MW3 is a huge step backwards for Activison. Uninspired, unoriginal and derivative makes MW3 a map pack, not a new game.
It took me a week after the launch of the "biggest game to hit consoles" to buy MW3, and I bought it with the best hopes in mind. I waited until the reviews came out for it because after watching E3 this year, it looked like MW3 was nothing new or special. It looked like a re-hashed version of MW2. Sadly folks, that is exactly what MW3 is. It's more of a Modern Warfare 2.5 actually. They made a good campaign, but it is extremely short-lived. 6 hours and it's over. Then you have Spec-Ops, the co-operative game mode that Infinity Ward launched to counter Treyarch's Nazi Zombies. Spec-Ops really flopped in MW2, offering insanely difficult scenarios and no expansion from future DLC. They revived it, and added in Survival mode. This is new for Infinity Ward, but not for gaming. This is Gears of War's Horde mode with a CoD twist. It's fun, but it's nothing special. You and your team hold out and fight waves of enemies and buy new upgrades for your guns and abilities like Predator Missiles to help. If anyone has played Horde, they will see the resemblance.
Now onto the biggest part of CoD, the competitive multiplayer. This is where the game has is biggest failure. The multiplayer is pretty close to the same as it was in MW2, with new maps. They have a lot of the same guns, same killstreaks, same sounds, same perks, just a lot of the same damn thing. The maps are some of the worst I have ever played on, with any game. There are too many ways to navigate them, leading to you getting shot in the back more often then not, and the spawn system never makes you feel safe. You can sometimes spawn with your teammates, but other times you spawn right near the other team, leading to you getting spawn killed a lot. I still remember when myself and an opponent spawned right beside each other, and I got stabbed right after I spawned. The maps are annoying, overly-complicated and bland. Each one of them is a box shaped map with stuff placed randomly around to make it look legit. The guns have been downgraded to where they are only lethal in Hardcore game modes. Six shots with any gun should be enough, but it isn't in MW3. They also brought back the ability to overpower a shotgun, making it effective at long range. Combine Steady Aim with the Range gun proficiency, and you've got a shotgun that can out range a guy with a sub machine gun, only twice as lethal.
I am mostly saddened at the paid critics for their misleading reviews. This game is not an 8.5, nor is it even an 8. The fact that it's more of a re-hash rather than something new should mean that it would get lower reviews on average. It seems like the only people aware of that are the people who paid for the game, the people that's money has been spent on a game that is not worth the full dollar of what we worked for. A map pack is not a game, but that's what Infinity Ward has gone and done with MW3. If you're still on the fence, I would recommend renting it first and seeing for yourself what a let down MW3 is. Thanks for reading.