Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare 3 was a ridiculous experience. I’m not sure I’ve ever played a
game as aggressively linear, and relentlessly noisy. Developers ‘Infinity Ward’
seem to believe that non-stop explosions and endless collapsing buildings equal
an immersive experience. There was barely a moment to pause and absorb the
atmosphere, no quiet lulls to allow you soak it all up before being bombarded
once more by the deafening roar of American bravado.
Instead you
are jostled from one falling landmark to another with little time to hear
objectives or decide which route looks tactically advantageous. Once again it’s
another case of run behind the guy with the big stupid FOLLOW over his head, shut
up, don’t ask questions, and keep on shooting.
It would be
nice to slowly fight your way through levels, to actually feel like you are
taking territory from the enemy, rather than hurtling through blindly as
bullets bounce off you and barely register. It was all so rushed, never more so
than at the very beginning of the game when, after pressing the ‘Start New
Campaign’ button, you are immediately awarded a trophy, just for having started
the game!
There’s absolutely
no immersion, nor time to even admire the fancy graphics. And the production
and presentation are undeniably impressive, especially when compared to the
recently played Homefront. The graphics are fantastic and the destruction,
although mostly overpowering in its persistence, is well done and sounds great. But oddly the same can’t be said for the grenades. I’ve never played a
game with such quiet and ineffective grenades. I’m not sure I killed a single
enemy with one. But maybe that was just because by the time they exploded I’d
already left the area, racing to catch up with the NPC I was supposed to be
following because he’d already completed the level.
The levels are
short, really short, almost like they had a meeting and said “What should
happen in the new game?” and everyone jumped up and shouted out at the same
time;
“A level where
you infiltrate a submarine!”
“A level where
you chase a tube train!”
“A level where
the Eiffel Tower collapses!”
“A level where
New York is all fucked up!”
“A level where
you’re on a plane, and it’s the president’s plane, and there are terrorists,
and then the plane starts to crash, and then you’re shooting the terrorists as you crash,
and then you crash, and then you shoot dudes in the wreckage of the crash!!!!!!
*pant pant pant*”
…and they just
decided to do it all without any real care for rhyme or reason. One level was
only eleven minutes long, which is probably about the length of time it took
them to throw together the story for this thing. They just couldn’t wait to
show you ‘The Next Big Moment’. I just couldn’t wait for it to end.
34 down, 16 to
go.
No comments:
Post a Comment