Sledgehammer Games has delivered one of the worst Call of Duty campaigns ever with Modern Warfare 3, and fans are blaming the game’s boring story mode on the initial reception to one of the series’ best: Infinite Warfare.
Upon its announcement, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s campaign reveal became one of the most disliked videos in YouTube history. Since then, fans have reconciled with the game, claiming its bombastic and sizeable story is one of the best CoDs in history.
Nevertheless, the reception to Infinite Warfare’s lavish campaign did lead to Activision crippling the series’ single-player output. Infamously, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launched without a campaign, despite developer Treyarch starting work on one for the forgotten sequel.
Now with hindsight, CoD fans are blaming the negative reception of Infinite Warfare on the state of Modern Warfare 3’s campaign. On the other hand, some fans blame the success of Call of Duty: Warzone on the quality of the newest CoD campaign.
In a thread of gaming forum ResetEra, CoD fans blamed the reception of Infinite Warfare on the latest CoD campaign, explaining that the franchise’s story modes have failed to live up to the quality of Infinity Ward’s 2017 narrative.
“Looking back at it now, from the perspective of someone who was absolutely guilty of skipping Infinite Warfare when it was released because it looked too different to me to be Call of Duty but maybe it was Activision and Infinity Ward looking at all the complaints that Call of Duty was getting reaaaalllly stale and giving CoD players a chance to prove that they really did actually want something different,” one fan explained.
“It's possible,” explained another. “The backlash Infinite Warfare got was ridiculous.”
While many blame the fan reception for the staleness of Call of Duty over the past few years, others blame Activision’s decision to keep CoD an annual franchise. Furthermore, with Modern Warfare 3 quickly shoved into the pipeline instead of a different game, the single-player portion has suffered tremendously.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign early access is available right now. The game launches properly on November 10, 2023.