Look at the difference in critic scores and user scores. Nearly 4000 users ratings and it gets a 3.1.

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I'd say that's about right. MW3 is unbelievably awful.

I just played it for three hours and had to stop because all it is is little kids running around a circular map trying to win coin-flip gun fights. There is no thinking involved. It's perfect for anyone under-18 this holiday season. Little kids will eat it up, but I'm not a little kid who's amused by anything that will easily boot up in my Xbox.

In my opinion here are the serious flaws with the game:

- All the maps are flat. They have an occasional up ramp and an occasional down ramp, but the majority of the maps are just giant circular roller rinks with differing color schemes. There are no distinctive buildings, no high vantage points, no long lanes or sight lines. The maps just encourage everyone to run around the circle and win close quarters coin flip gunfights. It takes no intelligence to play.

- The weapon proficiency system is step backwards. Basically they took the guns from MW2 and added more kick and then float to all the gun sights, then you earn proficiencies to remove these negatives traits. Only problem is you can only have one proficiency, so if you want a gun at MW2 levels it's impossible. You get one or the other.

- You go from running around to insta-dead in .05 seconds. Stopping Power is no longer an available perk, but that's not a problem because all the guns already effectively have Stopping Power. The Type 95 kills in one three round burst 90% of the time. The pros love it. Unfortunately, the down side to all this damage is that connection decides a lot of battles. Which leads me to....

- The hit boxes are the some of the worst in any COD game. They are absurdly generous. I died once, while I was standing in the middle of a doorway almost instantly. In checking the kill cam, the opposing player started shooting into the wall to my left, with pieces chipping off it, swept through me, was on target for about two bullets, and continued all the way to the wall on the right, with pieces chipping off it. All hits. It was ridiculous. No need to reward aiming when you can reward players for spamming automatic gunfire that's in the general direction of an enemy. Again little kids will love it, they'll feel like they're pros.

- Infinity Ward doesn't even exist anymore. As most of you know, Activision fired the majority of the Infinity Ward developers after buying out the company just so they'd have the MW brand, and now all they're doing is milking that cow. Sledgehammer Gaming actually made the multi-player so don't expect Infinity Ward quality. On a side note, the real Infinity Ward developers restarted their own company as Respawn Entertainment.

Overall, the game just isn't any fun. It's basically just slapped together from the pieces of old MW games, and not very well slapped together at that, but Activision could care less, they got what they wanted, your money.