Some funs levels and impressive production value hampered by what has now been confirmed as a clearly rushed schedule. Multiplayer is fun at points but too grindy and cluttered by the continued progression from nuMWII because this was initially just supposed to be an expansion after they promised two years of support for the last game.
In between the actual fun and flashy spectacle levels you are treated to "Open Combat" missions, which are basically just multiplayer maps/sections from the new warzone map cordoned off with random enemies and objects scattered everywhere. This would probably work fine as a 1 or 2 level gimmick, but it's almost every other level and it's clear the game isn't built for it in most cases. You're just playing solo warzone against bots! The other games tease this sort of concept but here it's just painfully lazy, missions try to encourage stealth but clearly aren't built with any thought, often making you run directly out into the open with no cover and absolutely never letting you shoot out lights in otherwise dark areas, a feature present in a game that came out 4 years prior.
There are definitely fun ideas in these levels, they try to soften the blow with half baked imsim elements where you have to solve basic puzzles to get the good guns and equipment. There's a kind of fun bit where you get to run around moving shipping equipment for one level but the only one where it really comes together is a close quarters one where you get to run around and parkour between these 4 different hollowed out apartment complexes while the enemies chase you around. It's not very call of duty but what is at this point?
Story is pretty boilerplate and safe. Makarov breaks out of prison and does no russian (except this time the staging doesnt make any sense at all) but this time it doesn't actually do anything and no one falls for it. In the original he starts a war with 5 guys and just fucks off to let the russian american war consume the rest of the plot, but here you spend the entire time fighting him because he somehow has as many guys as the entire russian army. Despite this almost none of their terrorist attacks are effective and you always nullify their effects the during or after the level they happen. All these innocent people dying is certainly really intense but apparently none of it ever has any consequences and no one seems to really give a shit anyways. At once point you catch Sheperd alone in the middle of nowhere and instead of getting to knife him in the face like in the original you just convince him to voluntarily get tried by congress.
Also, not something I normaly complain about with performance capture, but Makarov and his second in command look so fucking ugly in a really unintimidating way. They look like soy conservative podcasts commentators. All I could think about during any scene with him is how he could launch into lecturing me about how I need to get a trad wife at any moment.
I think the main amount of hate this is getting is the length, which to be fair it is short and ends insanely abruptly. If this was just 2-3 hours longer I think people would have been fine with it but it ends during a really subdued anticlimatic level where Makarov escapes and they tease a 4th game. Just end it! Are ideas at Activision so sparse that they can only rely on the FOURTH game in a reboot of an existing subseries? Go to space again who gives a shit! It sells like hotcakes regardless!
In between the actual fun and flashy spectacle levels you are treated to "Open Combat" missions, which are basically just multiplayer maps/sections from the new warzone map cordoned off with random enemies and objects scattered everywhere. This would probably work fine as a 1 or 2 level gimmick, but it's almost every other level and it's clear the game isn't built for it in most cases. You're just playing solo warzone against bots! The other games tease this sort of concept but here it's just painfully lazy, missions try to encourage stealth but clearly aren't built with any thought, often making you run directly out into the open with no cover and absolutely never letting you shoot out lights in otherwise dark areas, a feature present in a game that came out 4 years prior.
There are definitely fun ideas in these levels, they try to soften the blow with half baked imsim elements where you have to solve basic puzzles to get the good guns and equipment. There's a kind of fun bit where you get to run around moving shipping equipment for one level but the only one where it really comes together is a close quarters one where you get to run around and parkour between these 4 different hollowed out apartment complexes while the enemies chase you around. It's not very call of duty but what is at this point?
Story is pretty boilerplate and safe. Makarov breaks out of prison and does no russian (except this time the staging doesnt make any sense at all) but this time it doesn't actually do anything and no one falls for it. In the original he starts a war with 5 guys and just fucks off to let the russian american war consume the rest of the plot, but here you spend the entire time fighting him because he somehow has as many guys as the entire russian army. Despite this almost none of their terrorist attacks are effective and you always nullify their effects the during or after the level they happen. All these innocent people dying is certainly really intense but apparently none of it ever has any consequences and no one seems to really give a shit anyways. At once point you catch Sheperd alone in the middle of nowhere and instead of getting to knife him in the face like in the original you just convince him to voluntarily get tried by congress.
Also, not something I normaly complain about with performance capture, but Makarov and his second in command look so fucking ugly in a really unintimidating way. They look like soy conservative podcasts commentators. All I could think about during any scene with him is how he could launch into lecturing me about how I need to get a trad wife at any moment.
I think the main amount of hate this is getting is the length, which to be fair it is short and ends insanely abruptly. If this was just 2-3 hours longer I think people would have been fine with it but it ends during a really subdued anticlimatic level where Makarov escapes and they tease a 4th game. Just end it! Are ideas at Activision so sparse that they can only rely on the FOURTH game in a reboot of an existing subseries? Go to space again who gives a shit! It sells like hotcakes regardless!