Monday, June 6, 2011

E3 2011: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Takes Manhattan


Warning Spoilers Ahead
Washington D.C. is burning. A Russian invasion force has swept across the Eastern seaboard and conflicts rage in major American cities. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives have already been lost with millions more threatened by a surprise assault. New York is the latest battleground in a two-day-old war that doesn't appear to be going well for the good guys.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 picks up right after the end of Modern Warfare 2, with the Russians first storming DC and then spreading through America. The single-player campaign takes you across the world to London, Africa, the Himalaya Mountains, and Russia, but it starts in the U.S. They call it "Black Tuesday," the day the walls of a once-great republic crumbled. The resistance begins in Manhattan. 


That's where you join Delta team. Things are bad. The streets of the financial district are mostly destroyed. Buildings have fallen. There's a massive battle happening and you've got to get to the Stock Exchange. Hopefully to ring the opening bell with some Russkie's noggin.

The scale is epic. Marching alongside a tank, your squad battles troops on the ground as desolate Manhattan skyscrapers loom overhead. A large, scorched American flag hangs from one building, a reminder of what, just hours ago, was an untarnished country. It's enough to make you want to pick up a gun and fight. Good thing they made a video game for that.

The conflagration plays out like previous Modern Warfare titles. You go straight, you shoot people, and you move forward. Not a bad thing to play like one of the best-selling shooters ever. There are new bells to go along with some new whistles -- a 9-bang grenade sets off a series of flashbangs, there's a gun best described as a scoped N00b Tube -- but all and all, the experience is similar. Lots of noise. Lots of enemies to kill.

The difference is the setting. It might be the biggest change from MW2 to MW3. It's skyscrapers, city streets, and monuments of the modern age make routine battles look more significant. While Modern Warfare 2 did have its final large-scale battle in Washington DC, it's quite different to fight down Wall Street. You do actually go into the Stock Exchange, shooting Russian invaders while hiding behind the trade booths. Eventually you get onto the roof to destroy a satellite tower, where there's a better view of the mess New York City is in. 

The Manhattan battle level has all that is expected of Modern Warfare, including a lengthy helicopter battle with you in the gunner seat. We've been in the gunner seat of a chopper before in this series, but never one where the pilot is giving us a guided tour of New York in disarray.

New York is just one setting in a much larger game. But it seems like more of the focus is on urban conflict as another mission has you sneaking through a London neighborhood at night. That scene ends with a crazy chase in the London Underground, as you pursue a train, dodging incoming traffic on the tracks. Spoiler: It doesn't end well for you.

Each Modern Warfare game has had some mix of fighting within towns or cities, but Modern Warfare 3 is definitely pushing the throttle a little harder this time. It won't all take place in populated areas; I hope the majority of it does. When you're fighting in familiar places, it does feel like there's more at stake than, say, stalking soldiers in a Russian mountain base in Kazakhstan. 

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