Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, scheduled for release this November, looks and feels quite a bit like previous games in the shooter series.
Image courtesy Activision

LOS ANGELES — In a small, dark room hidden away in the Los Angeles Convention Center, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 executive producer Mark Rubin pilots a SEAL delivery vehicle through a web of sunken cars and floating corpses.

This is the beginning of “Hunter Killer,” a Modern Warfare 3 campaign level shown behind closed doors at the E3 Expo earlier this month. The presentation started out with some unique moments — in 2009’s Modern Warfare 2, such underwater segments weren’t player-controlled — but quickly reverted to familiar territory.

The 20-minute demo was full of high-octane gunplay and flashy explosions, but there was no hiding the fact that Modern Warfare 3 is the same old Call of Duty wrapped up with a shiny new bow.

Modern Warfare 3 development began at Infinity Ward, but after much of the company’s creative talent jumped ship to Respawn Entertainment, Activision brought on internal development group Sledgehammer Games as backup. With such an upheaval in the development process, it seems the two teams have decided to play it safe rather than roll the dice on any risky new concepts.

Nearly every moment in the demo was ripped straight out of an earlier Call of Duty title: Progress through highly linear environments, watch a scripted event, kill a few bad guys. Later in the level, after blowing up the submarine’s command center door with a few pounds of C4, players engage in a slow-motion firefight with the guards. You may remember these action sequences from Modern Warfare 2. They play precisely the same here.

Don’t get me wrong: Modern Warfare 3 seems to be a phenomenal game. The gunplay is fast and furious, the pacing unrelenting and the visuals top-notch. This game also brings a more ambitious scale to its urban environments. As Rubin hops in a getaway boat, enemy forces pummel New York City in the background. Jets scream overhead as missiles batter the buildings, motorboats speed toward the city skyline and helicopters pester defending forces with machine gun fire. It’s quite a sight to behold.

It’s just all so derivative. If this is your first entry in the series, you’ll think it’s a strong contender for game of the year. But if you’ve played the last few Call of Duty games, you’ll be considerably less impressed. The presentation was filled with moments of déjà vu: The sub infiltration looked exactly like the opening moments of Call of Duty 4, when Soap McTavish raids and escapes a sinking cargo ship.

“[Modern Warfare 3] is our chance to bring back characters you’ve known and loved in the past to new levels with epic urban warfare, 60 frames a second, and smooth, cinematic action,” says Sledgehammer Games co-founder Michael Condrey.

In other words, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer didn’t want to stray too far from the game that outgrossed Avatar. The environments are fresh, as are a few of the weapons, but ultimately the gameplay experience seems to be a carbon copy.