Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is a queasy anachronism

Uninventive and a little uncomfortable, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's single-player is little more than a fairground ride - but will its players really care?

Last year, Nintendo cancelled the rerelease of its war-themed strategy game Advance Wars. Russia's invasion of Ukraine several weeks earlier had made the timing feel tactless to the publisher, despite the game's sweetly cartoonish aesthetic. No such qualms for Activision, publisher of Modern Warfare 3, the latest entry to the 20-year-old Call of Duty series, which is released on 10 November. Less than a month after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, and with Russian troops still lodged in Ukrainian territory, the annual blockbuster arrives on shareholder-pleasing schedule, despite featuring several scenes of cinematically framed atrocity, such as the gory ransacking of a crowded football stadium by terrorists disguised as paramedics, and the hijacking and downing of a passenger jet bound for Sochi.

While the series has often flitted between historical settings, including 1940s Europe and the buzzing, bloodied jungles of Vietnam, it is increasingly focused on contemporary battlefields, as the game's title suggests. As we switch perspectives between the captivating ensemble cast of international supersoldiers who comprise Task Force 141, we're treated to the latest technologies of elite soldiership. We hear a rodent squeal as a pair of night vision goggles spring to life, feel the kinetic tug of the ascender" tool as it bites a cable and hoists our character up a lift shaft, and marvel at the murderous silhouette of a hyper-evolved rifle, laden with a camera crew's worth of arcane attachments.