MW3 has the worst review scores in Call of Duty history

At this point, no one could say they’re really surprised about just how utterly poorly received Modern Warfare 3 has been. As the dust continues to settle and more reviews get released (ours coming soon, though here’s the campaign for now), it’s becoming clear that this is one of the worst-scoring games of 2023.

Not only that, it’s also a new low for the Call of Duty series.

Yes, 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 is the Call of Duty game with the lowest ever score on Metacritic. As of this writing, the game has a Metacritic review rating of 50 (and a user rating of 1.4).

As unfortunate as it is for developer Sledehammer Games, the team’s previous game – Vanguard – was the record-holder before it, with a Metacritic rating of 73. Mid 70s really was the worst it got for Call of Duty, as that’s where most of the poorly received titles sat (Infinite Warfare, Black Ops Cold War, etc.) That said, last year’s Modern Warfare 2 is sitting at 75, so maybe people are falling out of love with Call of Duty.

The more you consider how banger of a year 2023 has been, the worse this looks. Modern Warfare 3’s Metacritic score is much closer to other 2023 misses such as Redfall, and Forspoken – though it did manage to beat The Lord of the Rings – Gollum and Skull Island: Rise of Kong, so maybe it’s not all bad.

It is worth noting, of course, that a big reason why Sledgehammer Games’ last two projects have scored so low is that they were developed at a much tighter schedule than normal Call of Duty games. According to a recent report, Modern Warfare 3 had the shortest dev time of any Call of Duty, so it makes a lot of sense that it lead to this critical disaster. The wrost thing about it is that Activision executives reportedly promised the team at Sledgehammer that the Vanguard situation will not repeat. I suppose, in a way, it didn’t. It just got wrose.