Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Best in series"

I've played all of the Modern Warfare series (i didn't finish MW1) and this is the best by far. The graphics have been given an update but it's still possible to play the game on an aging machine if you want. Most of the weapons from MW2 make a return in MW3 but there are some new editions, and changes but nothing too surprising. The story is great and escalates quickly from where MW2 left off and takes you to several notable cities across the world (Paris, London, New York, etc) unfortunately there is only one mission on American soil but all the missions are challenging except on the lowest of difficulty settings. The spec ops missions are challenging and familiar to players of the original games, but not impossible to skilled players.
The meat of this game comes in the form of multiplayer here there are a few changes to weapons, shotguns are now primary weapons. But the killstreak reward system has been completely replaced by the pointstreak system. You now earn points for kills, capturing flags, securing locations, etc. depending on the game time you play. There are also three types of pointstreak rewards; assault, support, and perks. Assault rewards are the most familiar, kills earned through rewards count toward the next rewards and it resets upon death. Support rewards don't reset upon death but don't earn points toward the next reward. Perks are the most different, every two points you unlock an additional perk for your use and after eight points you unlock all perks for use at once making you extremely powerful. The new pointstreak system can seem confusing at first but after a while they become as familiar as the old killstreak system. Unfortunately there almost always seems to be cheaters online, and you frequently run into people with akimbo Machine Pistols that become very annoying. Other than these people the game is a great finale on a perfect series.