hussmir tech and gadgets
adspace

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
preview

By: Mubs Date: 29/06/11

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) Preview, the follow up to 2009's best selling video game, will release on 8 November 2011 on Xbox, PS3 & PC.

 

At E3, Activision Previewed Modern Warfare 3 which will certainly be one of the biggest entertainment events of the year. The sequel to 2009's blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is likely to make more money than any blockbuster movie and even after it is released by downloadable content which will continue to generate millions up to 2012.

mw3 001

As part of one of the biggest selling games franchises, Modern Warfare will have a lot to live up to. Its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, smashed box office records when it was released in 2009. On its first day of release it sold an estimated 1.23 million units and grossed around £47m in the UK alone, according to industry body the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE).

Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision, described it at the time as "one of the largest entertainment launches of any media of all time".

It's likely that demand will be just as strong, if not stronger, this time round.

"We're taking it to an entirely new level," says Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling, displaying the customary games industry hyperbole. "We're taking players into the heart of major cities all around the world, delivering urban combat in places like Manhattan and London. We're also going throughout Europe, to Russia, parts of Africa, and the Himalayas – you will travel the world." Yes you will, and judging by the two missions Activision revealed in the press event, you will blow most of it up in the process.

The story, apparently, picks up immediately after the close of Modern Warfare 2, in which Russia launched an invasion of the US, while the elite counter-terrorist squad Task Force 141, attempted to gather evidence against Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Makarov. "Washington DC is burning, " explains Schofield. "Task Force 141 is either dead or on the run and battles rage along the eastern seaboard of the United States. You must now join with your delta team in Manhattan to help turn the tide against the Russians who have occupied New York City…"

New York Mission

mw3 newyork

Titled Black Tuesday, The first mission picks up at the opening of the New York campaign. The player starts aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that's just crash-landed in the city's financial district. The objective is to get to the stock exchange, but there is a full-scale battle raging. Missiles cut through the sky, taking out vast chunks of Manhattan real estate. A front line of obliterated roads, burned-out police cars and crawling APCs is populated by groups of soldiers cowering behind great chunks of fallen masonry. It is, in short, what we expect from a Call of Duty set-piece – a cacophonous opera of destruction and gunfire, through which the player is closely guided by a computer-controlled superior (in this case, someone called Sandman).

Sub attack

mw3 sub attack

The mission – which is clearly one of the earliest in the game – starts with you and your squad scuba-diving, initially through a very believable flooded Brooklyn Tunnel. Once through that, you must evade mines (you're equipped with a sonar which detects them before you can see them) and work your way into position for the Russian submarine which is approaching. When it arrives, you plant a mine on it, causing it to surface.

Chase sequence

mw3 chase sequence

When it surfaces you jump on board, lobbing a frag-grenade down the hatch then fighting your way, in a typical CoD corridor-shooting sequence, through to the control room. Once there, you kill the captain and purloin his keys for the weapons-launching system. Your colleague receives co-ordinates for the targets which, when bombed, will begin turning the tide of the war, you turn your keys in synch and leap overboard onto a Zodiac inflatable. Cue another of those breathless CoD chase-sequences, with immaculate water-modelling and vast numbers of explosions going on around you. At one point, when the Zodiac rides up the deck of a half-sunk aircraft carrier, you can fire sideways at your pursuers.

London mission

mw3 london mission

The second mission shown, called Mind the Gap, is set in London (we know Paris and an unspecified German city also feature in Modern Warfare 3). In Mind the Gap, you play as Sergeant Marcus Burns of the SAS. A Londoner would be able to tell you that the action seen above takes place in Westminster, but Mind the Gap opened in Docklands, with Canary Wharf in the background. It starts as a routine terrorist-attack mission, as you surprise a group of insurgents and take control of a lorry (which turns out to be empty), before pursuing a fresh wave of reinforcements through an evocative dock environment.

Tube chase

mw3 tube chase

The second part of Mind the Gap sees Burns and his SAS colleagues in a Land Rover, chasing down the remaining terrorists as they speed through the London Underground on a Tube train as well as Land Rovers. The sequence is punctuated by times when the tunnel the player is being driven down diverges from the terrorists' one, and the atmosphere is cranked up as the action passes through operational Tube stations, with commuters ducking for cover (clearly, London in the game hasn't yet been ravaged like New York has). The end of the demo shows the Tube train derailing, Hollywood-style.

Multiplayer

mw3 multiplayer

Multiplayer will be split between traditional maps and co-op Spec Ops maps. the latter will include both a survival mode and mission-based stages. In Black Ops, SpecOps was story-based, but the mission played in MW3 (Survival) was more like conventional multiplayer, with the maps and AI tailored to accommodate two people. You can play SpecOps on your own, with the AI taking the place of a human colleague. Survival resembles Gears of War's Horde mode: the object is to survive as long as possible while you're assaulted by wave after wave of enemies. The break in between each wave lets you stock up on ammo and acquire and place a selection of combat toys.

Survival

mw3 survival

In SpecOps Survival, you earn money for kills and so forth, which you can spend on three different supply chests, depending on how much you have – conventional ammo, explosive ammo (including turrets, claymores and the like) and air-strikes. Alternatively, you can call in a whole extra squad of AI-controlled mates with one life each. The longer you survive, the more fearsome your opponents. In MW3, SpecOps has a completely separate ranking-up system to the multiplayer, and can be played split-screen.

Call of Duty Elite

mw3 call of duty elite

One innovation Activision is preparing for MW3 has had loyal players up in arms. It's called Call of Duty Elite, and it's a web-based system designed to deepen your immersion in the multiplayer side of the game, whether you're a veteran or a novice, by integrating it with social media. The criticism has arisen from the perception that this is some kind of trojan horse designed to coax MW3 players into paying for multiplayer, but Activision denies that emphatically. It will be free to all, but there will be a Premium Tier which you will have to pay for. Activision wouldn't say what the payment model would be, but said Premium Tier would include all downloadable content and get you access to matches which could win you big real-life prizes. It also said it would be priced so competitively that: "It will be a no-brainer." That much remains to be seen.

mw3 call of duty elite 2

Elite is split into four chunks: Career, Connect, Compete and Improve. It will be a repository for an incredible wealth of stats: heat-maps, for example, will let you review past matches and see where you did best and worst. You'll be able to join Facebook-style groups of MW3 players with similar interests, whether they be your home-town or football. It will be like your 'baseball card', according to Activision, showing your career progression and strengths and will notify you of upcoming events and operations. Activision envisages Elite as "where you go when you're not playing MW3," and, naturally, you will be able to tap into it via smartphones and the web, as well as your console. Given that it will be free in its base state, it looks worth checking out, although whether anyone but the most committed online players will pay for the Premium Tier must be open to debate.

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/may/26/modern-warfare-3-game-preview

http://games.uk.msn.com/galleries/call-of-duty-mw3-preview

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Official Reveal Trailer

 

 

blog comments powered by Disqus

all articles

 

Contact Us | We are not responsible for the content of external sites | © 2015 Hussmir.com. All rights reserved.back to top