Warzone but alone

In interviews, Sledgehammer has spun this approach as Open Combat, a new format that offers an “incredible” level of choice. In actuality, it’s a canny way to lean on the assets and player toolkit of a game that’s already been approved by millions. Expect to drop into a given mission with an unhelpfully loud weapon and a handful of scattered objectives - bomb defusal sites, plane debris, bunkers - and be left to seek out better gear. Perhaps in a rooftop cache you’ll find a silenced shotgun and a killstreak imported from deathmatch mode: a mortar strike to drop on a distant patrol, or UAV designed to pick out enemy positions.

It’s a cheap and somewhat cynical way to fill out a campaign, but the results aren’t hateful. During the infiltration of an oligarch’s island hideaway, I pilfered night goggles from a cabana on the beach and crept through dark caves to get closer to my target. In a nuclear power plant, I shot through a skylight at an explosive barrel, blowing open a locked door from the inside.

Yet bespoke problem-solving exercises like these are few and far between. A couple of square kilometres and a mandate to have-at-it do notDishonoredmake. More than once, I fell foul of COD’s habit of painting false doors onto buildings, or a ledge deemed arbitrarily unfit for mantling, and couldn’t take the route I’d planned. If I recognised a vehicle from Warzone, it was probably enterable; if not, it was simply scenery.

Nothing Battlefield didn’t do a decade ago, of course. But much more fun than some of Modern Warfare 3’s attempts to recapture old glories. InCall of Duty: WWII, Sledgehammer’s finest campaign to date, you explored a Parisian fortress in disguise as a Nazi - engaging in sweaty conversation with officers who scrutinised your papers, and performing Hitman-lite feats of espionage. That proved to be a foundation that other COD developers could build on, first in the Kremlin setpiece of Black Ops: Cold War, and then in last year’s narco mansion break-in. These levels have allowed developers to flash Activision’s cash in meaningful ways, with lavish performance capture sequences and gently diverging outcomes.

Modern Warfare 3’s equivalent is an embarrassing downgrade, in which the returning Kate Laswell - now inexplicably a field agent as well as a high-level CIA handler - waltzes into a Russian military base to meet an informant. Everything feels off, from your own inappropriately fast movement speed, to the opaque detection abilities of the soldiers passing by, who open fire instantly once your cover’s blown.

This uncharacteristic clumsiness extends elsewhere - from the subtitles that fire too early in cutscenes, ruining character reveals, to the interstitial dialogue that sometimes overlaps with subsequent shootouts. There’s a sense that less time has been spent honing the pacing and polish of these levels than in previous years. And in a series all about slick, curated movie moments, those details matter enormously.

Even Sledgehammer’s take on No Russian, the audacious and infamous terrorist attack of 2009’sModern Warfare 2, fails to stick in the memory. While forefronted with shocking imagery, it’s barely interactive, and thus much less morally challenging than its predecessor. The whole thing is over in a couple of minutes, and leaves no lasting impact on the plot. Then again, perhaps that’s for the best.

There’s a common narrative thatCall of Duty campaignswere at their peak in the late ‘00s. That may be true in pop cultural terms, multiplayer having long since overshadowed solo modes for the typical COD fan. But this Modern Warfare reboot began with Infinity Ward firing on all cylinders, embracing brave themes and experimental designs in single-player that excused its occasional stumbles. It’s a shame to see the engine it built sputter and fail, betrayed by a stopgap schedule-filler with nothing to say.