Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s rock bottom review scores have behind the scenes shenanigans to blame

CALL of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has finally been fully released, and it is not going over well with fans.

People are claiming it is the worst Call of Duty campaign of all time, and saying that the multiplayer is essentially the same as Modern Warfare 2.

It already has ‘Mixed’ reviews on Steam, with less than 60% of players recommending the game.

One player wrote: “Game adds less than 20 new guns, reuses all the old MW2 assets and looks the same. 

“Waste of money. Campaign was garbage and zombies isn’t even worth talking about.”

While it is easy to fight back against the development team for these issues, it seems that the problem with the game lies higher up.

According to a report by Bloomberg, developers had to complete the new campaign “in roughly 16 months — the shortest development time for a new Call of Duty game in years.”

The average length for development on recent Call of Duty games is around three years, with multiple teams working to keep a consistent annual release schedule.

While officially Activision Blizzard claims Modern Warfare 3 was always planned to be a “premium game”, some of the developers have told a different tale.

Over a dozen staff came forward to say that the purpose of the game was left ambiguous, and many didn’t know if it was meant to be an expansion or a sequel.

Others have claimed that they were expressly told that Modern Warfare 3 was an expansion for Modern Warfare 2.

Factoring in the 16-month development cycle and the final length of the game, it does seem that MW3 was always supposed to be an expansion.

Adding to the tight production time, developers have also claimed that they had to run most of their progress past another Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward.

This led to the process being inefficient, as they often had to wait for feedback or make changes they didn’t think were necessary.

If you want to find out more about the game, then you can read our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review.

Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.