price almost gets incapacitated by the toxic gas, and that's what we see in the trailer. And from it we knew someone’s gonna die but it was not Price for sure, because he lives and kicks ass left and right.

Price being an errand boy: there’s a cutscene before mission ‘Payload, where Price and Farah get together to infiltrate an underground bunker to stop some rockets. In that cutscene it felt like the roles have been switched between the two. When Price was this leading figure in Farah’s life that had an enormous impact that changed the course of her life, now she’s acting like he owes her? It’s the other way around if you ask me, and she owes him fucking big. I don’t know man, I just hated the way she treated him the way she did. They keep giving her a piece of the story bigger than she could chew, and Price is left with crumbs (even with the amount of cutscenes and gameplay we have with him), he almost felt like he was being LED by everyone around him instead of him LEADING the team (and Farah). He felt like what Soap felt like in MWII, even Soap had a major ass role in MWII. That cutscene, as much as he looked good in it, felt really undermining Price for me. And the audacity Farah had when she said “do you trust me” to Price. Girl, after what you pulled with Graves, I would never trust you with anything. And Price giving his utmost loyalty to her just didn’t feel like he would do something like that. And I mean that in the most respectful way. When Price told her about Shadow company calling a hit on 141 and Shepherd being a bad man, I legit thought she would actually be shocked and side with Price, but what did she say? “My weapons are my business” fuck you Farah, and fuck your weapons. In conclusion, yeah Price felt more like an errand boy than the Captain of 141 task force. The mission that follows that cutscene was almost standard campaign mission. I say almost because it still felt like OCM.

Yuri Volkov: I’ll be honest, I was not expecting Yuri to make an appearance, I was expecting ‘Roach’ to be there more than anything. And we finally got to see Yuri’s face. I liked how they took Yuri’s story and twisted it around so he never 'betrayed' 141 by keeping the fact that he worked with Makarov from them. I guess Laswell is indeed useful sometimes. The fact that they made him be useful to 141 without having him take one in the face from Price was indeed surprising. (I was screaming in discord chat about it to Mari when he appeared.) Though we don't know what his fate is, but I'm 100% sure he's still alive and I have a feeling he'll be joining 141 in the next installment if not in the upcoming seasons of MWIII. I just hope he got away safe. That man sounded like a rascal lol, he definitely has some stuff up his sleeves.

Oh and special mention about Nikolai, am I happy to see Nik again. That man deserves every bit of love. No MW or 141 would be complete without Nik.

Stealth: For some reason this game was made to be played as ‘go big or go fucking die’ because in “Deep Cover”, you play as Laswell trying to sneak into the Arklov base, to meet up with Yuri, and i got caught like at least 10 times before I had to restart all over again, and again and again. The fucking stealth in this game is horrendous. Whoever made it IMPOSSIBLE to stealth, I hope you choke on water you drink and recover so you know how I felt all those tries I had to restart. It’s the same case even in regular missions, you either get caught even in fucking desguise, or they start shooting you for no fucking reason. I walk far, I'm too far from the obj, I walk close they shoot me. Fuck me man, I just had to fucking power walking through the first half of this whats suppose to be a 10 minutes walking simulator, took me 3 minutes of multiple tries because of that. Not gonna lie, I was kind of expecting Laswell to meet her demise in that mission because of the unavoidable missiles (maybe I was little bit of hoping it too who knows), but she survived, yaay.

Alex & Farah: then comes in the Master and the Lapdog duo. At this point I’ll never get tired of complaining about Farah and her personality. They tried so hard to make her into a girlboss, and they would have succeeded if they just left her story as is after MWII. But no, they had to drag her and her lapdog into this story and make something out of it.

I am just annoyed by everything she says. She keeps secrets from Price, the man who basically saved her life to become the commander she is today, her motives are unclear, she says she does this to protect her country and that she doesn’t get out of it to protect but stays INSIDE it protecting it (her words not mine), extends hands with a war criminal when she said that she doesn’t work with people who kills civilians for no reason, she compares herself, 141 and PRICE to the Shadows/Shepherd by saying “we’re all dangerous”, and the icing on the cake, her Arabic is horrendous. I know because I speak Arabic fluently. You might say “but Jay thats her accent you can’t judge her like that”, I know how Arabic accents sounds like, and this bitch’s is fucking incoherent half the time if not all the time.

And Alex… oh boy, this man is a fucking idiot lmfao. He had good intentions in MW2019, and I liked him there, but they should’ve just killed him off. But no, they had to bring him back. What are they gonna do now with Soap huh? They're gonna bring him back too? Also didn’t Keller say “he’s tired of getting told who his friends are” and didn’t want to follow the CIA blindly anymore? What’s he doing now with Farah, hm? I’ve never seen a boy so delusional like him before.

So many plot holes in these two characters only, I hate how they’re written.

Makarov lives: we… never got to learn the reason. Yes I went back and watched the gameplay today just to make sure I was not wrong, they never say why Price stopped Soap from killing Mak in that heli. “John he’s in custody he’s not going anywhere. Stand down.” FOR WHAT?! If they knew Makarov had this much power in the world, they should’ve just executed him. But noooooo they had to keep him alive for plot progress. If he died then and there in that heli, Soap would’ve been alive at the end. Was it because Shepherd said “bring him out ALIVE”? Or was it because Price wanted a win so bad that he threw his moral ambiguity out of the fucking heli he was riding? Man, I miss the MW2019 Price. But we’ll get to Price’s personality section later.

Yeah, we never got to learn the reason why Makarov didn’t die, why he is still alive. They just made it so that he’s the only villain that had the balls to do what he did. Bitch please, he looks like a whiny rich child that thinks he can do anything he wants to do. Literally that's how I saw Mak in the reboot. His character legit sounded like a spoiled child, not the evil man we knew and hated from the og MW series. And I can’t believe that I’m saying this but I kind of miss that Mak.

Like, who would look at this face and say “oh he looks intimidating shiver me timbers”

Yullian is too adorable for this role, and he did a good job to bring a villain to life, it just wasn’t enough to be "The" Makarov.

Soap & Ghost: now that brings us to this broski duo. Watching that heli scene made me realize two things, 1. Either Ghost and Soap were friendly before MWII and Ghost was never a lone wolf to begin with. Or 2.141 was tight as knit before it was even formed. Because if you actually go back to the mission itself these two sounded as close to each other as they were aftermath of MWII Alone mission. Like it doesn't make sense, bare with me a little bit as I go through the timeline of the campaign.

Ghost was introduced in season 2 of MW2019, he was in the 141 just immediately after Price had formed it, and rumors say Soap was too, but we never saw him until the very last season of whatever game that was released before MWII (I think Vanguard), as a character bundle in the store itself. Mind you the bundle was leaked long before Cold War was out (it came out right after MW2019). And in MWII we get introduced to Ghost as this lone wolf/rogue esque soldier that only takes orders for solo missions. So when he was told that Soap would be assisting him in that first mission we played, he sounded annoyed to say the least.

Now, up until the “Alone” mission and aftermath of that, it's as if they were only on acquaintance bases, then they became close after the hardship they went through in that mission. And it makes you sympathize and understand why they became close all of a sudden. They were betrayed by the people they trusted, they were in this together. But I digress.

Now in ‘Flashpoint”, the mission that was supposed to take place 4 years prior to MWIII where they catch Makarov, Soap was WITH Price, and Ghost was in overwatch with Shepherd in that heli. When they spoke with each other they sounded very close to each other, mind you this was before MWII took place. I kept thinking long and hard about it. Did they tell us what took place in between? Why do they sound like bffs in that mission when Ghost was not fond of Soap in the beginning of MWII? Did I miss something?

It’s one of the two, either they are not telling us the whole story of 141 and how Soap and Ghost know each other, or this is a massive ass yet another fucking plot hole.

Ghost: I have to talk about him, because as a character that had been glorified and milked to the brim, his presence in MWIII was so fucking underwhelming. Even as playable, I nearly forgot it was him we played as in that mission. And his dialogues felt kind of… dry… normally he would actually have a smart reply or he’ll talk very bluntly but it just felt dry from him this time around. Like… who asks “what’s the rest of your plan?” to the big baddie plain and simple expecting them to reveal everything? Man they made him sound dumber than MWII. Literally reduced to this emoji 🧍🏻‍♂️. He had almost no impact on the story if you ask me, he was just… there… I expected more from him.

no words....

“No Russian”: well, that was a lame ass “No Russian” mission if you ask me. Now bear with me if I keep comparing this game with the og one because it can't be helped. This is a reboot, this should be BETTER than the og, it had to be but instead we got this. If you compare the og ‘No Russian’ mission, as brutal and raw it was, it left quite the impact on the series. It told us how savage Makarov can be, it showed us the brutality of the world, and that the world has some BAD people with no remorse. In MWIII, the ‘No Russian’ we got was extremely underwhelming, it didn’t make us feel bad for our actions, it did not hold any sort of impact except feeling sorry for the woman because she was forced to do what she did. It wasn’t us following Makarov’s plan and orders, it was plain and dumb if you ask me. Now, I understand in the political climates we live in today, it would be controversial to remake that mission with the player being one of the gunmen that… mows down a whole airport filled with innocent people and civis, but that is what made the og game/mission so good. It didn’t hold back on brutality and the reality of villains, the truth of characters who want to play gods, their motivations, how the player is tied down to the villain no matter what they want to do because it’s inevitable. And It had an impact on the player, the game and the story. We needed the necessary evil so the game could progress. But instead we got a woman trying to save an airplane filled with innocents, disarm the bomb that was strapped on her chest, and clear her name at the same damn time, which was like 3 minutes. Could’ve done better if you ask me.

Shepherd: how the fuck did this cunt get captured in the first place? Wasn’t he supposed to be in Shadows and Grave’s protection? The man weaseled out of 141 and CIA’s grasps but somehow was weak enough to be captured by the Koni group? What is even the plot anymore? And they didn’t say how or why he got captured. Maybe it was that one Shadows soldier that Mak and his right hand man Nolan interrogated? How does Makarov get his intel? We don’t fucking know. He’s just a prophet at this point :)

I can’t express how much I dislike this man, I don’t hate him I just really really really dislike him. There’s a difference.

His character was, again, weak af in the reboot. God… why do they keep making me compare the reboot with the og games, I hate doing that for real. BUT, og Shepherd being as fucked up as he was, still had a strong personality. And if you just put these two side by side, no one would believe they’re the same character. I’m glad he got offed by Price at the end, no one likes loose ends after all. And he was a massive one, and a liability, and someone that no one can trust anymore after what he pulled on 141 and Laswell. Especially after he threw Graves in the fire when he was in trial when Laswell and 141's condition for helping him out was to confess everything. But of course, as the fucking weasel he is he didn’t do that.

Graves: oh man… Can this guy be any more pathetic? I love Graves, as he is, as a whole, pathetic or not, Warren’s acting made me love this character. But again 😭, reduced to nothing but a pathetic man who looks for glory. Stabbing his handler in the back to save his own ass, although he got stabbed in the back first.

They legit took everything good and cool about any character we like (Price, Graves, Ghost, etc) and gave it to Farah, a character that should not have an impact as much as her.

Price: that point brings us to John Price himself. I cannot describe how angry I feel towards sledgehammer’s writers now. I’m so pissed at them for writing Price like this.

real img of me reacting to the way they wrote price:

In MW2019, his actions were so RAW, he was brutal, blunt, calculated and honest about his work and what he does. And he took pride in what he did and how he did. He didn’t give a fuck about what the upper management (Laswell, Shepherd) thought about his work. He was THE Captain that everyone respected, even CIA agents and the U.S General were at his feet asking for help from him.

Laswell: “What can you brief?”, Price: “We just did”- LIKE WHO ELSE CAN SAY THAT SO CASUALLY AND SOUND SO FUCKING BADASS LIKE THAT. NO ONE, thats fucking who. Now even Price doesn't sound like that AT ALL.

They reduced my man into a puppet that ‘trembles’ in front of Farah whilst she calls him “Old Man”. That scene annoys me every time I think about it. Why would they do this to him? Where did that man that said “they were leverage” to Gaz when he questioned Price’s morality about the hostages, disappear. MW2019 Price would never be this mild, or he would never be gentle or compromising when it comes to civilian lives. That heli scene? It should’ve been HIM instead of Soap, grabbing Mak and pointing a gun at him. MW2019 Price wouldn’t even hesitate to cut out Mak’s tongue for talking too much. Killed Shepherd where he stood in Frozen Tundra. It's as if Price was not there anymore, it was Gaz telling him, reminding him what HE would do, it wasn't just once when Gaz advised him to what to do. Price is losing his mind for some reason.

In MWIII, he looked like he was too scared to be cancelled if he said or did something out of the line. That’s you’re fucking job Captain! To step out of the fucking line when no one would!!

Price is a morally grey character, a necessary evil, and that is what made him so good as a character. MWIII took all that away. I want to cry at how badly they wrote him. I wanted them to bring back “Angry Price” from MW2019, and add even more rage in him because of Makarov, but instead they pumped “Fear” into him. Price was scared shitless in MWIII for some reason, and it made it look like it was because of Makarov. He didn’t take risks anymore… he was not the same Price that we got to know from the beginning of the reboot. It's as if they keep having to change his character in every game he’s in, they can't keep it consistent for some reason. And it cost them dearly.

All in all it felt like Makarov and Price were having a personality mid-off the whole campaign.

Gameplay: 87% of it was ass. And short. And annoying af. I actually prefer the fucking driving mission from MWII than this bullshit.

The necessary death: I get it. I understand what they were going for, someone had to be the sacrificial lamb, the motivation for 141 to keep going, for Price to get angry and drag everyone to hell as we went there himself. But did it have to be Soap? They just introduced him like a year ago… and they took him out just as fast. In that scene Makarove appeared out of fucking nowhere to fight with Price and Soap, like… where did he appear from? Why is he here if he just armed the bombs? Did he REALLY want to take a body count with him that badly?

We were playing as Price, and again, I had a bad feeling, I couldn’t tell what it was but it was there. Then Mak was pointing a gun at Price, I honestly thought he would die then and there, and I was so scared that it would actually happen but Soap, my man Soapy boy, saved us. When Mak shot him I thought he was incapacitated but stood up and saved up, for like 5 seconds it reminded of the og MW gameplay, just for a short time.

And then, instead of shooting us (Price), he deliberately shot Soap, in the fucking head. And ran like a fucking pussy… I keep remembering his run, it was so stupid. Mari mentioned this to me the other day, in the OG we see Soap struggling to live, to breath out the last words to Price so he can know the truth, he was bleeding everywhere, there were seconds to at least say goodbyes, here his soul left his body before it even hit the floor. And after everything went quiet I thought Price would fall to his knees and grieve. But he just stood there like 🧍🏻‍♂️.

I guess I felt just what Price felt because, I didn’t feel anything at first, because it felt surreal, seeing him take a shot in the head like that. Instantly wiping the light from his eyes like that, it shocked me that I didn’t even react at first. Took me to the last scene where they were spreading Soap’s ashes. And when Price said “Who Dares Wins. sleep easy soldier”, I lost it.

Again, I get it, a major character death motivation was necessary, but did it have to be Soap?

What I liked about the game:

Frozen Tundra: I liked this mission for one reason only. Okay maybe two… Reason one being that it's a classic cod campaign mission, reason two being that it was in Siberia, Russia. And Icy and snowy environment… thank fuck that they did this in the classic style mission. Also sneaking, and actual stealth that worked, because we were wearing white suites IN the snow. *chefs kiss*.

Wish we had a bit more options and choices, where we would be able to ride vehicles, like snowmobile, or idk maybe snowboard? Some creativity would’ve been nice. Because dammit it’s a snow map. A lot could have been done tbh.

The Cinematics: if call of duty is good at one thing, it’s making good ass cinematic cutscenes for their games. It was filled with eye candy; Price, Soap, Gaz, Nikolai, Graves, Ghost, every single person looked amazing in the cinematics. And yes I was swooning over Price every shot he was in (although his personality was meh).

Yuri, Nikolai and Gaz: the only characters that I actually liked in MWIII. It seems like the less presence you have in the story the better your character can be. (not you Ghost and Graves). These characters were actually tolerable if anything compared to the rest of the cast.

The After Credit Scene: oh that was satisfying. Killing Shepherd before he became danger to anyone else ever again, and Shepherd was like “I ain't begging for my life” and Price was like “I know” and just shoots him. Price was not taking risks anymore.

Now this scene, here we saw the RAW Price. Now after losing one of the closest 141 members to him, Price was in for blood, he was on his way to hell, and he was going to take every. single. poor and pathetic bastard that inflicted harm to his task force. You can see the pain and the guilt in Price’s eyes in that scene, he blames himself for Soap’s death for sure. I loved that emotional part of him, I just wish he was like that the whole campaign. RAW and unfiltered. This was my favorite scene in the game, period.

Conclusion: they had good intentions… but making what was supposed to be DLCs into a fully fledged campaign was not the way to go. I wish more creativity was thrown into the story, the points were good, yes my theory was good, (shut up im biased) but it had some solid points, but the plot holes and the poorly executed story was the demise of this game.

Like Mari and I had a better fucking story written out WITH this storyline WITHOUT anyone dying, and to prepare for MWIIII. They could’ve used the “Price going MIA” from the og games and implemented it in this game, instead of killing Soap like that. Maybe kill him off later on after recovering Price back like they did in the og MW. so many potentials, yet very poor and bad execution to the story. Man Sledgehammer writers were not fucking cooking at all. I hate them all.

I would give the game: 6/10.

also I'm still expecting apologies from the people who theorized Soap was a traitor. yall better be so fucking sorry about it. even the people who entertained the idea of it even if you didn't come up with it. shame on you all.

#jay talks #cod #cod mwiii #mwiii spoilers #mwiii #cod spoilers #holyshit it took me almost 5 days to write this shit #my neck hurts my shoulder is in pain #but i finally finished it #i would've sat 10 more days to write it out #here it is #i dont care if you disagree with me #this is my review and my opinion #and im a mess because of this game

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