Before the power went of last week, I was walking around my apartment complex and people’s eyes were glued to their TV screens.

They weren’t watching the latest Teen Mom or those other ridiculous reality TV shows, they were all playing the new Call of Duty game. Rarely does a single thing pull a college community together to participate in single activity, or even on a global scale, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) is a game that can do that.

Selling 6.5 million copies in 24 hours, according to Activision (publishers of the game), it is one of the most successful sells of anything ever in a 24 hour period…I don’t even think Oprah could give out 6.5 million things for free. But what draws so many people to this game? Infinity Ward (developer of MW3) has come up with a multiplayer formula that is highly addictive and fun that it introduced back on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

It has since perfected the formula to create the best Call of Duty multiplayer to date. Infinity Ward enhances its addictive leveling system with the addition of being able to level your guns.

It may seem like just one more thing to level, but in reality it’s much more than that. Whenever you log on and play, no matter how long you play, you are always accomplishing something in terms of level and that reward and feeling is what will have players coming back for months on end.

MW3 does add in new game modes like “kill confirmed,” which give players something new to experience, but its new shiney toy is Call of Duty Elite. Elite is a service that lets you view status, how you do in matches and chances to compete in tournaments and win prizes from an annual cost of $49.99.

This service is ridiculously over priced for what it offers and to be quite honest is not necessary unless you are a hardcore Call of Duty fan. A year is a long commitment and with a price that is almost a new game it’s not worth the purchase. Call of Duty Elite is something that should be passed up because they offer it for free, with fewer services of course. If Michael Bay had a wet dream and it was put in video game form, it would be the MW3 story mode.

MW3 Offers the same kind of blockbuster moments that gamers are familiar with, but fails to capitalize on elements within its own story to make it stronger. It chooses to focus on single characters deaths more intensively than the potential millions of people who are dying because of the war raging throughout the game. Choosing that path weakens the story and leaves me with the begging question, who cares?

MW3 is the conclusion to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s story arch and isn’t a very pleasant one, to be quite honest you’ll probably be too busy to even care about the story mode. The story mode gives you no reason to care about it.

Overall, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a highly addictive game that can’t be passed up. Dispite its many flaws it does a lot of things right with its multiplayer. The question that this games leaves is what can they do next that will keep gamers coming back because this formula that has become a staple for the series can only work for so long. Verdict: 9/10