Predictions of Modern Warfare 3 reception

[philosophicalbastard]

Some people will like it, some people will hate it, and I simply won't give a shit.

 

[Gralian]

I read an article somewhere not long ago today that said Modern Warfare 3 had been criticised by the gaming press for having a campaign that's 'too linear'. Now, i've seen this crop up a lot lately, and it's become the latest punching bag in regards to FPS games. Remember the fuss about being able to get through the first level of Black Ops on normal without even having to fire a single shot? Not to mention internet celebrity Total Biscuit doing his damnedest to always rag on and on about not having any freedom in his FPS games, declaring it bullshit that he has to be told by the game when he can open the door, rather than giving him the free reign to just go and do what he wants when he wants. So if there'll be critical ire, it'll be for that reason - a campaign that's too linear and tries too hard to be a hollywood blockbuster. Though given the abysmal attempt from Battlefield to create a meaningful single player experience i'm willing to bet whatever we get will still be praised, supposedly 'wacky' story or not. Interestingly, i also read on the article that the single player won't matter too much anyway since the majority of the fanbase allegedly buys CoD for one reason only - multiplayer. I can't say either way how true that claim is, but it wouldn't surprise me given the high focus on multiplayer for the franchise, culminating in the Call of Duty Elite service. The multiplayer seems to be, from what i hear, virtually unchanged so people aren't going to get uppity about missing features and they'll likely be satisfied with just another iteration of the same thing. It's not so much about laziness as it is about managing your franchise and keeping a certain level of expectation satisfied.

As for the fans, they'll eat it up, no matter how good or bad it may objectively be. The fact one chap was willing to pay $1750 to get his hands on an early copy and a bunch of copies were stolen in a heist in France only goes to solidify this fact. The company i use to purchase games online also has notifications on your account page of any orders that may have to be processed early due to high demand. Unsurprisingly, they had a long message saying that Modern Warfare 3 was one of those titles and they'd have to start processing pre-orders early in order to just keep up and get everyone their copies by release. Even now, it's shown as being 'Unavailable' since it's out of stock. That's just one retailer; imagine how many will have a day one sellout, especially when you look at the number of people attending midnight releases. Regardless of what you or i may think about the Call of Duty fanbase, they love this franchise and i can't see it dying any time soon. In fact, this new zeitgeist of 'CoD-hate is cool' has only served to venerate this fandom. It's now the typical "CoD-kiddies" who look like the more mature lot, sticking to what they know and love while the opposition (like fans of Battlefield, for example) do their best to slag them off and feign superiority. That's not to say you don't get douchebags in the CoD fanbase, of course you do, but because of the nature of popularity the moral high-ground has shifted somewhat from the so-called "CoD-Haters" to the "CoD-Kiddies". If anything, they'll buy the next iteration of CoD and continue to do so if only to spite their critics.

I don't think the game will change dramatically. It'll still be the same old engine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's extremely light and easy to optimise, meaning it can make games look good even on six year old hardware. Activision knows that the primary demographic for Call of Duty are console gamers, so they stick with the engine to squeeze out the best possible performance and still make it look good. (Incidentally this is also why you see a lot of games using the Unreal engine) I think Call of Duty's legacy will stand as a testament to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy and although it encourages stagnation, it goes to show that if you can create solid mechanics and keep a consistent presentation, it'll pay off.

 

[Xanadu84]

(1) Critical/journalist reception: Widely praised, fanatically amongst the more casuals, amongst the connoisseurs it will be called fun and polished, but lacking in innovation.
(2) Public reception: Metacritic score will be 6 or 7, primarily an averageing of all the 10's and 0's. Largely it will be well recieved, even amongst more core gamers, with a very, VERY vocal minority. Criticisms and comparisons with Battlefield will be mixed and confused, since even though Battlefield is the prefered IP on PC and amongst more Core gamers, Battlefield has Origin, Battlelog, and an inferior single player experience that is usually harped on. MW3 will be more popular, and some people will perceive it is Battlefields failure to challenge CoDs position of dominance. There will be a backlash somewhere like Fox News for an emotional moment in the story, but not one as big as No Russian.
(3) sales success/failure: It will probably sell more then Black Ops, but it will start to plateau. Elite will be profitable but disappointing.
(4) legacy / wider importance: Minimal, largely. Just as a continuation of a highly influential IP. Few minor improvement, and a small contribution to the Multiplayer shooter genre.

 

[TheDooD]

the 1st hour = this is badass

2nd hour = ughh ok

3rd hour = this stage is bullshit

4th hour = wtf its over already

5th hour = fuck these goddamn campers

 

[Jegsimmons]

it will be loved by all the first day and forgotten within 2 months as is all CODS after 4.

then looking back, everyone will realize how shit it was and then they will pick up the next installment makeing game companies believe that COD is doing something RIGHT as opposed to GIMMICKY.


and then halo 4 and Half Life episode 3 will come out break records and everyone will realize how silly COD is and the franchise will lose sales and have to actually have good story and gameplay with some DAMN COLOR, and will improve or fail and the series will be dust in the wind.


i hope to GOD the second paragraph becomes true, and the first isn't

 

[Hosker]

It won't sell as well as Black Ops, but will receive high scores on the reviews, except user reviews, of course. People will moan about this and that, there will be many threads made about how bad it is, then people will forget about in about 6 months when the next one is announced, so the whole thing can start anew.

 

[Andy Shandy]

(1) Critical/journalist reception: Will range from good to excellent. Daily Mail will undoubtedly find something in it that is controversial. Lots of reviewers will probably say that it doesn;t bring much new to the table however.
(2) Public reception: Will be altogether more varied ranging from "Downright shit. The worst game EVAR!!!1!" to "Gaming perfection. BEST GAME EVAR!1!!" Many people will hate it just for being Call Of Duty, likewise people will love it for it. Will probably average 7-8 on Metacritic user reviews
(3) sales success/failure: Will sell extremely well, outselling both it's predecessor and Battlefield 3. Elite's success will probably depend on the community
(4) legacy / wider importance: Will be the biggest selling game of all time...until next year when the new one comes out.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Of course it will sell well, but if it fucks up like MW2 did, they might not be so fortunate next time. I'm going to guess 10 million on the first day alone.

The critics will give it 9/10's or similar, but we all know it's not that good.

Public response will be like 'ZoMg dis game iz fuckin' sick bruv', for the first few months, but most will get sick of it by then.

As for me, I'm going to buy this game in a few hours, play the hell out of it for a week or so, then just play it every now and then because it's a good fall back game for me. Assuming the game isn't terrible, which I highly doubt.

 

[Treblaine]

*shhhh* If we don't talk about it, it might not sell well.

It didn't work for the last 2 games.

I'm coming off the back of Battlefield 3 that I think is a far worse betrayal than anything Activision has done. Yeah, for MW2 they dropped dedicated servers... but at least they didn't try to spy on me!

And as much as I want to call COD generic... no one really does quite the same thing as them. The fusion of tight maps, RPG-elements and killstreaks is a really uniquely entertaining and engaging formula. They may be derivative of themselves but no one else is really moving the genre forward except for COD itself with it's many different small improvements that add up to way more than the sum of its parts.

As much as I hate COD, I love it way more.

It's the same with TF2. BOY is there a lot about that which annoy me but nothing like all the things I love about it, things that you can only get with Team Fortress 2.

For all the COD-critics, you can't define yourself by what you hate. What do you WANT? COD to simply "go away" is not enough, what does COD have to do to earn your respect? Stop being annual? How is that a good thing? I remember back in the 90's when annual game releases were the norm: Tomb Raider, Quake, Resident Evil and we'd STILL complain about having to wait that long between each game!

 

[Treblaine]

... Regardless of what you or i may think about the Call of Duty fanbase, they love this franchise and i can't see it dying any time soon. In fact, this new zeitgeist of 'CoD-hate is cool' has only served to venerate this fandom. It's now the typical "CoD-kiddies" who look like the more mature lot, sticking to what they know and love while the opposition (like fans of Battlefield, for example) do their best to slag them off and feign superiority. That's not to say you don't get douchebags in the CoD fanbase, of course you do, but because of the nature of popularity the moral high-ground has shifted somewhat from the so-called "CoD-Haters" to the "CoD-Kiddies". If anything, they'll buy the next iteration of CoD and continue to do so if only to spite their critics.

I don't think the game will change dramatically. It'll still be the same old engine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's extremely light and easy to optimise, meaning it can make games look good even on six year old hardware. Activision knows that the primary demographic for Call of Duty are console gamers, so they stick with the engine to squeeze out the best possible performance and still make it look good. (Incidentally this is also why you see a lot of games using the Unreal engine) I think Call of Duty's legacy will stand as a testament to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy and although it encourages stagnation, it goes to show that if you can create solid mechanics and keep a consistent presentation, it'll pay off.

Hmm, I've noticed that, the backlash has gone too far and the idiots joined the bandwagon now the seem to be driving this hate train too far into the deep end.

Personally, I always try to take a pragmatic approach and judge every game on its own merits with what it is and comes with, not it's history. I can't say I always do this but I try.

And it's a good engine, it's based on the Quake 3 engine that had original system requirements of just 230MHz CPU, 64MB of system memory and 8MB of video memory... and still looked pretty damn good. Carmack deserves a lot of credit for how well that engine scales up over 12 year of expansion and modification.

 

[jackpackage200]

What will be great is when Yahtzee reviews and fanboys will rage

It will be hilarious

 

[godofallu]

Well so far it has 1 review, and that review gave it a 10/10.

I bet it averages a 90+ on metacritic. IW knows how to make a FPS game better than any other company in the world.

 

[Treblaine]

As a PC gamer, I just want to let you know how ashamed I am of this Blatant, Vindictive and unwarranted score-bombing.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/user-reviews?sort-by=score&num_items=100&dist=negative

Zeroes.... EVERYWHERE. After all the concessions that Activision have made.

I call on sane minded PC gamers everywhere to speak up and not let the loud and petty minority represent all of us in such a poor light.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

fanboys will squeal, haters will bring up good points and will be ignored, reviews will be 4/5 on average, some will love it because they are tools others will shoot it down because they haven't really added anything and a solid concept is still solid 2 games later

Please refer to this every time a MWX game comes out, until the fanbase realizes they are paying for weapon packs and Mission DLC for full price it will sell well, and considering the fanbase this could take a while.

 

[spartandude]

all major reviewers will give it amazing reviews (they always do for cod) but i think that community as a whole will be rather critical, much more than any other cod game but still have a large fan base
I also think it will sell very well but not beat Black Ops mostly because Skyrim is going to take a lot of those sales away

 

[Treblaine]

1. Critical/journalist reception

9s and 10s across the board, just like every other CoD.

2. Public reception

Ignoring the rabid fanboys we'll see it get panned most likely. It's going to have an absolutely horribad single player and the multiplayer is going to be an imbalanced, hacker-filled mess.

3. sales success/failure

It will earn Activision more money than God.

4. legacy / wider importance
report

It will be forgotten within a year and a half, roughly when MW4 is announced.

All the lonely assholes of the world will hate it, despite it being an extremely solid FPS experience with next to infinite replayability. Standard magazines will give it a high score, and it will sell extremely well. All in all, it'll be a great game that is received well (by the people who matter).

So there's no room in your world for people who have different opinions to your own?


Wow. What a closed minded hell you call home.

Sorry, but what you say to Teacher goes both ways, especially concerning your "Rabid fanboys" jibe. Is that really open minded to how their fanboyism might not be rabid, but because they have a legitimate reason to be excited about this game?

You say it will be "unbalanced mess" yet when he predicts it will be solid you accuse him of being a bigot on opinions.

Please, don't bring this crap onto my thread. It's inflammatory and derailing.

*snipped reasonable opinon*

Do NOT take his bait.