If you’ve played a previous game in the Call of Duty series you know what to expect from Modern Warfare 3 — or so you think. Reductionist haters will choose to see it as more of the same. Those that choose to dig under the surface will find a game filled with subtle changes — changes that may make the game the best multiplayer shooter on the market.
The first, and perhaps most drastic change affects Call of Duty’s kill streak system. The designers at Infinity Ward found that kill streaks worked well in deathmatch, but that the best players wouldn’t get access to them in objective-based modes. Good players are too busy completing goals for the team to bother focusing on racking up kills. So the designers transformed kill streaks into “point streaks”; now capturing points, flags, and completing objectives will count towards your kill streak count.