Nerds That Geek Game Review – ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

​When a particular franchise reaches its peak point well before the story has arrived at its ending, we often wonder just how the heck the saga is going to be able to top the story that in essence achieved perfection. And judging from the stories we’ve seen that try to out-do the juggernaut that came before it, the answer to our burning question is that…there is really no way to top a flawless story. If anything, all a group of creative minds can do is try and stay true to the spirit of the franchise and hope that it does enough to do that bigger story justice.
 
But, more often than not, creative teams instead work to wow us and blow that other tale out of the water which ends in mixed or disappointing results and sadly, that’s precisely what happened with the Modern Warfare trilogy. For the third and final entry in the series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 tried real hard to overshadow the epic Modern Warfare 2 and well, this attempt didn’t make the game an outright disappointment, because there is a lot to like about this game, but it was evident early on that this game was simply trying too hard and that…definitely robbed the story of some of its power.
 
Which is a crying shame because the story here is actually pretty darn good. I mean come on, this is the big push for Captain Price and the Disavowed 1-4-1 to hunt down Makarov and the script even allows for the madman in question to further his evil machinations by plunging the entire planet into World War III. But the gameplay and ultra-fast pacing of said script is where this game quickly falls apart because at times it often feels more like an arcade game than a first person shooter and important moments that should have gravity and depth are glossed over in order to wow us with bigger action and bigger moments and sadly, that takes you out of the game.
 
However, make no mistake about it, there are some impressive moments to be found in this game. For the Battle of New York is chilling since it actually holds nothing back storytelling wise, even going so far as to answer the question as to what happened to civilians fleeing the Russian invasion and well, it’s not a pleasant answer to say the least. And the ending of this story is quite frankly as wild as it gets since it does feature a powerhouse final showdown between Price and Makarov and how that ends is satisfying to say the least since it brings perfect closure to the trilogy.
 
But once the end credits begin to roll, something about this game simply feels hollow and that’s a shame, because this really could have been quite the incredible finale had the developers taken the time to slow the story down a bit and let the performances and the moments shine. However, this is a fun game to play regardless and some of the more over the top moments will still leave you hooting and hollering and well, while this wasn’t the perfect ending we hoped for, it’s nice that everything is wrapped up in a messy little bow when all is said and done and this trilogy really did serve as quite the grand experiment in video game storytelling and it definitely deserves credit for challenging the audience and the industry and the most satisfying part of this finale is that the story ends exactly as it should, with Makarov paying the price for chilling crimes…

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