WHAT I SAW:
A slice of the follow-up to the reigning champion of First-Person Shooters, maybe the most anticipated Call of Duty game of all time from developers Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games, with the publisher, of course, Activision.

WHAT I EXPECTED:

Since I kind of found myself taking the reins of Modern Warfare 3's Special Ops (or Spec Ops) by surprise, I hadn't really had a lot of time to gather that many expectations. Suffice to say though, considering the intense drama that unfolded between Infinity Ward and Activision after Modern Warfare 2, I've definitely been curious about the follow-up.

WHAT THEY SHOWED:

We played some co-op Spec Ops with an associate from Activision, in a new mode called Survival- basically how it sounds, where you try and mow down as many waves of attackers as you can handle. We started off in a desert-area map with a pistol, but were quickly able to acquire a shotgun. The more enemies we killed, the more money we earned for upgrades (okay, our Activision buddy kept spotting us some cash for upgrades throughout the demo, but hey, they've got one of the best selling game franchises of all time, they're good for it...), the better our weapons got when we visited the mode's supply boxes, which were also crucial for buying more ammo to, well, survive. 

Any of my doubts about Modern Warfare 3 being able to deliver were pretty much squashed within 10 minutes of gameplay. The handling was great, the guns felt good, and the action's intensity has really been dialed up, even in little ways. For instance, maybe you remember dogs from Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops. In those games, they're little more than barking and biting pests. At one point in our Modern Warfare 3 demo, the dogs arrived strapped with explosives. Even when you killed one, you'd have to haul ass from the area as fast as possible because the lifeless K-9 would detonate anyway. This happened, naturally, at the same time you were dodging constant enemy fire raining down on you from every direction.

WHAT I THOUGHT:

I'm not sure if it was just the atmosphere of the room, my co-op partner's coaching, or just my low expectations, but this was some of the most fun I've had with a Call of Duty game in a long time. The tweaks to the enemies, including smarter AI, doing stuff like setting up auto-turrets to assist in our massacre, combined with all the core elements of the Call of Duty series made for an excellent play. Well, it was good times until a Juggernaut, looking like he stepped out of The Hurt Locker, showed up to end our session. To be continued.