It seemed like I was the last to play Modern Warfare 3. At the very least I was the last of my friends to try it out and I was raging with jealousy. I was not disappointed, but this post will be decidedly negative.

Modern Warfare 2 is my game, and I think Modern Warfare 3 is the evolution of the Call of Duty franchise. Not the evolution of Modern Warfare 2. The evolution of the franchise's lineage.
I think Call of Duty took a step backwards with Black Ops. I'm in the minority, but the polish that Black Ops lacked did not make up for the so-called corrections that Treyarch made to Infinity Ward's apparent balance issues.

Modern Warfare 2, for me, was like Subaru's 2006 STi. I had a wealthy client that ordered the first one off the boat and ended up selling it because it was too difficult to drive in the stop-start city traffic. It was a monster of a car, but you had to be prepared to put up with it. Black Ops was like downgrading to a Holden Cruze.

If I think back to my time on MW3 last night, the game looked like Black Ops. The menus were a bit clumsy. Things aren't quite as sharp. A friend of mine compared MW2's glass-like UI to MW3's plastic interface.

While the multiplayer never drops below 60 frames per second, the game has texture loading issues, some severe anti-aliasing problems and some of the geometry is just woeful. There is a jeep in one of the maps that looks like they applied a rubber texture to a boulder.

Modern Warfare 3's presentation is better than Black Ops', but it's not too far behind. What makes me excited to get home and play MW3 again is the feel of the guns, the flow of the maps, the incomprehensible ability to drop enemies quickly without being dropped yourself. It feels like I'm using more skill to play. It's slower paced, but my character still moves as fast. It just feels like home.

I've played Modern Warfare 3 for 2 hours. I've played Modern Warfare 2 for 624 hours.