Huge Opening for Modern Warfare 3
In the first twenty-four hours after it went on sale, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 pulled in more than $400 million in revenue. That’s correct; a four followed by eight zeros. That makes the launch of the first person shooter possibly the biggest entertainment launch of any product in any medium. Even bigger than the opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.
I have to admit that it leaves me scratching my head more than a little. First person shooters are popular and all, and this isn’t the first time the Call of Duty series has set records. The previous installments, Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2, also set sales records. I guess it leaves me wondering why so many kids (I am assuming that it is mostly kids, but I know that they are not the only fans of the series) have so much disposable income this close to Christmas. Of course I am one of those Scrooge types who think that kids should wait until after Santa shows up to get their presents. But there aren’t too many kids that I like enough to spend sixty bucks on for Christmas, let alone four weeks before the fat guy hits the roof.
But as much as I am befuddled by the over-the-top popularity of MW3, I can’t quite give time to the dedicated Call of Duty haters. Believe me, they are out there. The Call of Duty series has been criticized for being full of plot holes. Well d’uh! Maybe because the original series seemed to have a patriotic tie-in with its WWII setting, critics expected the FPS to be some kind of history lesson. Sorry, if you are going to look for uplifting values in first person shooters, you might as well look for political commentary in old Mario Games.
The purpose of a first person shooter is to give the player a chance to kill, kill, and then kill some more! And MW3 provides a lot of mindless killing. Play is pretty straight forward. Run. Hide. Shoot bad guys. Shoot more bad guys. Repeat. The story itself might be weak, but the action is pretty good. This is a game that sees the Eiffel Tower destroyed, after all.
Serious fans of MW3 will spend most of their time in the multi-player modes, which is another feature that is kind of lost on this reviewer. My role in most multiplayer scenarios is usually bullet sponge.