Modern Warfare 3 MetaCritic User Review

Clearly not everybody feels that Modern Warfare 3 has lived up to the hype. It's still within the first day of release, but the discrepancy between review outlets and players is starting to show, and looks to be even greater than some may have expected. While most reviews from publications and gaming sites are claiming that the latest Call of Duty is among the higher quality games this year, if users are to believed, Modern Warfare 3 is a complete failure.

While the Metacritic score for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are sitting at 90 and 88 respectively, the users have a very different opinion. The consumers see the game as deserving of a 2.6/10 on Xbox, and faring slightly worse on PS3 with 2.1/10 at the time of this writing. The PC has certainly seen the harshest criticism with a 1.4/10, while a Metascore has yet to be established. It's worth noting that the user scores increase alongside the number of reviews given, but that's not likely to be any comfort to Activision.

Those who felt the urge to post their own reviews on the site have described the game as being "pathetic," "absolute garbage" and "a sorry excuse for a game." Clearly these statements are all fair, since subjectivity is a factor in every entertainment industry.

Unfortunately, this is likely to immediately result in gamers everywhere accusing news outlets of having sold out, been biased towards large releases, and in some cases exchanged money for positive scores. These accusations will be completely unfounded for the most part, and the cynicism of such statements doesn't need to be explained. We're not intent on mounting a defense of the game reviewers everywhere (since we're busy playing through the game ourselves), but it's not as if everyone who bought the game - on day one - is being heard here.

The fact of the matter is that the people who love the game are most likely still playing it, and since there seem to be very few 1's and 2's being given in favor of a complete 0, we'll wait to see how the scores average out over the coming days. Again, everybody is entitled to a subjective opinion, but the truth is - for us at Game Rant anyway - that us giving a subjective review wouldn't be useful to anyone who doesn't share our exact view.

Modern Warfare 3 User Review Debate

But instead of arguing that reviewers are soulless corporate shills with no integrity, perhaps we can look at what else this could mean for the future of the Call of Duty franchise.

One of the most frequent criticisms fired against the game is that is more of the same, and while the same old adrenaline-fueled experience may have been entertaining over the years, the fact that the game failed to impress or innovate is no longer acceptable. We've been concerned of the same thing, and so has the competition, but the fact that the game is predicted to smash sales records doesn't exactly motivate Activision or Infinity Ward to change anything. Fans showed that they had put more faith in a known quantity than innovation when pre-orders for Modern Warfare 3 outnumbered Battlefield 3's 3-to-1.

So while the review outlets are ideally giving the game an objective view, and finding it very good, but far from perfect, there is no shortage of players who are sick and tired of this series. Still, the user reviews currently only number a few thousand, compared to the millions of people who will be buying the game this week.

Unfortunately, the fans who have been disappointed by the game will have to wait another year to show it by not buying the next title in the series. We've wondered if there would ever be a CoD game that failed to beat the last game's sales, and if these feelings are a sign of more to come that may happen sooner rather than later.

Have you already played through Modern Warfare 3? Were you disappointed, or would you be willing to give it better than a 0/10? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

Modern Warfare 3 is available now for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Source: Metacritic