If we didn’t already know that Name of Obligation Fashionable Warfare 3 started life as a DLC providing to 2022’s Fashionable Warfare 2, this yr’s single-player providing makes it obviously apparent.
Calling it a single-player marketing campaign in any respect feels beneficiant, as outdoors of a robust opening mission, and a few fascinating concepts about how these video games might be structured sooner or later, Name of Obligation Fashionable Warfare 3’s solo providing is shallow, quick, and seems like a launch of obligation.
The most important change is the open fight missions, which see gamers dropped right into a larger-than-average map, with some targets they will sort out in any order. These missions even have Warzone-style gear packing containers littered across the space for gamers to alter their loadout, or use killstreaks. Whereas that is an fascinating method to a Name of Obligation linear marketing campaign, in execution, they’re sadly poor.
It feels such as you’re being dropped into an space that’ll be used for the brand new Warzone map, and then you definately’re rushed by compromised AI in sequences that really feel extra like DMZ mode with cutscenes, and fewer enjoyable. The targets are additionally insultingly easy, with some open fight missions capable of be accomplished in a matter of minutes.
Name of Obligation Fashionable Warfare 3 reeks of a sport that had a sequence of environments at its disposal, that then had a storyline roughly strung collectively round it, to facilitate the marketing campaign. Makarov, a returning Fashionable Warfare baddie, is completely wasted on a narrative that capabilities extra as a method to showcase what Operators you’ll be shopping for in Warzone when the brand new map arrives.
Name of Obligation campaigns previously had been by no means RPG-length, however you possibly can at the least depend on them for some big-budget set items and a daft, pulpy marketing campaign that you possibly can get by way of in a number of evenings.
Fashionable Warfare 3’s marketing campaign is just not solely painfully quick (we timed ourselves at simply over 3 hours and 20 minutes) but it surely doesn’t have that Name of Obligation blockbuster vitality. The opening mission is the one one which seems like a correct Name of Obligation sport, and even that also seems like a guided tour of a location you’re going to be enjoying by way of in Warzone quickly sufficient.
The sport often flirts with totally different gameplay kinds, together with a baffling stealth mission that was on the similar time extremely fundamental, and deeply irritating. The sport doesn’t have a correct stealth system, as a substitute whenever you get arbitrarily too near somebody, they’ll begin to acknowledge you, after which all hell will break unfastened.
This part is instant-fail, that means in the event you don’t comply with a really set path, or account for the unusual quirks of what counts as being detected or not, you’ll be doing it again and again.
A CoD. marketing campaign has by no means felt extra like a contractual obligation, or made as a result of Activision didn’t suppose it may cost £70 for a sport with out it. It’s a cynical, disappointing low level for a sequence that used to set the bar for single-player shooter campaigns.
