‘It looks so bad:’ MW3 players complain about color saturation, visibility

The Modern Warfare III remake beta has gotten off to a rocky start in terms of opponent visibility. Every surface appears to be much blander than in previous Call of Duty titles, and it’s making player models blend in.

I guess no one told Sledgehammer that Active Camouflage is a Halo feature. Players of all skill levels and on all platforms are complaining not only that they can’t see anything, but the dulled-out maps are boring them. “Can’t see anything on these maps. Doesn’t help that allies and enemies look alike so much. Teammates keep shooting each other,” one Redditor said. Apparently, in previous builds of the game, enemies and teammates were more clearly defined, which led to much less visual confusion for all.

Over the past several years, the Call of Duty franchise has steered away from the advanced movement jetpack era back into classic boots-on-the-ground action. One of the key elements of the jetpack era was increased visibility across the board, with bright, vibrant maps. With the boots-on-the-ground Modern Warfare reboots, “realism” has become a key element of the game’s design again, even if it’s rapidly becoming unpopular. More casual players who praised Modern Warfare 2019 are finally seeing the light, and the utterly lifeless, cluttered, and bleak landscapes of the reboots are finally getting the panning they deserve.

Ultimately, Call of Duty isn’t a realistic shooter: It plays fast-paced, whether there are jetpacks or not. One of the worst things you can do for players is give them skill-based mechanics and then rip those out of their hands to satisfy a group of people who don’t dedicatedly play the game in the first place. If you want realism, just play Squad, Hell Let Loose, or Insurgency: Sandstorm.