Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Operation Deadlock mixes Zombies with Warzone's DMZ mode, and while the combination can create some heart-stopping battles, you have to be willing to grind to see them.

Modern Warfare 3 takes a risk using recycled content to sell nostalgia, but the payoff is enticing gameplay with classic features.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a disappointing anniversary for a series that really should take a break.

Zombies feels more like a limited-time Warzone event cobbled together from existing ideas and assets and that sentiment permeates throughout MWIII. Each pillar is an inferior patchwork of past ideas from its stunted campaign to its multiplayer that, while the strongest mode, is comprised of systems lifted wholesale from MWII with maps from 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This year’s COD is a threadbare expansion masquerading as a sequel and an embarrassing way to mark the series’ 20th anniversary.

A Call of Duty game of this low quality released a decade ago would have been a scandal. Now, it's emblematic of an approach to a franchise that's in desperate need of a reality check.

Despite preying on our nostalgia with strong gunplay and classic maps, added grind, barren zombies, and a heavy price tag make this yet another skippable entry.

In the end, Modern Warfare 3 begs the question of whether this annual cycle should continue or not. Almost half the game feels shoehorned in, such as the forgettable campaign. Meanwhile, the other half has mixed results in the case of the multiplayer maps. But if players engage with the truly special parts of MW3, such as its exceptional improvements to gameplay and spectacular alternative modes like Zombies and Ground War, they’ll find there is a worthy experience in there somewhere.

"We need a new Call of Duty game every single year," the Activision executives bellowed, and out popped Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 after the development times caught up with them. A truly anaemic release, there's never been a surer sign to press pause on the series. 14-year-old content is the best thing about this year's entry and if that's not enough of an indictment of where Call of Duty is at in 2023, we don't know what is. A franchise in serious need of a complete reboot, Modern Warfare 3 has to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 might just be the series' worst installment yet.

A weak campaign with an unsatisfactory cliffhanger resolution, a Zombies map that's little more than rebranded DMZ, and a selection of multiplayer maps taken straight from Modern Warfare II (2009), Modern Warfare III barely stands up on its own merits, especially if you've thrown countless hours into last year's entry and have plenty to carry forward.