There’s a lot to like here in the Spec-Ops missions, which are clearly designed with replayability and perfectionism in mind. While a perfect playthrough of a mission might only take 3 minutes end to end, it’s getting to that perfect playthrough that’s the challenge. You and your co-op partner will be tasked with kidnapping the Russian President in an airplane, strapping on bomb suits and disarming chemical weapons, or simply taking out everything that moves. Where Spec-Ops clearly separates itself are the missions designed for players to work together in separate ways.
One such mission has a player on the ground hacking laptops found throughout a warehouse district. Each successful hack allows the other player to control a camera and turret to cover the player attempting to hack. A mission like this becomes thrilling because of the level design; the player on the ground has limited visibility thanks to tight corridors and dark areas. This means the other player needs to communicate enemy positions and movement to the player on the ground.
Completing these missions earns you experience and unlocks for the Spec-Ops missions - while these aren’t used in the standard scenario based missions they carry over to the game’s survival mode. These unlocks consist of access to better weapons, different perks, as well as special support abilities. The survival mode reminds me a bit of a love child between Counter-Strike and Horde mode in Gears of War. Enemies come at you in waves, with each successive wave of enemy being more and more difficult. After each wave you have a half a minute or so to find different shop points throughout the map to buy weapons, ammo, and other gadgets to help you survive. Then it’s back to the action.
While initially the waves start off pretty harmless, things ramp up quickly as enemies come strapped with dynamite, chemical weapons, or even in support helicopters. Of course the king enemy is the juggernaut - who drops into battle armed in in a bomb disposal suit made of heavy armor making him a tough cookie to crack. As the waves progress the enemies being to gain more hitpoints and come in greater numbers - so those items you’ve unlocked from your previous play throughs and mission play throughs become crucial. Turrets, air support, predator missiles and more are all at your disposal - using cash earned from the previous waves to beef up your arsenal. Things ramp up quickly and stay fairly intense all the way through. All in all I found Modern Warfare 3’s take on the survival co-op modes strangely addictive.
Of course the biggest draw for most people in Call of Duty games are the multiplayer versus modes and while there’s a handful of new ones at play, my personal favorite being Kill Confirmed, I just can’t get interested in it. If you like Call of Duty style multiplayer, you are bound to like Modern Warfare 3’s offering. Add in the new Call of Duty Elite website and service and you’ll be playing MW3 for months to come.
Sometimes it’s tough to be at the top for so long, everyone is always looking at you to fail. I’ve even read that the developers felt as if they were the underdogs this time around, and I think because of this philosophy they’ve delivered the best Call of Duty game to date. Both the campaign and Spec-Ops are incredibly satisfying first person shooter experiences. Now the only problem the series has on its hands is - how does it top itself next year?
This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Play with a friend locally or online in 16 Spec-Ops missions, scenarios designed to play in co-op. Also available are survival style missions against infinite waves of enemies. Co-Op gets its own perks and unlocks as well as leaderboards.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.