Just truly unbelievable how disappointing this campaign is. Sure, maybe the multiplayer wasn't bad, maybe the shooting feels good, but by this point this is a standard, it's all as much of a given as it's been for the first three mainline titles in the Call of Duty franchise, and everyone was already bored of that by the third game too, despite the increasing level of graphical fidelity and improved gameplay diversity.

But this game lacks even that, there's a lot of new gimmicks for sure but they all boil down to painfully slow sequences, so many stealth sections, a monotony of a Call of Duty campaign has never been as bad as it is here. It feels like they tried to break the monotony of shooting by having enemies drop different types of weapons more often, but why in the hell would I want a silenced ppsh for an all-out, guns-blazing assault? All this to try and focus the narrative on Price, Soap, and a new member of their unit: Yuri.

And they butcher their story horribly. They decide that their poster boy Price and the fan-favorite Soap will now by mythologized, they will become legends, superheros akin to those of the last two Treyarch titles, but this isn't a Treyarch title. Modern Warfare was always a poltical thriller exploring the terrors of fucking modern warfare. It wasn't about Soap or Price, it was about the entire world getting to see and understand how technology changed the face of war. MW3 is like, idk, alternative history time, let's do full-on WW3 across Europe, let's actually retcon that a character was in places they were not, let's have that character be the new protagonist, let's have 2000 more impossible odds but also make the game shorter. There's so much wrong with the direction this series went for in its finale. And, again, by now its style, presentation and gameplay are fully played out, so it couldn't even muster a finale consistent with the two previous entries, they had to pull things out of nowhere for, well, literally no reason, I can't imagine why they couldn't let you play as Price the entire game, delve deeper into his psyche or something, have psychological warfare be the main theme of the third game. It's just an idea, shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I'm just confused by every narrative decision made by this game. What we got is a game that decides it's a great idea to have a scene where they cut away from the action to show a child exploding from the perspective of one of her parents. Disgraceful.

The final level is a return to reveling in violence. Isn't it so freaking awesome how you murder the guy and watch him die and do a quicktime event to punch him and hang him? So antithetical to all that the Call of Duty franchise tried to say about war once upon a time. And to think they add civilians to that last level, giving you one final chance at commiting war crimes...
What a disgrace.

Easily the easiest Veteran campaign. Good, I wanted to get this over with as fast as possible. It's very generous, but still not generous enough to do the fun stuff you're able to do on lower difficulties. Most of the missions are gimmicky or stealth-based, so it's not like Veteran makes a big difference anyway.

Closing words: fuck this campaign. Boring, butchered, egregious, appalling, disappointing.