We are edging close to a month since the highly vaulted MW3 has launched. At minimum, LP staff have collectively put in over a full week of gameplay for MP, although so far as I know, I am the sole player that has beaten the game. So, we figure we have enough data to do a decent review. And speaking for myself, I don't plan to go soft on this review.

There is no straying in the fact that LP staff are predominantly Call of Duty players. I think if you added up all of our time spent on just MP alone since CoD4, we've put in over a year of consistent non-stop carnage. Odd that that would be considered a bragging right since we could have been curing cancer or building Skynet (literally). Still, for the purposes of enlightening our fellow gamers, we'll dive into this review and skip the rest of our lame excuses for existence.

I finished the single player in 6 hours and 11 minutes. That was with some hangups with bad respawn areas and looking for that elusive data littered throughout the game. Had those not happened, I reckon this game could be beat in 5 hours on hardened. For a First Person Shooter, this is typical and honestly, about right. This game isn't great because of the single player, but it is still of note because it does close up the continued story from CoD4 & 6. Unlike those two, however, there isn't really much of  "wow" in this iteration of SP. Yeah, you get to be in the AC-130 yet again, and find yourself in other sorta neat situations, but nothing really memorable. I don't blame them too much in this regard. Sequels are often rehashes of previous greatness. At least there weren't morally questionable levels this time around.

If I were to cite one detail about Infinity Ward that I disagree with, it is their propensity to kill off all good characters. MW3 is no exception to this, and in fact, take it a step further. I noted that they really have problems with American characters over the course of these three games - they all die. So don't get emotionally connected with any, or rather any at all, of the characters in the game. Be strong, and callous.

Moving on, I have played the Special Ops missions with fellow clan amigo Ktal (his review after mine), and I think we've beat 4 of them on Veteran level difficulty. These are pretty fun as you tactically coordinate with your fellow player to advance along. There was one mission where you get to control an automated minigun via camera which was pretty fun, although upon review, we're not sure why you start gunning everyone down. Could have been a passing SWAT team for all we know, and now their virtual next of kin have unanswered questions as to why their own security system perforated them to bits (answer: we hacked it and indiscriminately slaughtered them all - we are so sorry!).

I've tried playing the infinite waves of enemy forces a couple of times, but each time more cronies of our clan would ping me to play MP, and so I would quit and join their lobby. Note: don't quit, instead, get overwhelmed and die. Otherwise, the game doesn't record that you got to 'x' level because it doesn't like quitters. Take a fall for the team. I don't like the idea of never ending waves though. Cap it at 100 and give the player 1 Achievement point for it. But make it uber-hard.

Multi-player is/was our bread-and-butter. We're honest gamers, so with a small hint of pride I'll gleefully state that my win ratio in Black Ops was 4.55 with over 1500 games logged. That was not manipulated - we were just that good at Black Ops. Kill ratio was 1.31 which was middle-of-the-road with our clan. Parry that to roughly 200 games into MW3, and we're doing terribly: 1.66 win ratio and k/d just barely about 1.01. It just plays different than Blops and MW2. [For reference, we were much better at MW1 & MW2 as well.] This new iteration of the game is much faster and you're the constant target of aerial attacks. Our whole clan is changing our play-style just to compete against our old foes. I've stated this before, but IW innovates and Treyarch perfects.

Though there are 16 maps to play, they don't exactly embue well-designed maps. And too many times have I gotten stuck on a map artifact and then got routinely slaughtered as I tried to jump over a brick on the ground. There also seems to be a recurring ping issue - latency - that we didn't have as often in Blops. Yes, we know how to manage a lobby and select closest rivals. It is just odd and considering some of us work in the IT field, it is disturbing to us we suspect some coding errors, perhaps.

{begin edit} Update & Edit: Seems this latency issue is getting wide-spread. In fact, it is something of a cheating mechanism now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOpFCCnv0E

This explains why the game seems faster when in fact, it is compensating for players with bad connection feeds and handicapping those that do. If you're the host, you're at a distinct disadvantage now. {/end edit}

I miss wager matches. This was a good way to burn a little extra time while waiting to join your clan for battle. I hate leveling up guns to get to extended mags which are the last things you unlock. I like being rewarded for having prestiged in all the other CoD games (about time that paid off!). I hate that I cannot reset my stats until Prestige 10. Assassin Pro is way too powerful and the only decent red perk because of that reason. I love having kill streaks (point streaks now, yeesh) personalized for every class - a request of mine since MW2 launched, but you should not be able to continuously revolve kills streaks (*sigh* point streaks) if kill streaks lead to more kill streaks. Idiotic! We get EMP'd up to 3 times in a single match now, even if we are winning. Of course, running Assassin Pro makes you immune to EMP and just about everything else you fear.

In I were to write a conclusion, it would be this: Modern Warfare 3 is actually Modern Warfare 2.5, and that isn't too bad, but they didn't really improve upon much and in some cases, made it worse in our opinion.

The following review is more analytical from our resident post-doc scientist; Ktal.

***

tl;dr: Black Ops is a better game, but with some gameplay adjustments I can learn to love MW3.

Introduction

Over the last week I've wished I was playing Black Ops but I didn't know why. I think this feeling of dissatisfaction with MW3 is important, since it's the first time I've ever thought this about a CoD game I've purchased. Today I took the time to examine this in a rational manner. Why could I be feeling this nostalgia for black ops only one month into MW3's life cycle? In this review I will focus on three reasons: results, mechanics and elite.

Results

First off, let's get the obvious reason I may wish I was playing black ops out of the way: I was winning at it. Like crazy amounts. Losing more that two games a night out of ten was unusual. And when six of us were on, we were unstoppable. Team tactical was no different than any play list (while we struggle at it in MW3), with only Black Ops tactical S&D games being the only real nail biters. We had nights where we stopped playing team tactical because halfway through every game the OTHER TEAM WOULD ALWAYS QUIT.

So we were good at it at Blops. We are unequivocally bad at MW3.

Let's review some stats: I may have the best K/D in the clan (humble brags:), but it's not great. Several .10s below my blops average, I think. My win rate is 62% as opposed to 80% in blops. These trends seem universally down across the clan. So, is poor performance the reason I would rather play blops? Maybe, but as fellow clan player Recon said, "I still am having fun playing MW3, even if I'm winning less." Therefore, this is likely not the whole reason.

Mechanics

All right then, what about the mechanics? What is fundamentally different between the two games? Here are four fundamental changes between the games that I believe have impacted our enjoyment of them:
• Kill streaks stack. In MW3 a predator will chain into a helicopter. In black ops it didn't. We knew going into it that this could be an issue, and it turns out we were very right. Here's a relevant retweet from yesterday from David Vonderhaar, a key community manager that worked on Black ops and now coordinates MW3.

"@DavidVonderhaar: Off the top of your head, how may Killstreaks do you think were called per match (on average) and how many do you think it should be?"

One fellow replied "@H2O_Ryuusei: I'd say there were about 20-ish per game and should be lowered to the 10-15 mark."

I'd generally say this is accurate. Interesting, eh? Even the developers are starting to realize that too many killstreaks are called in per game, regardless of who is winning. It doesn't even matter what the kill streaks are: UAV, EMP, recon drone, IMS, or even juggernaut. There are so many streaks landing all the time that it takes away from the most fun part of the game, the gunplay.
• Support package. If you are running this, your kill streak doesn't reset when you die. Now that would be fine if you were actually only bringing in support rewards, like UAVs and Recon Drone. However, at the top end is EMP, Escort Airdrop and the dreaded Recon Juggernaut. In an objective game you can be horrible but you are going to get 18 kills eventually. This means anyone can bring in one of these back-breaking streaks, even though they went 18 and 40 or something. This is bad for the game, in my opinion, and contributes to the point above about too many killstreaks being called in in a given game.
• You have to level your weapons. In black ops, once you unlock a weapon you can buy any attachments you want with cod points. In MW3 it's regressed to the MW2 system where playing w/ the gun unlocks attachments. Luckily the curve is much lower (you hit the relevant attachments after only a few games), and head shots are no longer relevant, but still, it adds more of a grind.
• The maps are linear. No open spaces with good lines means the gameplay is fundamentally different. Reflexes and speed are rewarded over position and aim. Boo.
I generally dislike where they took these mechanics. However, I love, love, love team defender and kill confirmed. These two games are original and awesome and I can't say too many good things about them. If/when we get to a point that we are good at this game, I predict we will be best in these playlists.

So, the mechanics are certainly a factor behind my annoyance, but there are enough new things in MW3 to keep me interested and coming back for more. Perhaps I just find Elite too disappointing?

Elite

Elite was supposed to be this amazing new thing, and for the most part it really isn't. The stats and game tracking are all things done since Halo 2 and 3. At this point in the FPS world these features are expected. On the premium side, you get the DLC (awesome, most likely), and you get the level/gun videos. While these are HIGH on production quality and greatly recommended viewing, they do not actually add anything to the in-game experience, and are most likely ignored even by founders. Indeed, the thing I most cared about, real clan support and ladder based tournaments in-game, was never implemented, and likely never will be. The only clan feature, clan xp, isn't implemented and who knows when it will be.

However, this can't be the sole source of my displeasure either, because I still have the game to play. Conclusion: the combination of results, mechanics, and lack of clan support has left me feeling wanting in regards to MW3. Humph.

MW3 is just different. It requires a different set of skills and expectations. It's not better by any means, and in many ways is a huge step back from the tight masterpiece that was Black Ops. However, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the game.

-Ktal