In a holiday game season when you can’t throw a stone without hitting a AAA-quality shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has nevertheless generated a staggering amount of buzz. With Dead Space-veterans from Sledgehammer Games joining Infinity Ward in the development of the eighth Call of Duty game, and a number of other franchises gunning for a chunk of CoD’s massive online fan base, there’s a ton of excitement about this release. We grabbed the midnight release, dove in, and the great news is that Modern Warfare 3 is packed chock full of everything that fans of the series desire.
It makes no sense to mess with success, so Modern Warfare 3 follows the same structure as its predecessor. There’s a single-player campaign that throws you into scenarios so action-packed that even Jerry Bruckheimer might find himself reaching for the pause button occasionally to catch a breath, there’s a set of Special Ops single missions where you can compete with friends for the best scores/times, and there’s the ever-popular multiplayer mode. The visuals and effects remain stunning, and the single-player AI puts up quite a challenge.
We don’t want to spoil the surprises found in the single-player campaign, but we’ll point out that it has all the extreme special forces action you’d expect from a Modern Warfare game. You’ll start your first mission right in the action, not in a training scenario (that’s available in the Special Ops mode for newcomers to the series). You’re defending some very familiar territory here in fast-action, explosion-laden urban combat.
Just in the first hour of the game, you’ll man a helicopter-mounted machine gun, direct UAV strikes, head out on an underwater mission with a SEAL team, and board an enemy vessel to prevent a possible nuclear apocalypse. All in a day’s work for a Modern Warfare 3 player.
I could go into details on the new multiplayer modes, but you’d probably rather see them than read me write about them. So head over to the Modern Warfare 3 page and you can see the new maps and modes outlined in glorious video form, with commentary from developers at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games. In my brief time with multiplayer so far, I particularly enjoyed the Kill Confirmed mode, where you must pick up dog tags from fallen soldiers. (Or in my own case, watch other soldiers pick up my dog tags on the KillCam…) 
Another big change is the addition of support for the Call of Duty Elite app. This full-featured app is free to download, and it gives you detailed access to your stats, provides intel on weapons and maps, links you to events and contests where you can show off your skills, and it provides access to the Elite Premium subscription which gives you additional features and a one-year subscription to all the Modern Warfare 3 add-on content. 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to slap my Modern Warfare 3 hooded sweatshirt on my avatar and go save the world from terror and tyranny again.
-- Denny Atkin [Gamertag: Editer]
