Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 3 Beta impressions
By Devin Shea
This past weekend Activision opened the gates to players to experience the highly anticipated Cal of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 beta. Ever since the Modern Warfare remake came out, players have anticipated subsequent releases of remakes. The first remake set the tone and MWII didn’t fully live up to its predecessor, but we get a little taste of the new changes during the Modern Warfare 3 beta. Keeping in mind the game is still a work in progress, how does it measure up?
The most apparent change to Modern Warfare 3 is the menu. It feels more like older FPS menus and reminds me, forgive this blasphemous comparison, of the Battlefield 4 menu. I will be honest, I don’t like it quite as much as the MWII menu, but it’s at least user-friendly. It starts you with some basic loadouts that you can then modify as you level up and create your own loadout. The more you play, the more things you unlock like abilities and gear that you can wear to be faster, more silent or automatically pick up ammo, similar to the Scavenger or Ghost perks.
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 beta offered a few modes to play such as Ground War for the large maps and Mosh Pit (my personal preferred mode) for smaller and quicker matches like Team Deathmatch and Hardpoint. Players of the original game will recognize some of the maps like The Estate, Favela and Rust. Rust made an appearance in a past remake and this map is exactly the same but it almost feels emptier somehow. The Estate seemed to be the most fun with lots of opportunities to try out different loadouts. It’s almost the most nostalgic map as the one with all of the Juggernauts when you played in couch co-op.
Speaking of Juggernauts, there is still the system where the more kills you rack up can offer you the Juggernaut suit. In the past, the Juggernaut suit was OP, either with a machine gun or a flamethrower. This suit however is…boring. During Rust, I earned a suit and all that came with it was a shield and a grenade. You’re a glorified walking UAV not to mention it came in a drop meaning it could be stolen and some other dude gets to walk around listening to rock music and bopping people with his shield. Needless to say, it was a disappointment.
The gunplay feels tighter than MWII but the HP seems to have increased quite a bit. Gone are the days of “one shot, one kill” with an AR shot to the head. You’ll empty half a clip into a player and they are still dancing around the map like it’s a party. After playing MWII, it took some getting used to. I hope when the 2nd round of the beta starts on the 12th, they offer hardcore modes to try to balance it out a little.
If you happen to get access to the Modern Warfare 3 beta due to spending $100 on a pre-order, you get to use your pre-order skins and guns during the testing. More often than not, when I got killed, it was by a shiny dude with a tracer gun that made me explode into what looked like rice. Speaking of skins, your MWII skins and bundles should transfer to Modern Warfare 3 which would be incredible considering all of the amazing guns they have released lately. What would be even better is if our Modern Warfare guns could also be transferred but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Overall the Modern Warfare 3 beta was a good time but nothing extraordinary so far. The biggest thing to look forward to is the new zombie modes in the upcoming game. They are offering new zombie themed bundles, like a zombified Ghost in the pre-order and a zombie bundle in the game store that includes two ARs that are OP AF. Plus one of the sights is a lower jawbone complete with teeth and that’s pretty rad.
Play the 2nd round of the Modern Warfare 3 beta on 10/12 and here’s hoping we get a sneaky peek of the zombie modes. See you there, soldier.