Modern Warfare vs Battlefield 3: Part 1

The wait is finally over as one of the most anticipated games of the year, Activision’s* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, hit the shelves and just as quickly left them. Gamers everywhere waited in long lines for the midnight release of the next CoD and no doubt rushed back home to blast through the campaign or frag their friends until the crack of dawn. Then some of them probably called out of work or skipped classes so they could play even more.

Flash back a few months and you may well remember an absolutely stunning trailer featuring some of the most incredible graphics this side of Crysis. When the trailer ended, and it was revealed to be EA’s Battlefield 3, no one could extinguish the flames spread by fans everywhere about which series would be on top. Once BF3 was released only a few short weeks ago, the bar for multiplayer excellence was set quite high and setting sales records for fasting selling EA game.

Now, we have both games out and there is one thing people want to know: which game is better?

Over the next week, I’ll be going through both games and recording how each game measures up. I’ll be going off of the following criteria:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

• Gameplay
• Graphics
• Audio
• Single Player Campaign
• Co-Op Campaign
• Multiplayer
• Lasting Appeal
• Advancements

Some of you may be wondering what I mean by “Lasting Appeal” and “Advancements,” so allow me to explain. Lasting Appeal is the likelihood someone will be playing the game several months or years from now. Generally this is a summation of how replayable the campaigns are and how fun the multiplayer is. “Advancements” refer more to comparisons with past games in their respective series. So MW3 will be compared with Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2, while BF3 will be compared to the Bad Company games and Battlefield 2.

Do note that while BF3 has an additional game to be compared with, one that was released near the beginning of this generation of games, we’ll be looking at it from a gameplay stand point only as it is the predecessor of BF3. The rest of the comparisons will more or less follow the same criteria listed earlier.

Battlefield 3

Also, I will not be going in to sales figures of the games as MW3 practically annihilated BF3 right out of the gate with 9 million preorders, compared to BF3’s 5 million in a week. It may be unfair to assume that MW3 will outsell BF3 based on preorders alone, but considering more people were playing Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops on Xbox LIVE than they were BF3, I feel it’s safe to assume despite XBL not being the only way to play the games online.

Be sure to check back to pnosker.com throughout the week for complete coverage of these two games, and leave your comments below.

*Note: Technically it’s Infinity Ward’s game and Activision simply published it. Figured I’d point that out to anyone who may have been confused by this.