15. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Despite other entries in the Modern Warfare sub-series raising the standard for first-person shooters consecutively, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was found to be largely lacking any sort of improvement, feeling like a shinier version of the previous Modern Warfare title rather than delivering something memorable of its own.
While its single player campaign offered some satisfying conclusions and heartbreaking story developments for the Modern Warfare series, there was little here that had the player coming back. Levels were designed a bit unevenly and, as feared, most of the development was noticeably spent on fine-tuning Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer aspect, causing both the single player as well as the returning Spec Ops mode to feel underwhelming at best.
Despite having spent a lot of time perfecting its multiplayer, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 felt oddly uneven. It took around two or three bullets to kill the opposing player, meaning the one who got the drop on the other would most likely emerge victoriously from that gunfight. The weapons were unbalanced and in combination with the general map design, Modern Warfare 3 almost encouraged camping. Sitting it a corner with a silenced sub-machine gun was the easiest way to score those big kill streaks that could effortlessly clog up the entire map with sentry turrets and automatic choppers.
With most of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 feeling like a less impressive version of Modern Warfare 2, this is the title that exposed the series’ toxic community as well as starting the whole controversy around the annual release of Call of Duty games, claiming the developers would rather cash in on the name slapped on their titles instead of delivering a well-polished, evenly designed game. This was the point where the Call of Duty series was seen as a “quantity over quality” series, which is a stigma that remains until this day.
