Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Defiance

While the main version of Modern Warfare 3 released on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 as a straightforward FPS set in Europe and the Middle East, the portable Nintendo DS version got its own subtitle - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Defiance - and tells a standalone side story set in New York at the same time Russian forces are storming the city, but with its own hero and its own plot that practically never crosses paths with the console campaign. The main hero cooperates with a small combat robot named Sam, who can also be controlled independently and used for reconnaissance, hacking locks, or eliminating enemies from hiding - a mechanic the main console version doesn't offer at all.

The version was developed by studio n-Space, which had already made DS spin-offs for World at War and Black Ops, and had to deal with the fact that the DS has neither a second analog stick nor the power for a full-fledged 3D first-person shooter. The game therefore runs from a third-person perspective, aiming is handled with a combination of buttons and the touchscreen - the stylus can be used on the bottom screen to directly control the robot Sam or browse a simple inventory menu - and individual levels are noticeably shorter and more linear than missions on the big consoles. Multiplayer only supported local play via DS Download Play or connections over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for a limited number of players, without the extensive reward system and Strike Packages known from the console version; after that service shut down in 2014, the online portion of the game remained permanently unavailable.

Defiance is therefore not a scaled-down port of the console game but a standalone, simpler title bearing the same brand - a typical solution Activision regularly chose for handhelds in the Call of Duty series at the time, similar to previous entries World at War and Black Ops on the same console. The graphical power of the Nintendo DS wouldn't have allowed a comparison with the big versions anyway - this is a title built primarily for short gaming sessions on the go, not a substitute for the home console experience.

Why play: Because of the Nintendo DS's limited graphical capabilities, this is more of a standalone action story carrying the Modern Warfare 3 brand for short play sessions on the go than a replacement for the big console versions.