's bold new vision for unifying the Call of Duty experience is off to a bad start. With the early release of Modern Warfare 3's campaign, players are discovering that launching Call of Duty HQ, the, is required to access the new game. That might not be such a big deal if it wasn't so slow, inelegant, and seemingly pointless. Call of Duty is now a launcher within a launcher, and it sucks.
Switching between Modern Warfares 2 and 3 from the HQ is not like switching modes. Once you're on the main menu, you could jump immediately into Warzone or a multiplayer match of MW2. Clicking the Modern Warfare 3 button, however, closes the HQ app and launches an entirely different executable called Modern Warfare 3. There is no option tolaunch Modern Warfare 3, because"Modern Warfare 3" is not its own game. It's buried, literally, inside CoD HQ as a piece of add-on content.
Battle.net, a service that's as much a CoD launcher as a Blizzard launcher these days, doesn't have that problem. The CoD HQ is purely a hurdle for fans eager to jump into what's usually one of the slickest FPSes around.Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them.