It has been a real roller coaster ride for Xbox Game Pass recently. After a very solid showcase at Summer Game Fest and an unexpected announcement of Black Ops 6 coming to Game Pass on day one, Xbox expectedly increased the price of the subscription and changed tiers so that only Ultimate members would get every first-party game on release as their “Play It Day One with Game Pass” slogan so proudly advertised. Soon after that, perhaps as a peace offering, they added last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III to the library.
I stood by what I wrote last year (The Call of Duty Problem) and I did not purchase Modern Warfare III. I have not spent any money on/in it. However, as someone who has played nearly every Call of Duty game to date, I was curious to see how this second coming of Modern Warfare 3 would hold up. I want to preface this by saying my opinions are based on my time playing the multiplayer. The short and uninspired campaign has been a point beaten to death already and I am not an avid enough Zombies player to comment on the Warzone meets Zombies mode. That being said, as a big fan of multiplayer first-person shooters (and coming off the heels of XDefiant), I had some thoughts.
On the latest episode of The Respawn Station Podcast, I talked about two things that really disappointed me about Modern Warfare III‘s multiplayer. But before that, I want to start by saying that MWIII is undeniably smooth in gameplay. The game looks and sounds great and I experienced no hiccups with the game technically. It takes the movement mechanics of MWII and tweaks it in ways that increase the pace. We’ll get into that soon.
The first point of disappointment is the unusual content pairing. Activision has seemingly taken a page out of the Nintendo DS naming scheme and released MWIII, not to be confused with MW3, which has maps from MW2, not to be confused with MWII, although it does include weapons from the latter. It does have some original maps in circulation too, which are decent. (Although I have no immediate favorites yet.) Admittedly, it is cool to see the old maps with new fidelity but it does bring me to my second point.
Now, as I said, Modern Warfare III is a very fast-paced game, even compared to Modern Warfare II. It tries to combine the tactical movement of the Modern Warfare series and the dives and slides of Treyarch. The result is a game that can feel too fast to keep up with. It’s so fast-paced, in fact, that I would cross paths with an enemy, and by the time we both reacted, we’d be halfway across the room. A few rounds of Team Deathmatch did get me up to speed but the problem comes when you throw that kind of moment into maps that are over a decade old and designed for much slower games. This causes maps to often be too chaotic (and not just on Shipment like usual).
Check out the full discussion on Respawn Station TV to hear more about my time with Modern Warfare III. If you jumped into the game too, let us know in the comments what you think about it. And be sure to subscribe to not miss out on more gaming news, reviews, and more.
