This review will mostly focus on the campaign. For me, the story is the most important aspect of anything. By itself, MW3 was a pretty good game. It had some fun levels, good multi player, and decent special ops. I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed survival and the 2 New York levels, but that's about it. Here's why:
Campaign
When MW2 ended, there were 5 loose ends that needed to be tied up: 1) Soap was injured; 2) he, Price, and Nikolai were on the run from the Russians and from the Americans because they had just killed a high- ranking (albeit traitorous) American General and wiped out an entire American base; 3) General Shepherd's Shadow Company was still out and fighting; 4) the war was still going on; and 5) Makarov was still out there.
Of those loose ends, only 3 were wrapped up: Makarov was killed in an epic duel between him and Price, the war ended when President Vorshevsky met with the US President for peace talks, and Soap apparently recovered from his wounds, which ended up being redundant when he was killed off later. This game made 2 mentions--mentions! not plot lines--of how Price and Soap were on the run: Captain Macmillan said he was "on everyone's s*** list" and Sandman said "Uncle Sam's got a kill/capture order on your head." Those are the only mentions of Price, Soap, and Nikolai being on the run. And at the very end, Price works with the Americans, no questions asked.
They also add a Russian named Yuri to the disavowed Task Force who apparently hates Makarov as much as Price. There is no real need for this character other than to say that Makarov was in Pripyat in 1996 with Zakaev and that he detonated the nuke in 2011. If Infinity Ward wanted to tie the three games together, they didn't need Yuri. They could have had Makarov explain in all when talks to Price. The fact that Yuri was there meant the player would not be able to play as Soap. My favorite missions in MW2 were when you got to play as Soap after not being able to play as him for most of the game. It really was just like old times like Price said, for him and Soap and for the player, who would not have had that experience since MW1. Playing as Soap in this game would keep that going. There was no need to bring in Yuri and they just killed him off at the end anyway.
Aside from that, some of the missions, like the New York missions were pretty fun. I also liked where Price and Yuri infiltrated Makarov's stronghold and the last level where Price killed Makarov (that level was awesome because that was the first time the player got to be a Juggernaut, but the armor got destroyed halfway through and proved to be way more vulnerable than the enemy Juggernauts in Special Ops). The European missions were pretty fun, but not as well done as they could have been. The first mission in Germany had no real objective--you were just killing people to kill time until the level was long made enough. The England mission was not very good because instead of allowing you to see the sights of England like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, or the London Eye, the game took you through the back alleys and subways of England, ending near Big Ben when a random and unnecessary nerve gas was introduced (and never resolved. You see the nerve gas hitting England and France, but it's never explained if it is contained).
Special Ops
The survival mode was awesome. It was like Nazi zombies but with actual militants, choppers, and Juggernauts. You could get to level 20 before the forces started to get overwhelming instead of wave 7 like zombies. It forces you to use strategy and apply defense mechanisms with explosives, turrets, and air strikes. No complaints there.
The actual special ops missions left a lot to be desired. They were basically the missions of the campaign just backwards and some were even repeated. There were also a lot less missions than in MW2, so they were sort of fun at first, but then got boring because of the lack of variety. And every 5 seconds Overlord would repeat his orders and say them in as many words as possible.
A word on the game as a whole, the developers tried to make the game more like MW1. MW2 was good for many reasons but mainly because the developers recognized how good MW1 was and they built on top of it. MW3 tried to be like its predecessors instead of doing something new. MW1 was groundbreaking because it was one of the first games that showed what the titled implied: modern warfare. It had updated weapons, sights, graphics, an AC-130, Stingers, Javelins, and it had a nuclear bomb and two nuclear missiles that the player had to race against the clock to stop. MW2 took it one step further with more guns, a better story, funner levels, awesome special ops missions, great characters, a nuke going off in the atmosphere, Predator missiles, the Stingers and Javelins in different settings, and a huge plot twist. MW3 had nothing new to offer. It had the Predator for 2 levels for about a minute, it had an AC-130, and just a lot of the same things. Nothing new to offer.
All in all, a good game by itself, but not so good when it's coming after MW2
Campaign
When MW2 ended, there were 5 loose ends that needed to be tied up: 1) Soap was injured; 2) he, Price, and Nikolai were on the run from the Russians and from the Americans because they had just killed a high- ranking (albeit traitorous) American General and wiped out an entire American base; 3) General Shepherd's Shadow Company was still out and fighting; 4) the war was still going on; and 5) Makarov was still out there.
Of those loose ends, only 3 were wrapped up: Makarov was killed in an epic duel between him and Price, the war ended when President Vorshevsky met with the US President for peace talks, and Soap apparently recovered from his wounds, which ended up being redundant when he was killed off later. This game made 2 mentions--mentions! not plot lines--of how Price and Soap were on the run: Captain Macmillan said he was "on everyone's s*** list" and Sandman said "Uncle Sam's got a kill/capture order on your head." Those are the only mentions of Price, Soap, and Nikolai being on the run. And at the very end, Price works with the Americans, no questions asked.
They also add a Russian named Yuri to the disavowed Task Force who apparently hates Makarov as much as Price. There is no real need for this character other than to say that Makarov was in Pripyat in 1996 with Zakaev and that he detonated the nuke in 2011. If Infinity Ward wanted to tie the three games together, they didn't need Yuri. They could have had Makarov explain in all when talks to Price. The fact that Yuri was there meant the player would not be able to play as Soap. My favorite missions in MW2 were when you got to play as Soap after not being able to play as him for most of the game. It really was just like old times like Price said, for him and Soap and for the player, who would not have had that experience since MW1. Playing as Soap in this game would keep that going. There was no need to bring in Yuri and they just killed him off at the end anyway.
Aside from that, some of the missions, like the New York missions were pretty fun. I also liked where Price and Yuri infiltrated Makarov's stronghold and the last level where Price killed Makarov (that level was awesome because that was the first time the player got to be a Juggernaut, but the armor got destroyed halfway through and proved to be way more vulnerable than the enemy Juggernauts in Special Ops). The European missions were pretty fun, but not as well done as they could have been. The first mission in Germany had no real objective--you were just killing people to kill time until the level was long made enough. The England mission was not very good because instead of allowing you to see the sights of England like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, or the London Eye, the game took you through the back alleys and subways of England, ending near Big Ben when a random and unnecessary nerve gas was introduced (and never resolved. You see the nerve gas hitting England and France, but it's never explained if it is contained).
Special Ops
The survival mode was awesome. It was like Nazi zombies but with actual militants, choppers, and Juggernauts. You could get to level 20 before the forces started to get overwhelming instead of wave 7 like zombies. It forces you to use strategy and apply defense mechanisms with explosives, turrets, and air strikes. No complaints there.
The actual special ops missions left a lot to be desired. They were basically the missions of the campaign just backwards and some were even repeated. There were also a lot less missions than in MW2, so they were sort of fun at first, but then got boring because of the lack of variety. And every 5 seconds Overlord would repeat his orders and say them in as many words as possible.
A word on the game as a whole, the developers tried to make the game more like MW1. MW2 was good for many reasons but mainly because the developers recognized how good MW1 was and they built on top of it. MW3 tried to be like its predecessors instead of doing something new. MW1 was groundbreaking because it was one of the first games that showed what the titled implied: modern warfare. It had updated weapons, sights, graphics, an AC-130, Stingers, Javelins, and it had a nuclear bomb and two nuclear missiles that the player had to race against the clock to stop. MW2 took it one step further with more guns, a better story, funner levels, awesome special ops missions, great characters, a nuke going off in the atmosphere, Predator missiles, the Stingers and Javelins in different settings, and a huge plot twist. MW3 had nothing new to offer. It had the Predator for 2 levels for about a minute, it had an AC-130, and just a lot of the same things. Nothing new to offer.
All in all, a good game by itself, but not so good when it's coming after MW2