Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III players around the world are experiencing a facepalm moment of frustration when trying to launch the new campaign. As reported by PC Gamer, the new Call of Duty HQ launcher, which is said to weigh in at a whopping 45-57 GB, is leading players down a convoluted rabbit hole in order to play the new game which releases next week on November 10. Originally introduced with MW II as an updated form of its main menu, the new launcher is intended to be an all-in-one place for players to access various COD features, games, etc., but its implementation seems to be anything but optimal. Meanwhile, the new campaign is receiving poor reviews for its quality and short time to complete.
Per PC Gamer:
“Here’s how it breaks down: if you have Warzone and HQ installed already, Modern Warfare 3 will add an additional 78GB, for a total of 149GB. The smallest possible configuration of MW3, with its campaign, co-op, and Warzone all removed, is 79GB (that’s CoD HQ’s 45GB plus multiplayer’s 34GB).”
As if having a launcher the size of a game using up precious space on their drive wasn’t bad enough, players are unable to play the new game unless they use it. The process to use the new HQ, just to get to start the game, is said to take between 70-90 seconds and is the only means to do so.
Per PC Gamer:
“Switching between Modern Warfares 2 and 3 from the HQ is not like switching modes. Once you’re on the main menu, you could jump immediately into Warzone or a multiplayer match of MW2. Clicking the Modern Warfare 3 button, however, closes the HQ app and launches an entirely different executable called Modern Warfare 3. There is no option to just launch Modern Warfare 3, because “Modern Warfare 3″ is not its own game. It’s buried, literally, inside CoD HQ as a piece of add-on content.”
It appears that PlayStation 5 owners found themselves experiencing another kind of annoyance in trying to launch the new game. A “disc required” error, not the new HQ launcher, popped up telling players they needed PS4 version of MW II in order to play. Clearly, even with errors, there seems to be some kind of intent in having the two games linked. An update correcting the issue has since been released.
From Bad to Worse …
Reviews for the campaign part of the game, which began its early access open-beta phase last month, have not been good either. It seems that having HQ treat the new game like DLC (which it was rumored to have begun as), may be closer to the truth than it seems.
VGC calls the new campaign “A LOW POINT WITH A THIN, MEANDERING MESS”, that clocks in under four hours of gameplay.
IGN says, “Modern Warfare 3 has perhaps the worst Call of Duty single-player campaign I’ve played. It’s shallow, dull, and plays less like the greatest hits and more like underbaked cover versions of missions past.”
Forbes is considerably more kind in saying:
“However, given the extremely short turnaround time between the two Modern Warfares, yes, it seems a quite few corners have been cut, and the campaign is getting criticized for both its quality and its extremely short length, even for a Call of Duty campaign.”
CoD’s strengths are usually its multiplayer mode and despite the poor reception for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III early access single-player campaign, it’s expected the game will fare better with that when it launches next week.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →I’ve enjoyed the campaign so far, but I can tell it won’t be very long.
Define not bery long? I'm not into COD anymore but the last ones I played had a campaign of 5-6 hours which imo was already pretty short.
I'm into it for four hours, and I think it will be around that 5-6 hours long.
It has been a loooooong time since I played CoD games, but waaay back when I did, the single-player campaigns were usually around 4-6 hours long. Like I remember CoD4's campaign being about 4 hours. The Battlefield games like BF3 and BF4 also had extremely short campaigns that were about the same length.
From what I read, many are averaging 3-4 hours and fast runs could be under 3 hours. Spending time to check it all out can go between 4-6 hours.
I know COD is all about the MP experience... but man that kind of sucks for the game itself.
So as a primarily single-player gamer, CoD and Battlefield never really had much for me.
Same. I've played one of them.. Maybe it was Black Ops on the XB360. The campaign lasted about 5 hours, and ... that was that. It had some polish for the time, but ... not a lot of meat on that bone.
I miss Unreal Tournament.
The Call of Duty single player experience from about CoD4:MW onward was something I've enjoyed for the most part. The experience is brief and there isn't a lot of replay value there but I found them enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the 2019 game. It was a return to form and actually had a good campaign even though it was short. It was still a bit longer than normal at around 6 hours for me.
Battlefield's campaigns used to be shit until Battlefield 3. 4 was good as well and five was dogshit. I'd argue that BF3 & BF4 had better single player campaigns than the CoD games at the time as the latter descended into farcical territory. Though CoD: Infinite Warfare was surprisingly good and refreshing though its ending felt a bit forced and tone deaf given how short the experience was.
At $20, I think the CoD games have enjoyable single player experiences but beyond that I don't think they are generally worth it. I used to play CoD multiplayer a lot but everything after CoD4:MW has never landed quite the same way for me with me enjoying and playing each installment less and less than its predecessor. Now I don't even bother. I think I played two or three matches of the 2019 game and I was done with it.
COD MP went to poo when they removed dedicated servers. I think BO2 was the last one where you could rent your own servers. It took the community aspect of gaming and threw it in the trash. I met so many good communities of people through playing in their servers. Plus you were able to police your server from cheaters. Now, just random chucklef**ks, most of which are cheating in some way.
Black Ops II was the last one that I put any significant time into. Even then, I didn't play it nearly as much as CoD4:MW. MWII didn't have dedicated servers either, and I didn't play it much. One of the worst aspects of it was the reduction in player count for individual matches to a max of 9 vs. 9. With larger maps like crash that were designed for 32-48 players, you felt entirely a lone and could walk around most of the match and never see more than a couple of enemy players.
And very few match types in MWII even allowed 9 versus 9. Most were 4 on 4 or something like that. Garbage.
I agree. Though I did play online a bit with the last game which I haven’t done in years. I normally play the campaign and then with offline bots in MP games.
As someone with a fascination for WW2 I found the original games pretty interesting and fun, while a bit short, and while I did play a lottle bit of battlefield online waaay back (although I played against bot's more), afaik I never played COD online, I had other stuff to play to invest much time in that.
I admit I did try a couple of the EA Battlefield games. Pretty sure I got them via Origin Access back in the day. I kind of liked them but ended up getting totally annoyed with them needing to do an 8-9 GB update way too friggin' often. Seriously, it seemed liked 1x week so after a bit I just gave up and uninstalled them but I thought the graphics and game play were decent. I don't remember exactly what, but seem to remember that there was something really bonkers about the menu layouts that drove me nuts as well.
I've kept UT1, UT2K4, and UT3 installed on every single PC I've ever had since those games were brand-new. I still play them all a few times a year. Of course I play with bots. UT1 was the very first video game I ever played online (thank you UMDCP's T1 lines, cuz 56K wasn't cutting it at home), and that game quickly taught me why I should NOT play games online. Every other game I've tried online MP in since has only reinforced that.
That's how I felt way back when I did play those games.
I stopped following the series a long time ago, so I don't even know what specific game you are referring to, but I guess I should maybe look into it and check it out.
BF3 was the first BF game I really played, and yeah that campaign was pretty good. It was also one of the games where I first saw the true potential of D3D11. It was an excellent showcase for DX11. BF4 was one of the first games I played through on my 2014 X99 PC when I first built it. Didn't like it as much as 3, but yeah it was decent. I think I played one other one, BF1, which I got for $5 on EA Origin (one of the only two games I bought for Origin, and both were $5). Didn't care for that one at all.
The only CoD I ever played online was CoD4: MW1. This was one of the only two games I ever really bothered to play online (the other being Hawken, which I was an alpha and beta tester on), and even then not that much. I used to play with a group called Grumpy Old Men Gaming on their server(s). Good times there.
Yeah if I play multiplayer sh1t, it's with bots, or at LANParties that my friends and I used to have back in the day. I've never really cared for playing with strangers anyways, which is one reason why I don't game online. I also don't like not being able to pause the game if I need to go take a dump or whatever. LANParties are my preferred way to do multiplayer. Online MP with friends is still a hassle because everyone has to be able to meet up, and my schedule is very different from most people I know (I'm usually awake at night and sleep during the day, and the people I hang out with these days are also night people). At least with LANParties everyone is there in the same house, ready to dedicate themselves to gaming for a few days. Of course those things don't happen often (although during our peak LANParty era we used to do 3 or 4 a year). These days they don't happen at all. The last one we had was in 2016, and only 3 people showed up. That's also when we realized we are too f*cking old to do LANParties anymore. We can no longer handle a few days of little sleep and filling up on junk food. Back in my 20s I could game for 3 days with little sleep, loaded up on drinks like BAWLS, Wild Stallion, and Vault, eating whatever the f*ck crap we had on hand. Then when the LANParty was over, I would come home, sleep for 16 hours, and be good as new. Those days are long gone.
Now what happens is that my friends have extra gaming-capable PCs in their homes, and if I go over there I can just jump on an extra PC and game with them for the evening. It's like going over to a friend's house and gaming with them on their console (or a 2nd console if they have one available). Those who have gaming laptops just bring them around (much in the same way someone might bring their own consoles to a friend's house).
I remember how hilarious it was that the community made their own online service for the "community demo" versions of CoD: MW2 and 3. We used that at LANParties.
I never had to deal with that because my copies of BF3 and 4 were "community demos". I was (and am) very much against using Origin and the other storefronts and launchers.
BF3 and 4, and I think BF1 (and probably a lot of the other BFs), if you used the retail version of those games, had their own really sh1tty web-based interface/menus. That was another reason why I was glad I had "community demos" of BF3 and 4.