In terms of level design, Modern Warfare 3 is significantly more linear than 1 and 2.
One thing I don’t like is some of the dialogue has cheesy, over-the-top soldier tones, but that is fairly minor and more of my nitpicking.
I always like how they constructed the plot and make it whole and realistic by switching different narrators, and I appreciate the story is much easier to follow compared to Modern Warfare 1 and 2, since those two games put you in some levels that have little to do with the main plot for the sake of level diversity – though it makes MW3 (4.9 hrs) much shorter than MW1 (6.6 hrs) and MW2 (7.5 hrs). I won’t say it is great because it is still just a shallow blockbuster story, but it has a good number of twists, a great presentation, some powerful moments and memorable characters that carry emotional weight - depending on how much you are emotionally invested. That said, the story of MW3 (also the entire trilogy) is pretty solid. It is probably because he was actually experiencing the story, whereas I just “went through” it to satisfy my curiosity. But it turns out the story doesn’t have the same emotional impact on me as on him.
The reason I played the whole Modern Warfare trilogy is one of my best friends told me he cried over a scene (Soap’s death) in Modern Warfare 3 back in 2011.
