Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailer has old faces and flashy enigmas
Meet your Makarov on November 10th
Activision have finally given the much-teased Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 remake a release date - November 10th. Here's your teaser trailer, in which the camera skydives through a cosmic wilderness of glowing red waveforms while returning adversaries Captain Price and Vladimir Makarov apparate briefly to the rear. There are mysterious husky whisperings - "he's not new", "never bury your enemies alive" - and you fly through a giant stone wolf's head. What does all this bode? I'm going to say "shooting".
Sledgehammer Studios are the primary developer for this year's helping of Call Of Duty, which was originally intended (per Bloomberg) to be a meaty expansion for 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remake. As reported by IGN, data-miners have already uncovered a few of the new game's weapons, including the (deep breath) Bushmaster ACR in 5.56 assault rifle, Heckler & Koch SL8 marksman rifle, Glock 21 pistol, Uzi Pro submachine gun and the SVCh sniper rifle, together with a long-range acoustic device killstreak, the excitably named AeroVironment Switchblade. When I was a lad, we had to make do with M16s and gumption.
They also appear to be bringing back slide-cancelling (aka, the trick of cancelling a slide animation to reset your sprint and preserve momentum) after binning it off in 2019's Modern Warfare. I can't say I'm one of the hardened wetworkers who made use of this move - my speciality is cowering near blind spots with a shotgun - but in keeping with Call of Duty exploits at large, it sounds like restoring it will be as controversial among fans as ditching it.
We can expect more news within COD battle royale Warzone 2, as per Activision's blog from July: "Drop into Call of Duty: Warzone to experience the worldwide reveal for Call of Duty 2023 in a limited-time event. Join the ranks of Shadow Company to take on Konni forces and secure the chemical weapon threat before it's too late."
Ed Thorn (aka, Ed Prime) deemed the Modern Warfare 2 remake "a mix of the spectacular and the middling" in his singleplayer review, but was a touch more positive about its multiplayer, summarising it as "slick shooting that rarely misfires".