Dulls in comparison to MW1 and MW2.
I'm basing this review on the single player alone- which does not take long to beat, that's a big complaint right there- some levels will take you under 15 minutes to beat.
When MW2 came out I, like most gamers who played it, loved it like MW1. We were thrown back into their world of Ultranationalistic Russians vs. the world and it was a nice welcome back. MW3 doesn't feel like it's in the same world.
MW3 feels like it's missing key elements that the first two games offered, it's hard to describe what but something just doesn't feel right. In the first two games you learned to really appreciate the characters, the chemistry between them seemed very realistic and there was general concern and shock when (Insert random spoiler from MW1/MW2) happened. MW3 has a few of those moments, but to me it feels like they're just tying up loose ends to finish the series. I'm not going to spoil the entire story, but I'm sure everyone who has played the game didn't appreciate the fact that they just killed off the majority of the characters. Especially ones that they've built up over two games.
The new characters aren't anything special, Team Metal seems like a very stale group, with 2-d personalities, however the voice actors are great (Fitchner, Olyphant, Elba), and minus the character of Sandman seem very cardboard. It's hard to care what they're going through. In MW2 you had Foley and Dunn, who in the span of a few missions had more depth then Team Metal. The worst part is- I was really excited about Metal, I -wanted- to like all of them but in the end they were pretty much just stock characters. Much respect for Sandman though- best new character in the game.
On the other side, we have Yuri, random Russian ex-Spetsnaz who is apparently Nikolai's best man. "Who the bloody hell is Yuri?"- Soap Mactavish asks early in the game, and that pretty much describes my sentiments towards the character. He's a sloppy and hastily thrown together character who gets tossed in the MW world, and the series probably would've been better if he were just an NPC along for the ride. At no point in the game did I like the character or even have the slightest bit of interest in what was going on with him except when they fully explain his backstory- which again could've been told if he were just an NPC who was with them the whole time. When we played "Just Like Old Times" and "Endgame" in MW2, it was a good feeling, it was...just like old times. So when MW3 was announced I was excited to be able to continue the Soap/Price duo of kick ass first hand- not as their random third party member.
When I saw the original trailers for this game, it looked like a mass global conflict of huge proportions, and sometimes it feels that way, sometimes. In New York, London and Paris you feel the global conflict, other parts of world? Not so much. Which makes me say- the story of this game doesn't seem as grand as it should be. MW2 setup such a huge scale with the Russian invasion; when you were running through a burning DC you knew @#$% was going down, it was shock and awe then. Now, it doesn't really seem like it, I didn't even know what the point of it all was. Macarov isn't that menacing of a villain. The times that he does show up are decent, because you're not expecting him, but he just doesn't mount up to much.
When the IW guys who made the first two games left, they sure as hell took part of those games with them.