Review: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (with afterthoughts)

Do you like Call of Duty? Then you will like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. It really is as simple as that, although the idea of diminishing returns is very present here. Read my review to get an idea of why, despite its greatness, I feel Modern Warfare 3 falls a bit short. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great game, but it’s one that feels much less significant than any previous title in the series.

The main reason for that? It’s just more Modern Warfare. For a lot of people, that’s fine. All they want is an updated version of the multiplayer they known and love with some cool extras. The campaign is generally very tight and ends on a high note and Spec Ops continues to be the best mode in the series, but it needed…something else. The thing is, there isn’t much you can do to Call of Duty without upsetting fans, but that might be the series’ inevitable downfall.

It’ll be interesting to see what Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer do next, but I’m willing to bet it won’t be Modern Warfare 4. Next year? Black Ops 2 seems inevitable (although I can’t say I’m too excited about the prospect of that), but after that…the future is unknown. Maybe someday we’ll finally see that third person Call of Duty game that was supposedly in the works, but who can even tell at this point. The series will be around for a while at least, and I want it to continue to be.

There is a lot of greatness to be found that has been ultimately weakened by the annualized nature of the franchise, so it’s kind of hard to remain optimistic, despite how much I want to. Will it continue to sell? Definitely. Will we ever see a Call of Duty revolutionize the genre like the first Modern Warfare did? Doubtful. At the very least, Activision will do whatever they can to keep the franchise going as long as possible, even if that means sacrificing new ideas for what has always worked and what hardcore Call of Duty fans will continue to gobble up.

Will I buy next year’s Call of Duty? This is the first time in years I can’t even say yes to that, at least not yet.

Review: Spider-Man: Edge of Time (with afterthoughts)

Next to Batman, Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, and yet he almost never gets his due. Spider-Man was at his best when he’s in an open world, able to swing wherever he wants, which lets the players fully explore the Spider-Man’s powers. And then Activision put Beenox in charge and it felt like a huge step backwards. Now, I’m one of the few people who actually enjoyed Shattered Dimensions, the previous Spider-Man game, but it definitely was a step down from Web of Shadows. And now we have Edge of Time, which turns out is even worse. You can read my full review here and let me know if you agree, because I can’t imagine why they went this route.

Spider-Man 2 was not a great game, but that sense of freedom you got from it was astounding. In Edge of Time, you are stuck in a single building in the entire game. It’s a gigantic building, but it’s the same fucking building. This is a step backwards from even Neversoft’s amazing Spider-Man game on the PS1; it was linear, but there was variety. There is no variety here, not one bit. Everything that makes Spider-Man cool as a hero is completely lost in this game, and Spider-Man 2099 is an awful product of the 90s that did not deserve to be resurrected, and yet here we are.

You know what the best part of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was? Noir Spider-Man. His levels broke up the monotony from the other, fairly similar Spider-Men and, if he could have been a bit more fleshed out, they could have done a lot more with him. It’s a real shame that we’re left with a game that doesn’t even feel like a real Spider-Man game. Oh, sure, Anti-Venom is in it, but that’s really it. Like X-Men Destiny before it, this feels like a cheap, barely thrown together product that just has Spider-Man’s name slapped on it. Shattered Dimensions wasn’t amazing, but it had things you would expect from a Spider-Man game. This has none of that.

Beenox’ next Spider-Man game, The Amazing Spider-Man, has apparently been in the works for a while and will return to the open world gameplay style that lets Spider-Man truly shine. Let’s just hope that those guys do a little better than this half-assed action game.