Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III review – exhilarating multiplayer combat rescues a tired format

PlayStation (version tested), Xbox, PC; Sledgehammer Games/Activision
Call of Duty's developers are clearly struggling to fit this sprawling game into the business plan devised for them, but for now they are still managing

Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Call of Duty series has always been a game of two halves. The first: a cinematic dash through several chaptered set-pieces. You inhabit the action hero - cannons to the left of them, flame-throwers to the right - diving through checkpoints en route to a denouement involving Nazis, nuclear weapons or space lasers, depending on the era in which the game is set. The second: Call of Duty rendered not as a film but as a sport, a merry-go-round of endlessly cycling competitive matches played in teams of friends or strangers, vying to be the first team, or individual, to snipe or spray their way to the top of the scoreboard.

Modern Warfare III builds on this fundamental template. On the first count, it's something of a disappointment: a campaign of broadly lacklustre missions, for which, reportedly, the team did not have sufficient time (the story was to be set in Mexico, until Activision executives allegedly told the development team to re-orient and re-brand the game). A different story emerges from the inferno of the game's multiplayer modes, however, which revive some of the series' best-loved maps, introduce a slew of new locations, add finessing tweaks to your character's movement, and combine this with a revamped system of weapon attachments that encourages players to craft a tool to suit their preferred play style.