The Turbulent Tale of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 

MW3 after school online with all your friends was peak childhood

MW3, while not perfect, I have a deep love for. I remember running home from school every day and playing search and destroy late into the night with my friends. So many laughs, rage, and tears. Something that I’ll never forget and always hold dear in my heart. If I could go back, even for a day, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

It's a bit of a shame that we never got to see what the OG Infinity Ward had in mind for the campaign and MP for MW3, I get the feeling it would be very different

Modern warfare 3 wasnt a victim of sabatoge. It was collateral damage from activision's mistreatment of their employees.

Tbh MW3 remains my favorite Modern Warfare COD, and is one of my favorite games of all time. I just love how it went all in on the WW3 aspect with setpieces like the New York battle and the invasion of Germany, while also concluding the OG series with a bang. It really did feel like the peak of the franchise and probably will be until the final game in the new trilogy.

Bro this to this day is still my favorite COD I had soooo many good memories on MW3

Arguably the worst part about MW3 is we didn't get to burn down Moscow in one of the last missions, which was teased in MW2. Smh

I liked the way some of the spec ops missions continued certain side stories from the campaign

People always say the score streak system was the best but I think the point streak was the best system. It was way more easier to understand and still rewarded people playing the objective

I wish we could see just how different MW3 would've been under the original IW devs who left

Take me back so many memories playing this game

With Modern Warfare 3 having so many development issues, it’s strange if turned out 100 times better than Modern Warfare ll

MW3 will always be a top 3 cod for me. i miss when it was simple and you could throw on ur two attachments that was the same exact for everyone. now you have to kit ur weapon out with so many attachments and make things work out

modern warfare 3 was the first cod I ever owned when my uncle got it for me for Christmas when I got a ps3 the same Christmas. it will always hold a special place in my heart and I never put more time into a cod until MW 2019 I will always defend MW3 and will say it is my favorite even if its thanks to nostalgia and has some problems i choose to ignore. love the videos keep making these!!!

Easily in my top 5 CoD games of all time. Back then, I never understood all of the hate that the game had. I thoroughly enjoyed all of it, even the co-op missions that were so-so.

Hopefully Ch0pper sees this : One thing to note about the MOAB was that it did give you and i think your team double xp until the game ended. Also Face off was easy to exploit. You and a buddy could do 1v1 or if you had a second controller, 2v2 and just do challenges and get gold camo easy. it was broken. Another thing as well was there was a calling card that literally you could only get if you killed someone wearing that calling card. Mw3 also introduced my favorite game mode Drop Zone. And another few things you forgot to mention was that when you prestiged, you earned tokens and you could spend them however you wanted like double xp or getting a certain calling card or an extra class slot. And i think this was the first cod at add 10 more prestiges later on in the game.

I just remember playing face off 3v3 after school all the time with one of my friends who recently passed away and another. Some of the best games of my life that was like our pre cursor to game battles 😂

The Specialist top tier streak reward with pro unlocks was such a beastly thing to have. A walking ninja AA tank

i want to go back and play this game so bad. last game before all the intentional over the top visual recoil. it played sooooo smooth

I loved MW3. So many great maps, AWESOME DLC maps, the Faceoff mode was incredible with it's own fun maps. This to me is the last COD that I fully enjoyed.

I love MW3 to death and have fond memories of it. Waking up early on a schoolday to get a few games in before heading off, coming home from school and playing Infected and Ground War almost all day, hearing that my eldest sister pulled multiple all nighters playing her friends, messing around in Spec Ops Survival and crying when Soap died in the campaign. Ah the PS3/360 era of CoD were so much fun, wish we could go back to those days instead of where CoD is right now...

Man Modern Warfare 3 this and MW2 were two of the greatest games I l’ve ever played they’re such old games now but you can always go back to them and relive it

After playing COD4 in game caffes with friends, this was my first COD I played on my PC. I loved it and since I haven't played MW2, I can't quite see things from the same angle. I love this game.

I'll never forget going for MOABS then hearing that stealth bomber rolling in. Always broke my neck looking for that annoying ass bombing path. The game allowed worse players a way to kill the better ones, which I get, but man was it the most frustrating feeling, and yes, I miss the feeling lmao.

Chop easily your retrospectives on past CODs have been both so entertaining and well put together. Absolutely amazing vids !!

this game was my childhood. so many good memories playing infected private matches on dome & seatown abusing funny glitches to troll kids lol + ffa last kill trickshot on terminal was so fun besides the prepatch akimbo fm9's being absolutely BUSTED I cared so much about that elite clan bullshit at 13 yrs old it's actually so cringe looking back lol

The trilogy for me after school was MW2,BO1 and MW3. It was peak childhood

BO1 was my 1st ever COD but I spent 99.9% of the time playing zombies. Very little multiplayer so MW3 was my 1st real multiplayer experience and it’s always a special place to me. I love MW3 a lot. I was only 10 when it came out but I was doing something 😂

14:30 Damn I never knew that Knuckles the Echidna was a soldier in World War 3 before joining his tribe, mad respect tbh

My favorite part of the game is where “Makarov blows.” It was a story beat I was not ready.

Multiplayer Gameplay wise this was my favorite in the series hands down, still pop back to play it every now and then

7:53 Thank you, even you as a youngster capture exactly what i was feeling when i played mw3 for the first time. At first i didnt knew what it was ofcourse, but later discovering what went on in the background, it all made sense. It played and looked different,but it ofcourse also ran on a different engine ofcourse IW 5.0 Still it grew on me eventually, but it was a sad era for IW which lead up to now.

This was my absolute favorite CoDs, there was one kill streak you could get with Specialist that you forgot to add :) loved 1v1,2v2,3v3’s because you could download packs and play certain maps against people instead of having to go to a map you hate.

The First COD I ever played was COD 2, but the first COD I owned was MW3, and I still remember it fondly, and honestly would love to play it from time to time, but nowadays it's so expensive to try to get a PS3 Controller and mine broke for not being used for a few years.

MW3 and BO2 are still my favorite CODs. I miss MW3 heavily and would love to revisit a very alive MW3

Really good break down my dude and I agree with a lot of what you said. I really liked MW3 and miss it more then MW and MW2. My favorite part of the MP was that each class set up could have their own set of streaks either assault,support and specialist. Which you didn't mention lol

MW3 was my first COD. I was still young and I didn’t have xbox live yet, so I was only limited to campaign, spec ops, and survival. With that being said I can’t say anything about mp. I had good times on that game regardless of not playing online, I’d just have friends over and do split screen. The campaign is really good and fun through and through. It also had a satisfying ending to me. Survival was really fun too. BO2 was my first time playing multiplayer and I’m glad it was bc that game is the GOAT.

Hey Ch0pper love the content. In my opinion [mw3 was my first cod] all the maps that sucked where really fun on infected private match. Loving the content couldn't imagine how long it to to make these vids :) keep it up brother

28:42 in a similar vein, after playing far too much MW2 multiplayer there was a time when I'd see something, like a bird or a plane, flying by out of the corner of my eye, and my monkey brain would think "enemy AC-130 above!!!" 😅

This was the best game in the original Modern Warfare trilogy. Best guns and was the most polished. It was definitely an upgrade from MW2 which was also amazing in it's own right

My 1st experience with MW3 was playing it against my friends on ps3 spitscreen for 3/2 Months. That's where most of my nostalgic memories of it come from. After that, I bought the physical copy for my PC and I play it occasionally to this day. The biggest problem I have with it is the dull, gray color scheme that often makes enemies hard to spot.

multiplayer was undefeated in this game. The amount of content on drop was also at a peak. So many great maps and guns, no dlc/ season drop system needed. Was amazing.

I absolutely loved the fact that you mentioned Santa Clarita Diet, cause I had the exact same experience when seeing this voice acting session video

Such an underrated game

wow this are some Behind The Scenes Situations on The Call Of Duty World... MW2 was my first first shooter game... so memorable that up to now i still long for that moments... me and my friends always reminisce on it... this what happens... it started to spiral down...

Starting with the boys on cod 4, and playing everything up to ghosts which we quit. MW3 was such a great multiplayer. Great maps and iconic guns. Played this game every single day. Its a top 5 cod for sure.

@21:35 Lol 8/10 That's a tough gag to pull off, but it's a Goldie. Keep it up! It's all in the delivery.

MW3 integrated Specialist, Gun proficiencies, new attachments, has the most maps and guns at launch. It thankfully didn’t have Danger close, Stopping power, or as many glitches. Maps were good and bad like any other and the color palette was slightly better in MW2 but MW3 wasn’t bad. The campaign wasn’t bad in MW3 either. It stayed true and finished the trilogy.

I remember getting a COD ELITE membership all the way up through BO2 then it shutdown before Ghosts. I still have some of the Game Fuel MW3 cans and codes somewhere in my old COD Collection. It was the first cod I bought myself but I started playing COD at COD 2 on PS2.

mw3 is legendary so many memories, prestiging, tokens, double xp , cod elite , all the clant challenges u could do to get the colored clantag, its hella dope

One of my biggest issues with MW3 multi-player was the locking off of third person to just split-screen.

I have waited so long for this video !

Yes!! ❤️ ch0pper you are the man! Love these videos and so happy i got to see my comment in the beginning 😂

I'm not sure if you were aware, but Glen Schofield some years back after exiting Activision put to rest at least some of the speculation about who worked on what on MW3. In an interview (Game Informer magazine? I forget right now, but its something you can Google), he revealed Sledgehammer mostly worked on campaign, with assistance from IW. IW mostly worked on MP, with assistance from Sledge. I mean, Glen didnt go into super detail about it, but gave the gist of which studio worked on what. So maybe that's why you thought MW3 felt different?

My favorite parts of these videos are all the cuts to the awkward ass interviews with devs/voice actors. Shit always kills me 😂

It’s pretty insane how despite all the issues behind the scenes and less development time, MW3 still launched with more content than most of the recent cods. Like how is that possible?

Mw3 is my favorite modern warfare because of survival mode! That mode is super fun and I remember spending countless hours playing it with my brother after school 💪 good times

First game I had on my Alienware laptop. This game gave me such chills. I loved the trailers this game was fucking peak high-school for me.

I've still got the box set that mw3 did, I loved that game, that and mw2 to black ops 1,was the golden age for me and my mates, we got back together for the new mw2, and have never been more disappointed in our cod careers

I appreciate your work as a RU-vidr and how much detail you put into these videos. I find it very interesting how different we are though. Like you dislike how they didn’t reinvent the wheel, but rather just made it better. I think that’s a great idea, fix what’s broken and keep the great parts. You dislike the MOAB system. I thought it was amazing you could stack MOABs, or keep playing a game you’re killing it in. I hated how a MOAB would end a game because I would want to keep killing. And yeah you get more kills with a chopper gunner, but a MOAB is a free kill streak like you said. And leaving the map grainy is awesome. I just remember going on RU-vid and watching people stack MOABs and it was great. Especially when more than one player had one, you wouldn’t need to worry about the game ending.

this game gave me my first every day multiplayer gaming experience, my first online friends, my first 1v1s against angry people, my first modded lobbies, etc. it was also the last CoD I played the single player for. I think quality wise BO1 and 2 dumpster it, but, nevertheless, it was a great experience.

Face off was the peak of cod multiplayer enjoyment for me. Never had such an easy genuine social experience in games like that. Made a lot of friends from that back then and nothing will probably come close to that again because of how the internet and social norms has changed so much

Oh god that Kitchen corner on Resistance, so many memories just came flooding in

I remember bailing out of MW3 right after i hit second prestige. It was fun for that time but I ended up going back to Black Ops 1, getting hooked on that again and playing that almost exclusively until Black Ops 2 came out

The weapon proficiencies and simplistic weapon building were far better then the 100s of random attachments that barley do anything in gunsmith now

Thank you, sir! This is probably the most fair and balanced critique of MW3 I've seen yet. So many people sing it praises as a perfect 10/10 out of nostalgia, while it definitely has severe problems, especially in the campaign. But calling it outright bad wouldn't be fair either. It's... troubled.

first game where i got a huge kill streak and a MOAB of course in infected but had so much fun with this game back in the day as a kid

My first COD i bought myself after I could try it out beforehand at a friend, playing turns each wave through nights. After that, online co-op was possible. Good times

Your Ad at 11:25 was genius. Love it

I wanna see a series of videos about your personal thoughts of each cod game, doesn't have to be as in-depth as this series but maybe like a 10 minute video for each game

I always thought Survival could've been IW answer to Zombies. Maybe add some light story to it, maybe add an end goal. Getting boss rounds could've helped as well. But I think it would've been cool to get killstreaks from MP in Survival. Maybe even add on to the killstreaks since it would no longer be bound to a need to be balanced. Imagine something like Ghost's field streak. Hated it in MP. But I think in a PVE setting. It could've been great. Especially as a way to introduce map specific killstreaks.

18:00 nice RLM reference lol Circles within circles

MW3 was my first cod I played MP on, I had played the campgains for mw1 and 2 before hand before I had internet then when I moved and got internet mw3 came out, loved it so much, one of the best cods of all time still to this day in my opinion

Looking forward to the Black Ops Cold War retrospective. Probably my favorite COD in the last 5 years. Still play it from time to time and it's always fun!

I remember waiting in line at target to pick up this game for my Xbox 360 and I played the hell out of it and I still believe it is the best in modern warfare series but such a great game today and yes it does show it's age but I still enjoy it

I loved MW3. My love for cod started with cod4 I was 11 when it was released. Cod4, cod5, mw2, Black Ops then finally MW3 was peak childhood memories for me and some of the greatest years of my life. I will honestly always look back on those times with love. Currently saving up for an Xbox series X and the new mw3 after taking a 10+ year break from gaming. Can’t wait to get back online, even if it will never be as good as the “golden era” ❤

This is my favorite call of duty of all time this has so much going for it so many maps modes they improved from Mw2 I still play this all the time.

I think what you were going for is that rather than the experience feeling raw, like the studio came up with these on the spot and felt encouraged to add them, it was trying its best to emulate the older games as a different studio who never really had the same experiences with CoD4 and MW2

13:54, the mom would reappear as one of the default faces in ghosts MP. Also MW3 was my first CoD.

I came back to these old videos sense the new MW3 (2023) just started (beta) i gotta compare this game to the new one

Its cool you mentioned Idris Elba as Truck, but you've forgotten about my boy William Fichtner, who voiced Sandman. Good stuff as always.

While this game lacked a certain charm, it was very addicting and the change to the weapon levelling system was welcome. The weapon variety was fun to mess around with as while there were the top guns (ACR,MP7) you could still win most fights with skill no matter the weapon. Edit: That little comment about the stealth bomber was hilarious, I found out so early on that advanced uav into stealth bomber was easy 5-6 man kills on a lot of the maps.

Thank you for this, cool to see my comment asking for this video but my Wendy’s and I felt a little attacked during your ad read.

For me and my friends, we remembered MW3 being more fun than MW2 and played it much more

I love the breaches in medal of honor warfighter there was like 10 different animations to chose from

Mw3 will always be my favorite. Campaign was fun. Online was epic. And when my internet wasn’t working right lan spec ops with my friend was perfect.

FINALLY!!!! I’ve been waiting on this for months

I remember having a call of duty elite, I totally forgot that was a thing until you mentioned it

The moab also EMP'd the enemy team for a certain time and also gave you and your team double XP for that match

Another great cod review keep it up chop

Survival mode is the reason that MW3 is my favorite cod. It was my first as well aside from playing the map moon at a friend's house. I know there is nostalgia going through my head but I really do feel that the multiplayer was the most fun I ever had in a cod. Nothing truly compares to the feel of this game since, In my eyes. Except black ops 2 or even 1

Mw3 def my favorite cod experience ever. Recently began playing multiplayer on Plutonium on Pc again, loving it. The map designs, weapons and simplicity of ranking up and prestiging is just perfect to me. BO2 is my favorite campaign though and as good as survival is, it lacked the ability to play more than 2 players to match the Zombies experience. If they ever remaster the whole mw3 package they should make survival and spec ops 1-4 players.

Nothing went wrong. It was awesome from start to finish. When BO2 came out at first I went back to MW3&2 since I enjoyed both of em more (nothing against bo2 - its a top 3 CoD hands down).

I will say, MOABs were perfect for infected and I actually really hate the traditional Nuke in that mode. Also, you didn't mention that streaks loop... which is a major game changer! Or did I miss that part? Honestly, the only reason I played BO1 at all was to get that prestige token. MW2 was just more fun so I skipped it until I saw I could get extra classes from reaching first prestige in older titles and seeing those ranks in MW3 was awesome as well.

Before MW3 came out I got a promotional poster. One was the boring side. The awesome side was a poster sized cover of Time magazine. It showed the financial district in ruins. It had the cover text that General Shepherd was laid to rest in Arlington cemetery. It had two thumbnail pics in the corner of Soap and Price calling them the most wanted men in the world. That poster(that I framed) was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. 😢

Those breach sections reminds me IW never changes. "People like the Breach and Clear sections? Let's add 30 of 'em!" with MW3 and now "People liked the Clean House mission? Let's make a whole Clean House Campaign!" with MWII

My comment made it at the start haha. Haven’t watched it yet but I’m so excited for it

My favorite COD game, and it wasn't my first, I played the very first COD game on PC when that came out. It was basically just MW2 but better in most ways and for me that's all I really needed. The multiplayer was just as fun as it was in MW2 but with some needed balancing so there was less bullshit (commando melee kills from miles away, unlimted noob tubes with one man army, people boosting for nukes etc). The killstreak system was at best, Assault for when you wanted to gets as many kills as possible, Support for if perhaps you were new to the game and wasn't quite good enough to get a good killstreak going, or if maybe you just fancied a change and didn't want to be playing quite so try-hard like. Then finially you had Specialist which is One Man Army done right, this is what you choose when you want to go for the MOAB's. There wasn't a single map that I didn't enjoy. Me and a friend of mine played the 2v2 face off quite alot too, shame we never saw more of that in the following games.

The removal of stopping power I personally believe was the end of CoD being balanced. This is where it happened. This is where it started going downhill. It made it so you had to trade something for it. Invisible to radar more damage more health. Choose one. Just like attachements.. you want two attachments? best forgoe your equipment. You dont get that anymore its just have everything and because of things like this nothing is unique or a decision in Modern CoD

A hit title gives you the structure to create a successful sequel with a lot of room for improvement. The 3rd version is usually just fine tuning the 2nd game with limited updates, ie the “don’t fix what isn’t broke” mentality.