Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Lore & Background

The game's campaign follows Modern Warfare 2 and begins right after the events of its final mission. It is centered on Task Force 141, containing Captain Price, Soap MacTavish, and a newly introduced playable character, Yuri. Alongside the Delta Force and Special Air Service, they hunt Vladimir Makarov, a Russian terrorist who leads the Russian Ultranationalist party. He led several terror attacks across Europe, triggering a large-scale war between the Ultranationalists and friendly forces. Development for the game began in 2010 with more than one developer studio. Prior to development, Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella left the company to form Respawn Entertainment. Other members had been fired or had left the company following the duo's departure. Sledgehammer Games joined the Modern Warfare 3 development force, with Raven Software also developing the game's multiplayer mode. Following a large leak containing detailed information about the game, multiple teaser trailers were released, with each showcasing a location featured in the game's campaign, leading up to a full reveal.

Reader's Guide

Modern Warfare 3 received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its gameplay, campaign, and multiplayer, although there was some criticism for its story and lack of innovation. Retrospective reviewers believe the game failed to match the standards set by its two predecessors. It won the award for Best Shooter at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, as well as Action Game of the Year at the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was a massive commercial success. Within 24 hours of going on sale, the game sold 6.5 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom and grossed $400 million, contemporaneously making it the largest entertainment launch ever. The game introduced new multiplayer modes such as Kill Confirmed and Team Defender, and revamped the killstreak system into Pointstreaks with three strike packages: Assault, Support, and Specialist. A new cooperative mode called Survival was added, allowing one or two players to fight waves of enemies on multiplayer maps. The game also featured a Prestige Shop allowing players to prestige up to 20 times.

Did You Know?

• A separate version for the Nintendo DS was developed by n-Space, while Treyarch developed the game's Wii port.
• In Japan, Square Enix published the game with a separate subtitled and dubbed version.
• The game includes an interactive scene of a terror attack against civilians, which the player is given the option of skipping due to graphic content.
• Modern Warfare 3 for Microsoft Windows has dedicated server support.

Development & Origins

Sledgehammer Games stepped into the spotlight with Advanced Warfare, marking their debut as the lead studio on a Call of Duty title. The project traces its roots to late 2011, when the team was still in the early planning stages just before Modern Warfare 3 hit shelves. Interestingly, Sledgehammer had initially been developing a Vietnam War–era game before the concept pivoted toward the futuristic vision that became Advanced Warfare. The game represented a major technical undertaking, as it was the first entry in the franchise since Call of Duty 2 to ship with a game engine that had been substantially rewritten and rebuilt from the ground up. The production was a collaborative effort spanning multiple studios: High Moon Studios handled the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports, while Raven Software took charge of the multiplayer component and the Exo-Zombies mode. Published by Activision in 2014, the title arrived as the eleventh major release in the long-running series, targeting the PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One platforms.

Story & Setting

Advanced Warfare broke from the franchise's tradition of rotating through multiple protagonists by centering its narrative on a single character: Jack Mitchell, a United States Marine Corps operative. The story unfolds across a speculative timeline spanning 2054 to 2061, placing Mitchell at the heart of a conflict involving Atlas, a private military corporation that markets its combat services to whichever client is willing to pay the most. To bring this world to life, Sledgehammer enlisted two well-known voice actors—Troy Baker and Kevin Spacey—to deliver the lead performances. The campaign employs pre-rendered cinematic cut scenes, a technique the studio had seen used effectively in Black Ops II, to punctuate the narrative between playable segments. After completing each mission, players receive upgrade points scaled to their in-mission performance, which can be invested in enhancing their Exo suit or weaponry across categories like armor, sprint, recoil, and battery. Additional points can be earned by fulfilling side objectives, including hunting down scattered Intel collectibles hidden throughout the levels.

Gameplay Innovations

One of Advanced Warfare's most distinctive design choices was the elimination of the conventional heads-up display. Rather than overlaying health bars and ammo counters on the screen, the game channels all vital information through holographic projections emanating directly from the player's equipped weapon. Movement was reimagined through the Exoskeleton system, granting players the ability to boost, dash, and execute sky jumps—mechanics that added a vertical dimension to the otherwise horizontal gunfights typical of the series. The title also made history as the first Call of Duty to let players swap between conventional firearms and alternative weapon types such as laser or directed energy arms, each with their own stat profiles. Beyond movement, Exo abilities like Exo Cloak let players render themselves temporarily transparent for stealth. In multiplayer, the Pick 13 loadout system expanded on Black Ops II's earlier model, and the introduction of weapon variants pushed the total arsenal past 350 distinct options.

Reception & Legacy

Upon its 2014 release, Advanced Warfare was widely received as a meaningful step forward from its predecessor, Ghosts. Critics highlighted the visual presentation, the quality of the voice performances, the tight single-player campaign, and the exhilarating pace of the gunplay as standout strengths. The main area of criticism centered on the campaign's narrative, with several reviewers noting that the plot's beats felt predictable. Despite that, the game collected multiple industry awards and was regarded as a commercial success. In the years since release, retrospective assessments have largely remained favorable, with Advanced Warfare consistently appearing in the top ten when fans and publications rank the broader Call of Duty catalog. The game's cooperative modes also left a lasting mark: Exo Survival offered a four-player wave-based experience across thirteen maps organized into four progressive tiers, while Exo Zombies—first teased at the conclusion of the Exo Survival map Riot and later unveiled with the Havoc DLC pack—brought the undead to the Exo-powered battlefield with five entirely new characters and exo-suit–equipped zombies.