Supporting Streak rewards include becoming a Juggernaut to soak up enemy bullets, laying down a pack of body armour and sweeping over the map with a toy chopper to highlight enemy positions, allowing players to contribute to their team more effectively and earn small experiences while doing so. While these changes aren't as game-changing as you'd expect, the main benefit is that supporting players, the sort who don't usually muster up high-ranking Kill Streaks on a regular basis, are rewarded far better for their actions. Offensive is the usual array of powerful attacks, with your running total of kills resetting upon each death, while the defensive option offers less of a dramatic impact on the match, but actually lets you continue your streak through multiple spawns. Meanwhile, these rewards are now split into offensive and defensive branches. While the fundamentals remains the same, Kill Streaks have now been swapped out for a new Point Streak system, which now allow objectives to also contribute to Kill Streak rewards.
#Xbox 360 call of duty modern warfare 3 series#
Multiplayer, meanwhile, teases the most radical changes to the series since the seminal Call of Duty 4, a game that set the standard for multiplayer carrot and stick over the past few years. It's not until the game's climatic final few missions - where Soap and Price once again take the reins, tightening up the pace with some enjoyable stealth sections and adding a much-needed dose of personality - that the campaign picks up again, leaving the trilogy in a satisfying way. Objectives here consist of pushing forward through countless streets, corridors and plazas, jumping between cover points and taking down countless enemy numbers, and engaging in a few limp set pieces to push the story forward. However, once the conflict envelops Europe in the game's second half, it quickly becomes a prolonged whirl of rubble and explosions. It takes the ridiculous tone of Modern Warfare 2 and runs with it, and you're more than happy to go along for the ride. The opening act features arguably some of Call of Duty's best missions to date, mixing jaw-dropping set pieces with some clever gameplay conceits. Structurally it's very similar to Modern Warfare 2, jumping back and forth between American soldiers on the front line and returning British task force agents Price and Soap, who continue to pursue Russian renegade and all-round bad guy Makarov. The game sees a spectacular opening in Manhattan, with players pushing back enemy forces using helicopters and submarines as they're surrounded by battered skyscrapers and sandbagged streets, before taking to London, Berlin and Paris as the Russians extend their reach across Europe. The story continues pretty much where Modern Warfare 2 left off, one where the United States is in tatters after a powerful Russian force invades its borders, leaving the world on the brink of a global conflict.
There's also added anticipation, since it's the concluding part of the trilogy that pushed the series into the limelight. Modern Warfare 3 continues to do what Call of Duty does best, adding yet another impressive layer of new features to its monstrously successful multiplayer empire, and yet another impressive rollercoaster single-player campaign - one that's so ridiculous at times it's difficult to keep up. At this point, Activision's success story really is its own thing, a game that's so fast, sharp and over the top that at times it has more in common with arcade shooters than military ones. While there's been much talk about the battle between Call of Duty and Battlefield this year, it's now clear that they have two very different approaches to the same genre.
Developer: Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer Games