How do you describe a game that has so much hype behind it without offending everyone? You don't. Modern Warfare 3 is difficult to write about. Especially since it's following on the heels of Battlefield which came out less than a month ago. It does some things very well and other things very badly. So let's start with the bad and then end with the good.
The bad:
1. Lag! Lag! Lag! I never really truly appreciated dedicated servers until I played Modern Warfare 3. When there is no lag it is fantastic, but when there is any lag it's nearly unplayable. I have kind of mixed feelings on this. On one hand you can always have games to play since you aren't relying on servers to be up and running. On the other hand, you can get some terribly laggy games. So it's a mixed bag.
2. Gun balance. I don't have tons of guns unlocked yet by any means, but I already notice some pretty big differences in gun damage. Now I do expect different guns to do different damage, but it's pretty bad when one gun can spray someone with 15-20 bullets and not kill them and then they turn around and shoot you 3 times in the chest and you die. It just doesn't feel right to me and I think some adjustments need to be made.
3. Kill streak balance. I know I keep talking about balance, but the fact is that the kill streaks can be ridiculous sometimes. That being said, this has been a bit of an issue in all CoD games. It's not a deal breaker, but sometimes it can be really annoying to not be able to go outside for 5 minutes without getting gunned down by a helicopter.
The Good:
1. Fast paced fun. In my opinion the biggest difference between Battlefield and MW3 is the pace of the game play. Battlefield is a lot slower in this regard, but that's what it is meant to be. MW3 is very fast and furious and that's what it is meant to be. MW3 does this well. The maps are fairly small so you find people quickly and you have a fight. You may die a lot, but you can get back in the action so fast that you really don't mind. There are not many breaks in fighting and for this reason I like MW3 a lot.
2. The new persistent kill streaks that keep building even after death. I think this is the most brilliant idea ever for kill streaks. In fact, I wish they would just switch to entirely this. I think it would make people camp less if they didn't lose the streak they were building after death. This works especially great for me because I die all the time in this game so I still feel like I can experience the kill streaks which is a big part of MW3 online.
3. Gaming modes. There are a ton of ways to play MW3 online and I love having all the options to choose from when I get frustrated with one I am playing. The newest of these is called 'Kill Confirmed' and is a mode where after you kill someone you have to go and pick up their dog tag to confirm the kill and get the points. If their team gets the dog tag before you then they get the points back. It's a nice change from the usual team death match. It's hard to get bored with so many modes to choose from.
4. Guns. I know I complained about the balance, but I really like the way you level guns now to get the unlocks instead of buying what you want. There are just so many options with each gun that it really helps to keep it fresh if you are like me and love to unlock everything you can.
So overall I would say MW3 is a good game. It's definitely not the 5/5 or 10/10 that some review sites were giving the game, but it's fun. I'm sure they will smooth out some of the balance issues in the upcoming weeks and make it even better. If you are a fan of the CoD games then you will find the usual things you love with nothing really out of the ordinary on a CoD launch.
I will post a more in depth review once I play through the campaign and spec ops and put some more time into the multiplayer. It may be a few weeks though as Skyrim is out on Friday and I plan to dedicate a lot of time to that.
