Modern Combat 3 review: War in your pocket.

Looking to satisfy your craving for first person shooters on your Android phone or tablet? Then look no further than the newly released Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation. In this third installment of their successful Modern Combat franchise, Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation continues the immensely popular military opera with new graphics, story and larger multiplayer.

Name: Modern Combat 3 | Developer: Gameloft | Genre: Action Games | Players: Single/Multiplayer | Version: 1.0.0 | Size: 2.7MB + additional data download | Price: $6.99

A New Modern Warfare Combat

Gameloft is no stranger to first person shooters. Space themed N.O.V.A. and its military shooter counterpart, Modern Combat has been incredibly popular on mobile phones. Despite the never ending criticism for making their games eerily similar to top console and pc titles, you can’t argue with the amount of production value and quality these games receive. Just like Gameloft games before it, Fallen Nation bleeds with quality.

Taking heavy inspirations from the Modern Warfare titles, Fallen Nations premise is as silly as the series that inspired it. Fallen Nation’s campaign drops you in a conflict between United States and the KPR, Korea, Pakistan and everyone’s favorite, the Russians. Story has never been the strongest drawing point in a fps title and this one falls in the same bracket. We wouldn’t blame you if you confuse the two when you see the excellent AC130 level complete with an option to change the heat signature and weapon modes. Some levels also mimics the Infinity Ward formula of never ending waves of enemy, spawning one after the other forcing you to painfully crawl across the level. Yet despite the lackluster story and minor annoyance, it’s over the top action, graphics and scripted events make it more than easy to swallow.

Speaking of graphics, Modern Combat 3 is easily one of the prettiest mobile games to date.  Rifles, Shotguns, handguns and every single type of weapon have been given rich details, a smart move on Gameloft’s part. It’s what you’ll be spending most of the time with and is at all times front and center. Fallen Nation also contains minor yet pleasing details such as your characters finger tightening his grip around the barrel of the rifle. The same can’t be said with most environments, while the Holly Wood Hills turned military post level looked excellent, small items such as crate and boxes look bland in comparison. The overall graphics however is pure eye candy. With huge drawing distance, you’ll be taken back when you first see the sun peak the treetops in levels like Alaska.

Most weapons have a little to no kick like the TZ4- Compackt, which is Gamelofts version of the M4A1 assault rifle. This might be an annoying to some hardcore gamers but when faced with the dreaded touch screen control it makes sense. Luckily Gameloft also gave us three options concerning the control scheme. While still not as responsive as a controller or tight as a mouse and keyboard, the three control options should turn over most skeptics. Even better, you can customize and resize the onscreen buttons to your liking adding a great way to fine tune the controls.  Auto aim for fps illiterate is also available but can easily be turned off for the faithful. Forget the useless gyroscope control unless you want to show off.

For those with Android tablets, Modern Combat 3 looks even better on a 10.1 inch screen. While gaming on a larger screen you may see a few jagged edges but nothing that make a major impact. It may be easier to control on a smaller screen but the fact your fingers covers half of the screen can be a real pain. Tablets provide a great view of the action but since the controls are spread throughout the screen you may find your fingers stretching just to hit that run button. I wished Gameloft added support for game pads.

Despite presenting a number of powerful weapons in the game, you never feel powerful as you should thanks to the lackluster sound. Weapons sound flat and generic, breaking the illusion of weight when running then suddenly stopping to pop a few rounds only to hear a soft whimper. Donning headphones does not remedy this issue. Again this is minor in compared to the whole level where at times can actually hear small firefights in the background. Hopefully this can be easily patched with an update.

There is also a Military Shop to use your blue credits to upgrade your weapons. Not enough blue credits? Pay real world money to purchase additional blue credits to unlock additional ammo for your weapons. This leads the game to feeling cheap as you already spent money to buy the game itself. While this (hopefully) will not translate well on consoles, it still has no place on mobile gaming.

Minor slowdowns are also present, while not a consistent occurrence can breaks the intense shootout present throughout the single player.

“Tag em’ and bag em”

One of Modern Warfare’s greatest features is multiplayer. Currently breaking records as most played on Xbox Live, MW3 and its predecessor Black Ops still rein supreme. Gameloft pulled no stops in attempts to emulate the experience. You’ll be running and gunning across 6 maps and 7 game play modes. This includes the basic capture the flag, free for all and ever popular team death match. Consider all bases covered when signing up for multiplayer action.

Just like that title, Modern Combat 3 allows you to customize your load out before matches. Feel running and gunning? Equip your soldier with a Shred 4 with athlete pro as a perk. Did I forget to mention that you can add perks to your character? Getting pinned down by opposing players? Call in an air strike as a kill streak bonus. The similarities between the two are sickening that I’m surprised Infinity Ward hasn’t breached and flashed Gamelofts door. Despite that, it’s an enjoyable experience and will satisfy Modern Warfare fans.

Hear that familiar countdown? Yes, that’s a nuke. Like MW2, once you hear the countdown ends, kiss your butt god bye, you just lost, or won depending on which side you were in.

Fallen Nation 3’s multiplayer while not as deep as Modern Warfare, still has enough features to sink your teeth into. Not surprisingly clans have begun to spring up and the number of players continues to rise. In-depth tutorials have been created which explains what combinations of perks and load outs makes a great class.

However, like most multiplayer games there are always the ever present and inevitable hackers, glitchers and your plain old cheaters. While I’ve yet to see this happen on the Android version, they are a common staple on the iOS version. Gameloft has combated the rampant hacking issue by resetting the levels of the offending players. If Gameloft have added security measures to prevent this from happening on our beloved OS remains to be seen.

Mission Accomplished.

While presenting a solid package it is not with its major faults. While this issue lies more on Gameloft than the game itself it’s never the less a problem. While reviewing the game, I found that my Tegra 2 Asus Transformer was incompatible while the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, another Tegra 2, was. While I understand that Android has a number of devices under their belt, to completely ignore a more than capable device can only lead to piracy. Heck, these two devices are almost the same! Another issue I find annoying is that the iOS version seems to run better. This one I can attribute to Android itself as (in my opinion) Gameloft possibly tried to make it run on a number of devices instead of optimizing it for one.

After making our Top 5 we’re glad to finally have Fallen Nation on our hand. Despite the minor issues Gameloft  Montreal crafted a great single and addictive multiplayer first person shooter experience. While in no means a replacement to the console and pc titles, it compliments them and feeds the hunger for those seeking a multiplayer experience on their mobile device.  Modern Combat 3 proves exactly how mobile gaming has grown and where it will go.

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