It’s gonna be a weird year for Call of Duty.
Arguing about who makes the best Calls of Duty is a time-honored tradition, but in 20 years of studio baton-passing, Modern Warfare 3 presents a unique opportunity for persnickety CoD enjoyers like myself: Sledgehammer has been entrusted with the direct sequel to Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 reboot just a year after its release, with the same engine, the same content pipeline, and full backwards compatibility with MW2’s guns and attachments.
I imagine this is a pretty big deal for Sledgehammer. The Bay Area studio has spent a decade playing third fiddle to its more-senior Infinity Ward and Treyarch collaborators, serving as a support studio when necessary and garnering a reputation as the « offbeat » CoD studio with Advanced Warfare (2014), WW2 (2017), and Vanguard (2021)—all entries that tried to reach beyond where CoD was, and either fell flat or didn’t make a significant mark in series canon. Simply by being a Modern Warfare game, MW3 is the studio’s highest-profile project ever.
After a few days playing Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer beta, it might also prove to be the strangest CoD package in years. The beta is essentially a tasting menu of MW3’s full-course nostalgia for the original 2009 Modern Warfare 2. Familiar sights
Yes, it’s a confusing pretzel of sequels and recursive reboots, but the takeaway is that Activision is betting big on players wanting to relive a well-remembered CoD from 14 years ago, so much so that it’s willing to forgo MW3 having any real identity of its own. Instead of having original multiplayer maps, MW3 will only feature remakes of MW2 (2009) maps at launch. Between both weekends of the beta, I’ve played five: Favela, Skidrow, Rust, Highrise, and Estate.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but yeah, the nostalgia is working. I played a whole lot of MW2 in 2009, as you do when you’re 13 and most of your friends are online too, so it’s not surprising that these maps are still branded into my brain. Sprinting down the center lane of Highrise gave me the same sentimental rush I get when I drive by my old middle school. Sledgehammer clearly understands the assignment—modernize, but preserve the map’s visual identity—and I think they’ve so far nailed it, with the exception of Favela. MW3 Favela doesn’t quite replicate 2009’s dingy art style: the new one is cleaner, brighter, and more saturated. That’s an entirely valid interpretation of Favela that I like just fine, but it does stand out next to Estate and Rust, which are so faithful to their originals that they stop feeling like remakes and just become those maps.
And hey…some of those maps kinda sucked, huh? It was bold of Sledgehammer to toss Estate into the mix so early on, because 10 minutes on that map reminded me why I voted against it every time it came up in 2009.
