About the game
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a 2011 first-person shooter developed by Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision. It came out worldwide on November 8, 2011 for Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii, with an OS X version later. It is the sequel to Modern Warfare 2, the third and last game in the original Modern Warfare trilogy and the eighth main Call of Duty game. In Japan, Square Enix published a separate subtitled version and a separate dubbed version.
The campaign picks up right after the end of Modern Warfare 2 and follows Task Force 141, with Captain Price, Soap MacTavish and a new playable character, Yuri. Together with Delta Force and the SAS, they hunt Vladimir Makarov, the Russian terrorist who leads the Ultranationalist party and who set off a large war in Europe. The story is told in three acts, and you change characters from mission to mission, including a Delta Force team in New York and an agent protecting the Russian president.
Multiplayer brought in new game modes and swapped killstreaks for Pointstreaks. Points can come from objectives as well as kills, and rewards are grouped into three packages called Assault, Support and Specialist. The ranking system no longer uses a currency, and your main weapon levels up alongside you. Special Ops returns, with Mission mode and a new wave based Survival mode for one or two players that runs on the multiplayer maps.
The game was in development from about two weeks after Modern Warfare 2 shipped. Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella had left to form Respawn Entertainment, and Activision brought in Sledgehammer Games to help, with Raven Software working on multiplayer. It runs on an improved version of the Modern Warfare 2 engine, and it was the first Modern Warfare game with built-in support for colour-blind players.
Activision announced Call of Duty: Elite alongside it, an online service for stats, videos and premium content. The Hardened Edition on PS3 and Xbox 360 came with a one-year Elite membership, a steel case, a field journal and extras. There was no Prestige Edition. Downloadable content came as Content Collections through Elite, and Xbox 360 players got each one about a month before PS3 players.
Reviews were positive, with praise for the gameplay, campaign and multiplayer and some criticism of the story and the lack of new ideas. It won Best Shooter at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards and Action Game of the Year at the 15th Interactive Achievement Awards. It sold 6.5 million copies in the United States and United Kingdom in 24 hours, taking in 400 million US dollars, and passed 1 billion US dollars worldwide in 16 days.
Looking back, critics call it a satisfying end to the trilogy that did not match the highs of the two games before it, and its campaign recycled many set pieces. It introduced Kill Confirmed, a mode that stayed in the series. In Japan the PS3 version topped the first week chart with 180,372 copies.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 88 out of 100 (Xbox 360). Individual reviews: IGN 9/10, GameSpot 8.5/10, Game Informer 9/10, Eurogamer 8/10, GameTrailers 9.3/10, Official Xbox Magazine 8.5/10, Giant Bomb 4/5, Joystiq 4.5/5.
Extra content
Downloadable content came as Content Collections through Call of Duty: Elite, with maps and Special Ops missions. Xbox 360 players got each one about a month before PS3 players, starting on January 24, 2012. Two free Face-Off maps were given to Xbox Live Gold members on May 15, 2012. The Xbox 360 Store closed on 29 July 2024, so the packs can no longer be bought, but ones you bought earlier can be downloaded again.
- Content Collection 1: First of the Elite content drops on Xbox 360
- Face-Off maps (two, free): Two small maps for the 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 Face-Off mode, free to Xbox Live Gold members
Good to know
- The Xbox 360 list has 76 achievements worth 1,610 gamerscore. 50 are in the base game for 1,000 and the rest come with the Special Ops DLC.
- Xbox 360 players got every Content Collection about a month before PS3 players, because of a deal between Microsoft and Activision.
- The Hardened Edition came with a one-year Elite membership, a steel case and a field journal. On Xbox 360 the matching extra is a Juggernaut avatar outfit.
- Some copies were sold in the United States a few days before the November 8 release, after a shipping error at one retailer.
- The 2023 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is a different game. Fans mixed the two up when that one came out.
Made by
Developer Infinity Ward, Developer Sledgehammer Games, Publisher Activision, Director Bret Robbins, Director Glen Schofield, Writer Paul Haggis, Writer Will Staples, Composer Brian Tyler, Artist Joe Salud.
