Even by Call of Duty standards, Modern Warfare 3's campaign is very short
Call of Duty campaigns are always on the lighter side of video game campaigns, but Modern Warfare 3's seems to have taken it a little too far.
Though we are one week away from the official launch of Modern Warfare 3, anyone who buys a digital edition of the game from now until then can play the full campaign immediately. This is the second year in-a-row that Call of Duty has done this.
While the practice has been almost universally praised, Modern Warfare 3's campaign will not be selling anyone on the idea.
The simple fact is that, while Call of Duty campaigns are generally short, Modern Warfare 3's is even shorter. That's what so many of the people who started playing the campaign when it unlocked last night believe.
A typical Call of Duty campaign runs anywhere from five to eight hours, depending on how quickly you get through them, their respective content and whether certain missions intentionally slow down the pace. There's a certain level of quality and production value players expect, and Modern Warfare 3 does not appear to meet them.
Reactions everywhere about the quality of the Modern Warfare 3 campaign, its length, content, and the so-called Open Combat Missions are negative everywhere you look. The frontpage of Modern Warfare 3's official subreddit is riddled with criticisms.
Most of the popular posts right now are all about how disappointed people are with it. "I'm a little in shock at how half baked this campaign was," wrote Reddit user ImRefat.
"This campaign is basically Warzone with cutscenes...," argued ItsmejimmyC, who brought up the fact that so many of the game's missions take place in Warzone's first map, Verdansk, just with some voice over and brief cutscenes to spice things up.
It's also clear that it does not live up to the Modern Warfare 3 name, or how it was pitched as a true sequel to last year's game. "Finished the campaign, calling the game 'MW3' was clearly a last minute decision," wrote Mysterious_Rate_8271.
All of that, of course, (and everything else going on with multiplayer) lends a lot of credence to earlier reports that Modern Warfare 3 started out as an expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2, which later grew into a full game.
We'll have to see if multiplayer and Zombies are going to be better-received by the wider community, but this is looking like a dull Call of Duty year so far.