MW3 User Reviews “Generally Unfavourable”

TSA Staff 79 Comments

Whilst the early press reviews of Activision’s Modern Warfare 3 were, well, fantastic, user opinion doesn’t yet seem to match the glowing comments from the industry critique.

[drop2]Of course, the first round of reviews from the big sites tend to be higher than the overall average, for whatever reason, but rarely is there such polarity between them and the buying public.

“This is the BEST map pack for MW2 so far. It’s a little over priced though, they’re usually like $15,” says one user on Metacritic.  “If you played one, you’ve played them all. Same thing. Get in line, everyone is buying this game,” says another.

“Played this sorry excuse of a game for a while yesterday after we picked it up on the midnight launch.”

“The funny thing is I had yet to realize this was the exact same game I’ve been playing for two years,” says another Metacritic user.

The common complaint appears to be that this is more of the same, although that shouldn’t come as a massive shock to most – it does have a ‘3’ at the end, and anything off the beaten path would have been judged equally as viciously.

With the user review average currently sitting at around 3.2/10, there’s certainly some unhappy people out there that have splashed cash on the much hyped Infinity Ward first person shooter.

We’ll have our review done as soon as humanly possible.  We weren’t selected in the first round of review code, so bought the game at midnight last night with you guys.

Via Twitter.

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79 Comments

  1. An article about the USER scores of a game that people love to hate?

    Right. Relevant.

    • I have to agree here. Metacritic’s user reviews tend to be a wall of hate on anything that’s vaguely popular (CoD in particular, MW2 has a user score of 3.7, Black ops has a relatively high 5.8))

    • Call of Duty is the most popular gaming franchise out there. Therefore it stands to reason that the majority of voters would have given a high score.

      • Nope, doesn’t work that way. The people who love the game are more likely to spend their time “playing it”. If you check out the metacritic user scores there are a huge amount of 0/10 reviews from people who clearly haven’t played it or just hate COD.

        Pinch of salt reporting…

      • If you like CoD and you’ve just got the newest entry in the series, your immediate thought is to play it, not rush to Metacritic and post a glowing review.

        There’s also the age old fact that people are more likely to post reviews of stuff they hate than stuff they love.

      • Exactly.

      • @billsmugs

        Maybe in your fantasy world. In my world, the real one, fanboys are as vocal if not louder than haters. The silent majority, on the other hand, keeps on buying like the good sheeps they are — most logically influenced by the press propaganda (another one of your “age old facts”).

      • @Kaminari I’m frightfully sorry, but I wasn’t aware that I lived in a fantasy world! :)

        I think the fact that MW3 has got this low user score somewhat implies that the fanboys are NOT as vocal as the haters (unless you’re trying to say that actually no-one likes CoD any more, which I somewhat doubt).

        I do think that to a certain extent, sites may be scared of being too negative towards the big juggernaut franchises, but I think that if the game was seriously as bad as 3.2/10 then most review outlets would have picked up on that.

        I think you may also be overestimating the effect of review scores (or “propaganda” as you call it). Many people will just pick up CoD games on name alone, without knowing or caring what the critics say about it and the only time that will change is if the previous entry in the series was really shockingly bad, in which case people may think twice. We won’t know whether that was the case with MW3 until the next game comes out (or if there are loads of people trading in their copies of this one).

        This has turned into a bit of an essay, sorry!

      • I’d love to know how CoD officially became the most popular gaming franchise. I’d suspect that franchises like Zelda, Mario or Final Fantasy would have something to say about that…

      • @Kaminari – every one of your comments I’ve ever read are sarcastic, Holier than thou wank-fests. Just waiting for that horse of yours to topple over!

  2. I’m so glad I didn’t pick this up from Tesco on my way in to work this morning, I usually buy COD:MW on release day but not this time.
    It’ll be interesteing to see what the multiplayer feedback is like compared to BF3.

    • Funny, I’m so glad that I did exactly that.

      Feedback from my COD MP playing friends (the only user opinion I’m really interested in) is very positive. Yes, it shares a lot with MW2, but TBH I don’t see that as a bad thing and didn’t expect anything else.

      Only issues reported atm appear to be connectivity based.

      No point in comparing MP feedback with BF3, way too different. I’ve been playing BF3 since release and TBH there are some nice touches but it hasn’t moved the game on much since BC2 either and in places feels very clunky indeed. Needs a patch I reckon. Still a very good game though, just not “great” IMO.

      Will be very happy alternating between the 2 for the next 12 months I reckon.

  3. It’ll be different when the multipayer gets going.

  4. I’ll give it a week before I start looking at pros and cons. By then enough people will have played a lot of MW3 to give an in depth impression. Then I’ll decide whether to get this for Christmas.

  5. ha ha. The obvious result is people who like MW2 will like MW3 because it plays the same. People who don’t like MW2 will dislike MW3 for same reason. Therefore, it would suggest the majority of people reviewing this are either a) people who were stupid enough to buy a 3rd in a series of a game where they didn’t like the 2nd or b) People who dislike COD and making up crap scores.

    I wonder if the same happens with user reviews of Unchartered 3, Battlefield 3, even Skyrim will be the same game as Fallout NV with a different skin. Will people complain? I just can’t wait for all these games because they are similar to previous versions – which were brilliant.

    • Uncharted 3 and Skyrim have al ot of new stuff ulike MW3.

      • I’m sorry but U3 isn’t different from U2.

      • ooops, trigger happy me. Aren’t different in terms of gameplay.

      • really? Not from what I’ve seen or read/heard. It’s not a criticism as I enjoyed both games but what officially classes as ‘new stuff’? Sounds like MW3 is the same first person shooter in a new environment and new story, while unchartered 3 is the same 3rd person adventure with new environment and story. Bit like criticizing any sequel to a film because its the same character with a different environment and story?
        What do these people think of FIFA then? Same characters playing the same way with the same story and same environments, or any F1 game……..

      • I have to disagree Mike – When you look at the games separately and look at how far the both of them have come in terms of graphics, gameplay and pretty much the whole package Uncharted has evolved massively with each iteration to perfect what it is trying to be.
        Call of Duty is just the same thing each time with a new skin. That isn’t to say that the game is bad though, it just hasn’t offered anything substantial to make me think “wow! this game beats the last one right there with that!” like I have done with Uncharted.

      • @SpikeyMikey23 speaking as someone who played U2 to death and is currently heading that way with 3 it is very different to 2. The booster system has been completely redone from scratch as have the shooting mechanics. To say otherwise merely suggests you are mentals or haven’t played either.

      • I’m not really talking about the multiplayer psycho as im not really a big fan of it. Played U1, U2 and currently on chapter 17 of U3. I love the games, but all it is is find treasure, solve a few token puzzles, jump, climb and hang of ledges, and shoot/punch people in the face. in all 3.

        MW 1,2,3 – Shoot people in the face

        I’m not saying one is better than the other etc, all im saying is that throughout all 3 games (single player only) The game play is the same

        I feel the same about battlefield 3, and no doubt arkham asylum (when I finally get to play it)

      • @lewis, I cant really see what has changed. What can I do in U3 that I cant do in U1?

      • @SpikeyMikey23 – When you boil any game down to it’s core components it’ll be identical throughout though, that’s the point ;-)

      • I know you were asking Mike, but as I have a similar attitude to MP I hope you don’t mind me sharing my rationale too.

        I had my fill of competitive MP as a teenager with Quake 1 to 3 and UT, when Halo came around with it’s co-op I fell in love. Everyone walks away from a co-operative game a winner, there’s no hard feelings and little of the brash aggression that so often mars competitive MP, so for me at least, it’s a nicer playground. MAG is the one exception for me to this rule.

        I have nothing against competitive MP, it’s just not where I am at any more.

    • Regarding your assumption a): You are forgetting people who haven’t bought the other two games but heard all the praise from the fans and are now unhappy with MW3. :P

      • i guess that should be c then, however I assumed most people were down grading the score because of similarity to the previous game. I’m certainly not the biggest COD fan – didn’t finish single player MW2 and didn’t bother with Blops but I just get annoyed by the biased hatred of what is obviously a high quality game compared to a lot out there but is hated on because of popularity. It makes it difficult to accept justified criticism without being skeptical. I have my own equivalent as I just don’t get the hype around Halo and find COD gameplay far better but I accept it is a high quality game – particularly the multi player side.

      • I dodn’t judge the newer release but I played the MW1 campaign for a while and hated it so much that I won’t be spending another cent towards any of the releases of this franchise. I don’t play competitive MPs so I’m not interested in a game that clearly focuses on the MP part. MW1 GotY edition was probably the wors 80€I’ve ever spent and I only bought it because I bought a PS3 that day and wanted a new game with good graphics and a decent single player experience. Boy was I let down. ^^

      • No competitive MP? Can I ask why?

      • I’m more of a coop player. I love to play with my friends, not against them. It’s just a preference. I played Counter Strike alot when I was younger but after that I never really enjoyed competitive Mp as I did back then. I’m a team player. What can I say? :)

      • You’re explanation makes absolutely no sense.

        Why don’t you just party up and play on the same team as your friends in team deathmatch etc. then?

  6. After looking at the maps in Private Match I can say I agree. There is no map as pretty or brightly coloured as Favela, Terminal, Highrise or Skidrow. Therefore this game will be boring, it’s all just Invasion maps.

    I hate Treyarch but they truly had the best COD, Bloos, BUT it was let down by slow killing guns, horrible sounds, bad hit detection, bad graphics and too much recoil. I have to come to the terms that COD developers are lazy. All they need is one major patch.
    MW2 still remains the more fun COD. 2/5 stars is what I give it.

    • *Blops, iPad auto correction -_-

      • There are plenty of interesting and colourful maps. You might want to consider actually playing the game a bit more before giving your “opinion” on its content.

  7. I think its safe to assume at least 50% of those reviews are from people who haven’t even seen MW3 in action ;) Haters gonna hate.

    • I think it’s not safe to say that. At all.

      • Check out Metacritic and see if you still think that Boomshanks. I’m with R4U on this one.

      • I did and I still stand by my point. I agree that COD has grown to such sizes that there are enough haters who use senseless and unbalanced arguments to bash COD. Unfortuantely the defence seems to drag itself to the level of ‘haters gonna hate’ quite quickly. Not much better in my opinion.

      • I think in this case, with the obvious bias shown in the majority of the user scores on Metacritic, the expression “haters got to hate” is very valid.

        I agree that the term does get banded around by people every time something they enjoy is criticized in any way, I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself for no real reason, but the sheer number of idiotic 0/10 reviews is overwhelming TBH.

  8. The truth comes out! ;)

    I don’t place any trust in these, remember the whole thing from Dragon Age 2, maybe it will be a more reliable indicator of quality in a few months but not now…

  9. This is just the 360 version. PS3 version sits at 2.3 and the PC version at 1.4. *sits back and eats popcorn*
    There should be a game where BF3 and CoD fans fight in an arena against each other. Now THAT would be a game I’d buy. :D

    • Yeah, but by the time you got to the third iteration of ‘Fanboy Wars – The Game’, people would be so tired of it, they would just give it 2.3 as a user score!

  10. Haven’t tried it yet, my copy should have arrived by now. I still have a dream, that one day they will re-release COD 4 with all the maps from W@W, MW2, BLOPS and MW3

    • Hell yeah! I don’t know why they don’t have all the previous maps on the new iterations, or at least make them available to download if they want to cash in. They would certainly sell.

      • deffo. COD4 was the ultimate and up until now, I have yet to find a FPS that I have enjoyed more, Seriously, up until MW2 I sank so many days worth of gameplay into it. Enjoyed every single second. My fav game of this gen

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