Modern Warfare 3

[hypernova]

This game's been out for about 5 months now.  Compared to other CoDs, what are your opinions?

Overall, I think the game was a step backwards.  I've actually never played any of the campaigns on any CoD, so I won't comment on them.  The Spec Ops are about the same as before.  Fairly fun, but nothing special.

I was going to focus solely on the online multiplayer.  When comparing it to MW2, it seems almost like a carbon copy, only with new maps.  Except for a few reasons, it's just not as fun.  Perhaps that's due to the seemingly elevated amount of campers that happen to hide in the most random of places you wouldn't expect, as well as those places that are completely out of the way.  Until now, I've played TDM for the most part, so camping as a tactic is generally frowned upon, although I concede camping as viable only to people with a sniper rifle, in addition to objective based modes.  That's all I'll say about camping to avoid going off topic.  As a result of my view of this camping issue, I've actually gone into playing a lot of the Infected game mode.  In this mode, camping is accepted, and actually encouraged if you want to last as long as possible (assuming you aren't the first randomly chosen infected).  I've generally had much more fun playing this mode than other modes on this game.

Reason number two is the killstreaks.  Because of the seemingly more rampant camping, obtaining higher assault killstreaks seems harder.  In Black Ops, I've reached 18 in a row twice.  And that's without killstreaks chaining like they do in the MW series.  In this one, my highest is 12 or 13, and that's with chaining.  In the five months, I have only seen MAYBE one legitimate (not via care package) assault osprey gunner (chopper gunner in previous CoDs).  It's a 17 streak-nearly impossible in a non-objective format game.  The assault drone, a 10 streak, requires waiting for a package to drop.  Even the assault juggernaut requires a care package, (although it drops extremely fast).  The helicopter is a 7, but can be shot down in one rocket again, so it usually is.  Rarely is that thing out for more than 10 seconds, and you are lucky to get 1 kill with it.

Reason three is the maps.  They just seem to encourage serious camping.  Take Lockdown and that long hallway.  You can actually go prone and peer through the slit between the boxes and pick people off coming in.  I've done it once, and wow, was it way too easy.  It's almost impossible to get the guy doing it unless you are really fast at getting a good OHKO in, or come in from behind, assuming he doesn't have a teammate or two watching his back...which he usually does.

I've played four CoDs now.  We've tried playing WaW, but the amount of hackers is just overwhelming.  You're lucky to find a game without one...and this is on the 360.  MW2 was great fun, but had far too many exploits (One Man Army=infinite ammo for toobing, Toobing+Danger close=nuff said, Commando knifing=nuff said.)  Black Ops was and still is my favorite.  It's only REAL issues are the lack of true sniper maps and Second Chance, and maybe the knifing being inconsistent.  Hazard is one of my favorites.  Some people complain about the graphics.  It's got a different look, but if that's the best people can come up with...I didn't think Second Chance could be worse, but they did so in MW3.  Now you keep your primary, you can absorb another 10 or so bullets while falling, can't be finished with a tactical grenade, and can still be resurrected as long as nobody kills you in 15 or whatever seconds.

Now with MW3's Elite service, you can get the new maps as they're released, but you can't play just TDM on them anymore.  You have to play a set of modes to play those new maps.  Or you just wait until the maps are available to everyone anyway, so you can just play TDM like you wanted to in the first place, so getting them when released seems pointless to me.  In addition, they still don't have those as playable maps in Infected.  Infected could also use some gun variety.  There's 5 or so usable guns in total.

Finally, the Elite service.  There just isn't as much information available.  I don't know if this is IW's fault or not.  In Black Ops I could see how many times I've used a certain killstreak, as well as how many kills it's gotten me.  There just isn't this information anywhere in MW3.  Why do I need this?  I can use this info to reasonably estimate whether it's worth it to go for that higher killstreak.  I started using Chopper Gunner (9 streak) in Blops, because I found I was getting over 4 kills per use with it.  The regular helicopter only got me about 1.5 per use.  Napalm and Mortars were just borderline useless.  The amount of info in Elite on this CoD iteration is just severely lacking compared to what Blops offered.

I'm sure there're more reasons that I've temporarily forgotten.  What's anyone else think?

[-UnitMonster-]

I am going to have to disagree with you on a couple points.

Overall, MW3 is an epic game. Is it a carbon copy of MW2? They're close. For the most part the game engine is a refined version of MW2, but the gameplay is more balanced than the previous installments and so are the weapons by far. The biggest disappointment that I notice are unbalanced maps. This may be due to Sledgehammer taking over mid-way through production.

The campaign modes through all of the COD's have been absolutley excellent. I highly recommend everyone check them out. And I guarantee you'll be a better player after beating them on Veteran.

Killstreaks rewards have been modified to include a pointstreak system. This encourages people to participate in objective based gametypes which have truely been effective. Your actually killstreak is only consecutive gun kills.

Camping? Come on dude. Get another excuse. I can rack up killstreak rewards camping like anyone else, but I can rack up even more by being a little aggressive and taking advantage of gametime situations. In the end it's all about winning and most "campers" don't understand that. One thing that has helped put an end to cautious/camping gameplay is the introduction of additional stats. Way back when the only way to judge a player you've never competed against was to check out their KDR. This led to so many people not playing for the objectives.

Part 2 coming once I get freed up form work again. LOL.

[Mikezilla]

Yeah, the multiplayer is a carbon copy, its all the same, thats why you have to play it for the missions. The single player, from MW to the newest one are superb. MW3 not as much, but jesus god, the first two have the best story, and endings, for any FPS I have ever played. I know that isnt saying much, but its really engaging. The multiplayer is meh, cause its all the same, but man. Play the campaign. Its worth it.

[-UnitMonster-]

Part 2

COD Elite.... I knew that this was going to be an absolute waste of money, but hey...I love this series, so of course I am going to buy it. It is basically just the same expanded stats that used to be free on their website. And supposedly 20 free downloadable items, although we've only seen like 3 induvidual maps dropped after being out for almost half a year. I suspect that the other 17 will come out as soon as the next COD is released.

[lordnacho]

Yeah, the multiplayer is a carbon copy, its all the same, thats why you have to play it for the missions. The single player, from MW to the newest one are superb. MW3 not as much, but jesus god, the first two have the best story, and endings, for any FPS I have ever played. I know that isnt saying much, but its really engaging. The multiplayer is meh, cause its all the same, but man. Play the campaign. Its worth it.

Is MW3 single player better than Black Ops?  I didn't care for that one

[Mikezilla]

Yeah, the multiplayer is a carbon copy, its all the same, thats why you have to play it for the missions. The single player, from MW to the newest one are superb. MW3 not as much, but jesus god, the first two have the best story, and endings, for any FPS I have ever played. I know that isnt saying much, but its really engaging. The multiplayer is meh, cause its all the same, but man. Play the campaign. Its worth it.

Is MW3 single player better than Black Ops?  I didn't care for that one

I only got to play the first couple of missions on Black Ops, cause I rented it, then had to go out of town unexpectedly, and returned it when I got back, so sorry about that. MW1 and 2 though, cant be beat. 3 Concludes the story of all of em.

[hypernova]

I am going to have to disagree with you on a couple points.

Overall, MW3 is an epic game. Is it a carbon copy of MW2? They're close. For the most part the game engine is a refined version of MW2, but the gameplay is more balanced than the previous installments and so are the weapons by far. The biggest disappointment that I notice are unbalanced maps. This may be due to Sledgehammer taking over mid-way through production.

The campaign modes through all of the COD's have been absolutley excellent. I highly recommend everyone check them out. And I guarantee you'll be a better player after beating them on Veteran.

Killstreaks rewards have been modified to include a pointstreak system. This encourages people to participate in objective based gametypes which have truely been effective. Your actually killstreak is only consecutive gun kills.

Camping? Come on dude. Get another excuse. I can rack up killstreak rewards camping like anyone else, but I can rack up even more by being a little aggressive and taking advantage of gametime situations. In the end it's all about winning and most "campers" don't understand that. One thing that has helped put an end to cautious/camping gameplay is the introduction of additional stats. Way back when the only way to judge a player you've never competed against was to check out their KDR. This led to so many people not playing for the objectives.

Part 2 coming once I get freed up form work again. LOL.

Part 2:
COD Elite.... I knew that this was going to be an absolute waste of money, but hey...I love this series, so of course I am going to buy it. It is basically just the same expanded stats that used to be free on their website. And supposedly 20 free downloadable items, although we've only seen like 3 induvidual maps dropped after being out for almost half a year. I suspect that the other 17 will come out as soon as the next COD is released.

I applaud the pointstreaks and such from taking out others' killstreaks like UAVs and helicopters.  My contention is that the killstreaks themselves are rather weak, and the truly good ones are nearly impossible anymore to get to.  Sure you can go support, but you'll need 18 kills for that osprey airdrop, and the juggs you get at 15 or whatever is nearly pointless because you get a stinkin' pistol and riot shield.

While I tried to avoid the conversation about camping, it seems it's necessary anyway.  This game has so much more people sporting their Type 95 and other ARs, hiding behind a box with only their head popped out, looking one way waiting for anyone to come in/through.  Camping hasn't gone down from the last CoD.  It's gone up.  It's OK if they have a UAV up, and see that you're coming.  No sense exposing yourself.  It's the ones that just sit there.  And sit there.  And sit there.  And even better are the ones who hide in corners that are generally out of the way and make you say "Seriously?  Here?"  Fortunately, these are the types that just sit there as mentioned before, and you can come back and take them out, because they're too stupid to move.  But this tactic seems more prevalent in this CoD iteration, thus it's harder to rack up that higher streak because of these random spots these people take.  I used to get chopper gunners (legit-not CPs) a few times a night.  That's a 9 (or 8 with HL, which I ran, because it was damn fun rerolling those CPs.)  I'm lucky to get few predators anymore.

I dare ask your opinion on Assassin Pro.  And you didn't mention Last/Final Stand/Second chance or whatever it's called now.  I'm interested in what you think, as well as quickscoping.

Oh...one thing I forgot earlier.  Spawning.  Here we are, five months in, and this spawn system STILL has the WTF moments at least a couple times a night.  Two weeks ago, in Dome, I spawn in the dome.  I run out, and bam, I'm shot from behind in two seconds.  Literally.  Someone else was in the dome, on the other side of the central pillar-so essentially less than 10 feet from me.  There's six people on their team.  There has to be a better spot.  I've seen people spawn right in front of my eyes in TDM on larger maps.  These developers can't tell me that there isn't a better spot to spawn.  What's amazing is that they seem to finally work these kinks out in each game, but it goes to ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- again when the new one comes out.  Why can't they use the same logic from the one they had working?

Elite having expanded stats?  The way I see it, they have even less stats than before.  Go look at the massive amount of info you can get on Blops, including how many times you've used each item, and such, and then look at MW3 stats.  You barely get anything.  By the way, I also used to like looking at other's stats before the game started.  A quick look that their score/minute and k/d ratio gave you a pretty damn good idea as to their TDM abilities.  Can't do that anymore.

I had a 1.3+ in Blops, almost TDM exclusive.  During the last two months, it was more akin to about 1.7ish overall, as that's what my weeks ended up at each time.  That may be in part due to many noobs gearing up for MW3.  Doubtful, though.

I have a 1.15 or so in MW3.  Now that's deceiving, because I do quite a bit of Rioting, which of course will bring me down, especially if you're still aggressive, like I am.  But even if I try to estimate what my overall skill is, and even if it was somewhat close to 1.3, which it probably could be, it just isn't nearly as fun.  The only things that make it fun is the Infected mode, and doing some Spec Ops with friends.  Otherwise you're stuck dealing with a group holding down the upper part of Arkaden or the bunker in Outpost.  Not really fun no matter which side you're on.

I'll probably play the campaign after I get my hands on the original.

[Hoopz]

My experience is going to be different than most because I bought my first 360 in Sept then got MW3 when it came out.  I played the original COD games on the PC but haven't played any since they left WWII.  I did play MW2 before getting MW3 but only the campaign and right before MW3 was released.  I enjoyed both campaigns and didn't find either to be too tedious.

For multiplayer, I've prestiged a few times but have stopped at level 80 now and won't prestige again.  I enjoy the challenge of doing it but I've started using the FAD almost exclusively but didn't unlock it when I could have with the prestige token.  I don't want to go back to the ACR for 95% of the leveling up. 

I played a lot of Ground War initially then started playing Team Defender, then tried Infected.  I have spent most of my time recently on Infected.  I saw the new gameplay (FFA or something?) but haven't tried it yet.  My k/d ratio is under 1 but is going up.  I'll have some games where I do really well but most of the time, I'm about average. 

I'm not a fan of quick scoping.  Seems like it's a glitch that people take advantage of.  I know that some will say that everyone has the same chance to do it so I can learn to do it too.  Not for me.  If I am playing in the same group of people and someone does that match after match, I'll switch to another group.  Playing Infected creates more of a level playing field (for the most part) so it avoids that most of the time (maps where you have the Barrett excluded of course).

Not having played multiplayer on the MW2, I can't compare what the perks/final stand/maps are now to before.  Camping has always been a part of multiplayer going all the way back to Duke Nukem/Doom/Quake.  I don't agree with it but just accept it as what it is.... Just people playing the way they want.

I do get tired of the 12 year olds talking trash.  And the other idiots talking trash. 

I've got a group of friends who have both and they'd rather play zombies on BlackOps instead of MW3.

I do have the new maps but haven't played the new single player missions yet.  The new maps seem much larger and I haven't had time to learn all of them yet.

[ark_ader]

Last time I played MW2 was 6 months ago and the servers was still busy with spawn camping kids.  After running a Counter Strike server for a number of years, I think it great to play online but with a moderated server.

None of the console servers are moderated, which is a shame.  MW3 was bought and sold on eBay after 2 days of online play.  The game is so similar to MW2, with the maps all camper oriented.  I bought BF3 and yes sometimes you can get spawn killed repeatedly the game is pretty much even in the theater.

So I would give MW3 a 6/10 and keep BF3 (Xbox) as I get more value from this title than I did with MW3.  

[-UnitMonster-]

I dare ask your opinion on Assassin Pro.  And you didn't mention Last/Final Stand/Second chance or whatever it's called now.  I'm interested in what you think, as well as quickscoping.

"Assassin" has existed in every COD game thus far. It used to be counter balanced with Jugg/Stopping Power, so it was kind of a sacrifice you had to make if you wanted to use it. I hated Jugg & SP, because you had to use one or the other to win games making the other Perk 2's useless, but now Assassin is used overwhelmingly with the other Perk 2's not being as useful. I would suspect this to change in the next game.

Last/Final Stand/Second Chance was only lame in W@W. This game it's a death perk meaning someone literally died 4 times just to get to use it. It doesn't bother me at all. Do you really get killed a lot by it?

Ahh...Quickscoping...I have never been a very good sniper, so I have never really used it. It's not a glitch. And it takes great skill if you want to be awesome with it. They even brought it back for this game after it's absence from Black Ops, so it must have been for a reason. I don't get owned by Quickscopers too often, so it's not been a factor in my playing. Check out the G-Shot from CO4 sometime. Now that's one hell of an exploit.

[hypernova]

"Assassin" has existed in every COD game thus far. It used to be counter balanced with Jugg/Stopping Power, so it was kind of a sacrifice you had to make if you wanted to use it. I hated Jugg & SP, because you had to use one or the other to win games making the other Perk 2's useless, but now Assassin is used overwhelmingly with the other Perk 2's not being as useful. I would suspect this to change in the next game.

Last/Final Stand/Second Chance was only lame in W@W. This game it's a death perk meaning someone literally died 4 times just to get to use it. It doesn't bother me at all. Do you really get killed a lot by it?

Ahh...Quickscoping...I have never been a very good sniper, so I have never really used it. It's not a glitch. And it takes great skill if you want to be awesome with it. They even brought it back for this game after it's absence from Black Ops, so it must have been for a reason. I don't get owned by Quickscopers too often, so it's not been a factor in my playing. Check out the G-Shot from CO4 sometime. Now that's one hell of an exploit.

Killed by second chance alot?  No, of course not.  At times, yes.  It's incredibly annoying to knock someone into it, then nail him with 10 more bullets (all with the hit-marker sound) and none of them kill him.  If your clip happened to be low, then you either have to reload, or switch to your secondary.  And if your secondary is anything but a pistol, you're in trouble.  Truthfully, I don't have any problem with second chance.  It's the invincibility they keep granting the other player, during which time they can kill you, but you can't kill them.  

I was referring to only the Pro version of assassin.  Where you negate CUAV and even the EMP!  How ridiculously overpowered can a perk be?  Like Stopping Power and/or Commando in MW2, you are disadvantaging yourself if you don't run this.  Only my rush class is without Assassin, in favor of speed.

Quickscoping is as mentioned.  An exploit that needs to be re-removed.  Treyarch was intelligent enough to mostly remove it.  And I don't care if it takes great skill to use it or not.  That's not how sniping works.  I am relatively okay sniping.  I was a 1.11 with the L96A on Blops.

One more thing on this game.  Either there are more good clans playing together, or I just have the absolute worst luck.  Before I started playing Infected nearly exclusively, I kept losing ground in the win/loss column.  I have a positive k/d ratio, yet I had 70 more losses than wins.  And it kept rising.

One last thing that's always driven me nuts is drop-shotting.  It's completely unrealistic if you've ever tried acting it out yourself.  You shouldn't be allowed to fire the gun while going into prone.  Fortunately it's not a huge problem, but it's still annoying seeing people do that.

I realize it's just game, and realism isn't exactly what is going on, but there's some elements of the game where they can strive for a little more.

[SithMaster]

I was always a fan of using the perks to be invisible to all air support, secondary weapon being a Stinger or Javelin, and using only the easiest killstreaks to get.  It was really bad in the MW2 days whenever someone got a Chopper Gunner or AC130 so this was the best way to make them suffer while helping my team.

MW3 was great if only for the Strafe Run giving me the chance to take out 5 rotorwings with 2 stingers.  They made finding UAVs annoying on most maps and that one map in the German shopping center is horrible if you spawn on the wrong side of the map with an enemy air unit out.  Actually that map is just horrible for a bunch of reasons.  Then again all the maps are designed to cater to their target demographic of the "hardcore."  You know somethings wrong when the xbox dashboard has videos on the best camping spots.

You mention drop shots which reminds me of the Dolphin Dive from Black Ops though I can't remember if you could shoot while diving.

The only times I had fun sniping in a COD game were:in cod4 in Chernobyl, in mw2 using the ebr, and in mw3 using the dragov (the worst rifle in the game).  My friend would use the .50cal and just spam bullets like it was a shotgun.  Funniest thing I've seen.  Almost as funny as the time on that snow map with the tunnel in the back the entire enemy team used riot shields and tact inserts to camp the tunnel.  Next match (same people) was on the French one and they setup shop in the center building.  This time I had XM25s on the spammed that into the door by the park.  It was less fun then taking out a osprey drop but more fun than playing on Downturn.

[Malenko]

Im terrible at multiplayer but I typically still have fun. Black Ops was ---smurfing--- stupid, RC cars? no thnx

single player I actually got to the last level on veteran (guess I got better or single player got easier), and actually finished MW2 and 3 on medium , I stopped playing Black Ops single player on the vietnam flash back part, where your on the boat, the story was just so lame.

[hypernova]

I actually viewed RC cars as a detriment to your team.  Having a Spy Plane out could get you more kills than a car.  Plus you can be killed while using it.

You couldn't shoot while dolphin diving.  That's one reason I actually liked it.  People didn't spam it because shooting was removed from it.  You could, however, toss your tomahawk if you did a certain sequence, but it was somewhat complicated.

Ha...Strafe Run in MW3.  What a joke, as it's another example of a fairly high killstreak that just plain sucks.  Like you said, you can take out the entire group with two lock-ons.