Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – Come for the Fun Multiplayer, Stay for the Zombies

Arguably the world’s most popular shooter, the Call of Duty franchise got a reboot in a new reimagined timeline for its Modern Warfare series with the latest addition to the series offering not only the usual multiplayer mode but the surprisingly popular Warzone battle royale mode, a single player campaign and a revamped Zombies mode.

We managed to get our hands on a copy for field testing and after taking on hordes of zombies and angry operators aplenty during the holidays, here’s our Call of Duty Modern Warfare III review where we share if their latest addition to the franchise is worth your money.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – Campaign, Multiplayer Mode and the Hunt for the More Accessories

The single player campaign is basically a warm-up prelude for multiplayer and has you hunting global bad guy Makarov who is out to cause chaos and destruction because reasons. In any case, our usual crew of Price, Soap and Ghost have to save the day.

You get the obligatory action bits including a prison break, playing as a gunship weapons operator delivering death from above and your usual array of combat and sneak missions with the slight difference being that you have slightly more leeway in how you approach a mission instead of being a linear affair as a semi-open map where you can choose to do things quietly with suppressors or the usual way of going in guns blazing.

You also get the unexpected return of a prior bad guy who changes from being a heel to a face in record time. There’s not much to dwell on here and odds are you’ll likely play the campaign a couple of times just for the achievements but you’re looking at about 4-5 hours of gameplay here.

Where the meat of the game is is in multiplayer where you have a veritable armoury worth of guns across the range to unlock and accessories to kit them out.

Rather than the old linear system of getting kit doled out to you at specific times when you level up, the game allows you to designate priority guns or kit to unlock first by completing daily challenges. It’s a fun mechanic that still offers a challenge but allows lower level players to get the exact accessory or item they want.

In terms of the hardware you get, you get access to the usual assortment of submachine guns, assault rifles, battle rifles, marksmen and sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols and melee weapons. Interestingly enough, you also get access to older Modern Warfare 2 guns though they’ve been given a slight redesign and rebalanced to accommodate the array of new guns in Modern Warfare III.

Across the course of my Call of Duty Modern Warfare III review, I used all of the new weapons and some are strong out of the gate like the new MCW rifle and the Tyr pistols with Snake Shot ammunition but regardless of any gun you pick, each weapon in the game has a role where it shines. 

Modifying and adding accessories to each weapon to customise them to your exact playstyle is still a fun affair but it remains confusing as there is no tangible numerical value to see how exactly a given attachment or accessory can modify a weapon’s performance barring some rudimentary graphic sliders. More tangible feedback would have been helpful.

Multiplayer mode makes for short and intense bursts of fun with remakes of maps from the prior games like Estate, Rust and Highrise which makes for a pleasant surprise especially for those who’ve played the earlier prequels from the 2010s.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – One of the key aspects of progression in the game is unlocking new guns and also the new accessories that come with each gun like new sights, grips, stocks and the like with the ability to prioritise unlocks by completing daily challenges.

Unfortunately the skill level in the various multiplayer modes is daunting and odds are you’ll most likely be slaughtered the moment you get in the game by vastly better armed and nastier opposition. Much like prior games you’ll have to slog your way through to get better hardware and master the nuances of each map though it’s admittedly a slow slog for casual players.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – Warzone returns but no DMZ

Making a return this time around is the highly popular Warzone battle royale mode where you and a small team have to kill everyone else on the map as a gradually decreasing circle caused by lethal radiation forces everyone into a final showdown. 

The new Urzikstan map is smaller, denser and this time around has more horizontal movement via ziplines across the city’s skyscraper that you can slide back and forth across in a fashion similar to Spider Man.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – In keeping with recent times, the game offers a battle pass with a smattering of free stuff but which the good stuff requires payment in the battle pass with cosmetics, custom weapon blueprints and skins to earn.

It’s still as cutthroat and stress inducing as it was since the mode was introduced and while Warzone is technically free to play, access to much of the accessible guns and items in the game is a lot harder unless you scavenge them from the battlefield.

Unfortunately, Modern Warfare 2’s DMZ mode which was an extraction shooter with the same ‘every man for himself’ mechanics was not revised or reintroduced in Modern Warfare 3 though as an alternative, they’re introduced a new Zombies mode.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – Bigger, better zombies mode

Zombies mode for the franchise is traditionally an affair that takes place in a fixed map location in which players have to gradually unlock more areas to explore while upgrading their arsenal against neverending waves of the undead.

While it was admittedly popular for a lark, it was a tedious and repetitive affair that had you stuck on the same map doing the same things ad infinitum until you inevitably fell to the infinite zombie hordes.

The new Zombies mode in Call of Duty Modern Warfare III takes things in a different direction blending elements from their derelict DMZ extraction shooter mode by throwing you into an open world map of a post apocalyptic city in fictional Urzikstan overrun by zombies for you to shoot, lot and explore. 

The city itself is divided into concentric rings of increasing risk and danger with the outskirts of the city where you start off every time featuring few of the undead and simple, low-paying missions.

As you start to get to the heart of the city past the yellow zone into the red zone centre, you’ll gradually encounter more aggressive, tougher and more numerous undead culminating in massed zombie hordes charging you with mini bosses thrown in for good measure. In between, you’ll also occasionally encounter human enemies – mercenaries – out to make a quick buck that you also have to deal with as part of the storyline.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III Review – The majority of power ups in Zombies mode are acquired by quaffing drinkable soda cans. Most times you’ll tote a good six pack of different power ups, referred to as Perk-A-Colas in the game into a match to get instant upgrades from the get-go

The map is massive with all the trappings of postmodern life like apartments, gas stations, parks and the like though it’s now become an urban hellscape full of the living dead. The game rewards exploration and savvy users can discover hidden portals that let you zip about parts of the map and get free upgrades too.

Much like the prior DMZ mode, the new Zombies mode has you starting out without weapons or armour though they do start you off with a few basic random weapons to get started. From there, you have to brave the zombie hordes to accomplish a series of storyline missions and random missions dotted across the map for loot with absolute freedom in what and how you accomplish your missions.

While weapons remain at the forefront, the key mechanic to levelling up in the game is acquiring crafting schematics for elemental weapon upgrades and personal power-ups, both of which are necessary to even attempt to enter the red zone at the centre of the map though accomplishing that is far from easy.

From the moment you start, a timer is ticking down with about 40 minutes of time to explore, loot and shoot before the map slowly becomes inhospitable with an expanding circle of radiation expanding out.

If you want to keep any loot, you’ll have to call in a chopper to lift you out of the map from a preset number of rapidly diminishing exfil zones. Things can get tense as calling in a chopper also spawns a horde of zombies out to stop you which makes for tense gameplay.

Unlike DMZ though, the new Zombies mode is strictly a PvE game and there’s no malicious means (yet) of killing other human players which is a surprisingly positive change for the game. I’ve had complete random strangers help me out in the middle of nowhere and when I could, I returned the favour as a rifle toting harbinger of zombie doom.

Across the course of my experience in Zombies mode in my Modern Warfare III review, I’ve even had situations where strangers came up and tossed over exotic schematics only available in the deeper red zone. Rather than the cutthroat nature of DMZ, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III’s Zombies mode makes for a surprisingly more pleasant affair to play through.

Barring the random elements, the storyline missions in Zombie mode can easily last a good twenty plus hours with a team. Double that if you aim to play solo or with a random team of players as the quality of your teammates will vary widely ranging from clueless sods to elite operators.

I’ve had a fair mix of both playing in the game including berserk Leeroy Jenkins wannabes who charge into the red zone buck naked with only a handgun and expecting people to save them when they’re downed.

The only quibble here is that once you’ve finished the storyline missions and collected the complete set of crafting recipes for the game, there’s very little else to do. Hopefully they’ll keep adding new content in further seasons in the game. 

Should you buy Call of Duty Modern Warfare III?

Contrary to naysayers, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III is currently the second best-selling game of 2023 outpaced only by Hogwart’s Legacy which is still an impressive achievement seeing as it was only available for sale only in the past several weeks.

To be fair, the single player campaign is a short affair with most of your time spent in multiplayer and Zombies mode. The core gameplay loop is tight, refined and addictive and you’ll easily rack up hundreds of hours trying to collect the nigh countless number of accessories to kit out your guns. 

If you’re a veteran Call of Duty player, this is still worth a whirl. Those who are keen on the less cutthroat, more entertaining Zombies mode will also love this and Warzone and multiplayer still exists for those who want something more competitive.

Newcomers to the game will find the sheer number of unlocks and gameplay daunting but this latest addition to the series is still the most accessible thus far with much easier access to unlocks. Come for the multiplayer, stay for Zombies mode!

Call of Duty Modern Warfare III review sample courtesy of Activision Blizzard. Available on PS5 and PS4, Xbox series X|S + One, PC on Battle Net and Steam. To purchase please visit https://www.callofduty.com/playnow/modernwarfare3