Multiplayer gameplay

Boasting new perks, maps, weapons, equipment, kill streaks and game modes, Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer is set to dominate gamers’ lives across the globe. Deft touches have been made to the menus to display extra stats and emblem/title identifiers have been added for comparing and contrasting with your friends. As usual, there is a plethora of competitive metrics, hard-to-obtain unlockables and specialist perks that will have people mixing and matching their classes to try and counter whatever is thrown at them.

An interesting overhaul has been made with the introduction of strike packages, letting you choose how you want to stack up your kill streaks. This allows players who struggle to rack up the kills a chance to still change the game dramatically. For instance, the support strike package grants players the benefit of building their streak even after their death. This adds a nice touch of strategy to game modes such as Domination, where air supremacy used to be all that you needed to win a match. Thankfully, this change also forces players to become a lot more involved in the game’s actual objective rather than sitting back and working up a good kill/death ratio.

Kill Confirmed is the new multiplayer mode that delivers some diversity to the play lists. The basis of the game involves killing an opposing player and then running to their body to retrieve their dog tag to secure the point. However, it is not necessarily a wise move to run directly for their tag, as if an enemy puts you down before you reach it, they can claim not only your tag, but prevent you from scoring by retrieving their fallen comrade’s tag, as well. This can lead to loads of tags building up at certain points of the map, while both teams wait around for the opportunity to claim them. It is a mode that brings heaps of scheming and is arguably one of Modern Warfare 3’s greatest achievements.





For MW3, the game designers have chosen to branch out from the style of map that features multiple high traffic areas where teams often clash head-on, instead opting for a lot more twists and turns in the level layout, with multiple structures, stairwells and other tight spaces. So far, there seems to be very few points where both teams end up waiting on either side of a wall, lobbing flashes and grenades down at each other. While this shift does remove choke points and make it harder for snipers to prosper, you could argue that without many lengthy maps, matches occasionally suffer from a bit of a ‘kill and then be killed’ scenario. Spawning is currently worse than ever, with players appearing right in front of an enemy’s gun sights regularly, something that will hopefully be fixed by upcoming patches.

As far as quality goes, the maps are split overall, with some showing great promise for epic fire fights in famous locations. However, developers seem to be unable to resist going back to those drab Eastern European backdrops featuring dull and murky colors that blend into each other, making it really hard to give the map any character and depth at all. It almost feels like some of these are maps Treyarch had left over from the 1960’s-inspired Black Ops. Unfortunately, this seems to set the stage for the inevitable overpriced and underwhelming DLC map packs, with which Activision must already be preparing to flood the market.