Modern Warfare 3 blazes into 2012 with the debut of all-new multiplayer maps Liberation and Piazza. The front line of the Modern Warfare 3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite, nine consecutive months of epic downloadable content that commences January 24th for Xbox Live users.

Activision Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, revealed recently that the content will be available first for Call of Duty Elite’s premium members on Xbox LIVE, followed by additional platforms at a later time. From January through September, Call of Duty Elite premium members on Xbox LIVE will receive regular updates of all new content totaling at least 20 content drops.

The Modern Warfare 3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite will include a broader variety than ever, with brand new multiplayer maps, Special Ops Missions, new game modes and more. While Call of Duty Elite premium subscribers get the new content first, as promised, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 fans who want to buy the content a la carte as they have in the past, will be able to purchase the content via Modern Warfare 3 Content Collections.

“The mammoth launch of Modern Warfare 3 and the breakout success of Call of Duty Elite were just the beginning.  Call of Duty Elite provides an ‛always-on’ connection to our fanbase, and the MW3 Content Season is the ultimate way to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the Call of Duty community and provide tremendous value to Call of Duty Elite premium members,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing.

“With the Call of Duty: MW3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite we are delivering on our promise of more new content, more often, and with more variety than ever. With three studios collaborating on the first season, the breadth and depth of material on tap is truly extraordinary. It’s rare you can successfully execute both quantity and quality, but thanks to the expertise of our developers, the reach of Call of Duty Elite and the passion of our fans, we intend to deliver.”

All content drops for Call of Duty Elite premium members will occur once a month, starting in January for Xbox Live users and will continue through the year, ending in September. During the first three months of 2012, Activision will release five different content drops on three occasions in January, February and March, first on Xbox Live, followed by additional platforms at a later time.

The first two Content Drops will be multiplayer maps—also playable in Modern Warfare 3 Survival Mode—that throw combatants into a war-torn Central Park and an Italian seaside village. Liberation is a vast, militarized landscape, ripe for long-range sniper and LMG fire, with mounted turrets on either end that lend power to anyone brave enough to expose themselves in exchange for deadly firepower. Piazza is the idyllic Italian getaway that is anything but, where tight corners and branching pathways pose great risk at every turn. Close-range combat dominates in Piazza, where attacks from behind, above and below are an ever-constant threat.

The third Content Drop will be available for download in mid-February and two additional Content Drops will go live in March, as premium Call of Duty Elite members will receive new content once a month through September. Also in March, the first Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection will be available for purchase by the entire Call of Duty: MW3 player community on Xbox Live.

To celebrate the launch of each new content drop, Call of Duty Elite will run specialized events for real-world prizes throughout the nine-month Season. Additional details about the Modern Warfare 3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite and Collection series will be announced throughout the year.

Published by Activision and developed by Beachhead Studio, Call of Duty Elite is a comprehensive social gaming network offering a deep and innovative service for all registered Call of Duty players. Call of Duty Elite provides “always-on,” universal communication between the platform and the game. Players can access Call of Duty Elite via web or console—to connect with friends, plan multiplayer matches with their Clan or social Group, configure load-outs, access comprehensive stats and interactive heat maps, and much more.

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As First-Person Shooters go, this monster of a game is the king of the hill. There are few competitors who can match this level of focused development on a game with so many gameplay options. Infinity Ward has a long history for developing Call of Duty games, each iteration getting bigger and better as the years progress.

Players from Modern Warfare 2 will recognize the feel and gameplay mechanics of Modern Warfare 3; there is something that is unique to the Modern Warfare series that competitors can’t quite duplicate. What this creates is a game that is at once familiar and yet also features new elements for players to experience.

With Modern Warfare 3, the storyline is straight and to the point. Some fans commented in Modern Warfare 2 that the plot was just a touch past the point of confused head scratching, and so that has been tweaked to a degree, focusing more on the seamlessness between missions with noticeable highs intermixed with low points of the campaign. You won’t be bored here.

The visuals of the game are more streamlined and that really appears to be the name of the game this time. Previous Modern Warfare games have felt rushed or chaotic, and while there is no shortage of either in this game, the visuals certainly draw you into the game world. Developers have focused more on realism and less on quick and fast gameplay.

The campaign itself is indeed more fluid, with events planned out to prevent any and all confusion from setting into the players’ minds. You have options in weapons and in gameplay direction, but the flow is overall more cognizant of the players’ choices. You won’t have to worry about ammo or weapons, as there will be plenty of them to be found in the environment.

The Survival mode in Spec Ops is particularly organic, mixing different types of enemies after each successive wave of opponents that are trying to batter you down. Warning, the helicopter will make you cower in fear, if you make it to a good hiding spot at all. Here you’ll either play smart or die fast, and the player must choose their reloads.

Do you want more grenades or more ammo? You won’t have time to get both. This mode puts to shame any comparisons to Zombie Mode from Call of Duty: Black Ops; it’s just leagues apart.

The real draw for most players of Modern Warfare 3 will be the online multiplayer. Beyond the campaign and the reasonably predictable AI, the need to play against a living breathing person is the real advantage of the game. With new weapons and map packs likely to come online, players can expect to have a very customized multiplayer journey.

Experience points are gained for every kill and are also gained for every flag or dog tag collected in new multiplayer modes. The Kill Confirmed mode is one of the new modes available that should lead to a lot of creative strategies to avoid walking into an ambush. This mode will require the player to retrieve the dog tags from opponents that they’ve eliminated.

It means that, yes, you can be fast with a gun, but now you’ll also have to be strategic and not babysit the high ground with a big gun. Happily, all is not lost as you can actually deny the opposing team their points by picking up your teammates’ dog tags before they do. The Team Defender mode is a hybrid combination of Capture the Flag and King of the Hill.

The team that keeps the flag for the longest amount of time will accumulate the most amount of points as most would expect, except that the flag is mobile the entire match and it’s a race to see who can hide or run the furthest without dying. Flag generation will likely lead to no shortage of online trash talking since the first player to be killed is the one who generates the one flag for the whole match.

This should lead to some otherwise hilarious kill footage. The snag in an otherwise seamless game begins in a familiar area that fans are all too frustrated with experiencing. The re-spawning part of the online multiplayer is again an issue that Infinity Ward seems unwilling to address. Players just don’t like getting killed immediately after re-spawning; it just isn’t exciting.

The interactive button press cut scenes in campaign can be an annoyance on the second or third round of play through but are otherwise fine. Modern Warfare 3 is an excellent addition to the Call of Duty series. Its crisp visuals, combined with the better plotted storyline and continually evolving gameplay, make for an exceptionally focused game.

Players will be able to tell, versus Modern Warfare 2′s scattered jumble, that this iteration of Modern Warfare felt like it was developed along a very specific set of guidelines. As a result, the replay value on this game is particularly high, so it is unlikely that there will be many used copies available in the immediate future.

The overall game retains that great First-Person Shooter feel from past versions, and the new multiplayer options create an even greater range of death and destruction than ever before. This is a solid game that for any shooting fan is a must have for their collection.
Image Courtesy of   http://www.callofduty.com

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