Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer is a sweet addiction

Cool new maps

The new version of multiplayer comes with 16 maps. Matches range anywhere from four to nine players on a side. They include all sorts of terrain, but don’t necessarily reproduce anything that is in the single-player campaign.

In the Village map, you fight among tin-roof shanty buildings and deep caves. Just about every corner has a good hiding place, so it’s easy to get ambushed if you just run around a lot. In Mission, you play around a run-down Spanish mission that stands on a cliff. It provides a big challenge in fighting at different elevations. Some of the maps are small, necessitating the use of quick-draw and rapid-fire weaponry. Some are large, with plenty of room for sniping at long ranges.

It is hard to stay alive for longer than 30 seconds. At any given time, a sharpshooter may have a bead on you from far away. If you round a corner, you may meet the wrong end of a shotgun or a knife blade. From above, helicopters, Predator drones, or jet aircraft may rain death on you. And you could always swear that you pulled your trigger just a split-second before the player who took you out.

Once you reach level four, you can create and customize weapons loadouts known as classes, which is like a kit that includes your choice for primary weapons, secondary weapons, special abilities known as perks, and types of grenades. Perks include Blind Eye, which hides you from air support; Stalker, which lets you move faster while aiming; and Hardline, which lets you achieve Killstreaks (where you get rewards for shooting multiple enemies in a row without dying) with one less kill.

The variety comes in with different types of matches, from Ground War with 12 to 18 players fighting it out to my favorite, Domination, where you have to take and defend three flags scattered strategically throughout the map. You can always count on the action being near the flags. There are many other modes from Team Deathmatch to Search and Destroy.

Big differences from Black Ops

There are some important differences compared to past years. The game no longer has a points currency system that Black Ops introduced.

This time, players can choose to play three different types of modern warriors with different packages of weaponry. These include the Assault Strike Package, where you can do as much direct damage as possible with Killstreak rewards that include Predator drone missiles, helicopters and air strikes. When you’ve achieved a Killstreak, it is one of the most wonderful triumphs because you can then take an overwhelmingly powerful weapon and rain it down on your enemies.

After what seemed like an enormous wait, I finally got an Attack Helicopter Killstreak last night. One of the Killstreaks I won’t miss are the attack dogs, which killed over and over again until someone took them out.

You can also use the Support Strike Package, where you can use rewards such as an unmanned aerial vehicle for recon, counter-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) and anti-aircraft missile turrets. Players who aren’t quite as skilled at killing can use this package to help teammates win. When a support player dies, the streak count doesn’t reset upon dying.

If a player dies four times in a row, they get a “death streak” reward, where the player can run faster for a short time. If you die five times in a row, you can see on the radar map where the person is who killed you. If you die six times in a row, you fall into the “last stand” mode, where you’re bleeding out but can still shoot, and you carry an explosive that can blow up nearby enemies. That tips the odds in favor of beginners’ survival in battle against expert players.

Also, the game presents the Specialist Strike Package (unlocked at level 20), which is designed for expert players such as snipers. It gives you a fourth perk after two kills and a fifth perk if you get four. The Killstreak rewards of the last game rewarded players for individual kills. But this game rewards players for achieving collective goals known as Points. The more Points you get for your team, the more you can reap bonuses that help you in combat.

For the expert players, there are also some tweaks. You can now level up your weapons the same way you level up your character. There are 40 different weapons to choose from, and each one has a progression for leveling up. The higher you level up, the more you can add things like camouflage, reticules for better aiming and attachments for additions such as a grenade launcher. If you become proficient at using a weapon, you can level up and reduce the recoil when firing. As far as attachments go, you can now get a dual scope, which lets you see both close-range and long-range targets at once.

New multiplayer modes

The multiplayer also includes “survival mode” for the Spec Ops version of the game, originally introduced in Modern Warfare 2. In Spec Ops, you can play cooperatively with another player to defend against a horde of computer-generated enemies who come at you in progressively tougher and tougher waves. I played the Spec Ops mode and had a lot of fun loading up on ammo and purchase supplies in between rounds and using different strategies as more powerful waves hit me. Ultimately, you always die in this mode as the enemies overwhelm you like the undead surrounding the good guys in a zombie movie.

The regular multiplayer also has a “kill confirmed” mode. In this mode, you shoot an enemy and then have to run over the body to collect “dog tags.” That results in a confirmed kill. If you don’t confirm the kill, you don’t get credit for it. And if a person on your team dies, you can retrieve his or her dog tags so that you can deny the kill to the enemy.

This totally changes the way that snipers play. After they shoot someone, they have to rely on others to pick up dog tags for them. The dog tags become a kind of battleground, as players have to race to them to either confirm or deny a kill.

There’s also a mode called Team Defender where your job is to protect a player who grabs a flag and moves it to your part of the map.

By popular demand, Modern Warfare 3 will support dedicated PC servers, allowing players to browse, filter and join dedicated servers as they wish. Players can set up their own servers and administer them with direct control over features such as game rules, setup and ban lists.