Don't expect anything fresh -- but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.
MW3 is no exception. While not groundbreaking in any ways, there are some nice additions that make it a worthy upgrade.
The unfortunate part, is that depending on who you talk to -- usually only players who are on board for the multiplayer aspect are going to be seeing the benefits.
Spec Ops makes a return, and now it's online capable. This is great. Frankly, I'm amazed they didn't offer this from the start. In a way, I'm finding it hard to praise them for finally offering something like that. Regardless...it's still a good addition. We won't split hairs about company strategy.
You can play either solo, local coop, or online coop for Spec Ops. You can also accumulate points. It's run, and mirrors the multiplayer a bit more than in MW2. So far the missions have been fairly straight-forward. There's an obstacle/kill house course, and then the splattering of various elements of the game.
The campaign is redundant, let's just be honest. There are tons of scripted moments and slow-motion scenes (ie, breaching) where you take over and shoot guys. It would have been nice if they would have tried to add in a different dynamic. Gone is the more traditional military feel of MW1 and MW2, as the gameplay feels a lot more linear now, (that's possible?) and the maps don't feel as large. At least in moments of MW1/2, things like the Russian sniping mission, etc left you some freedom with strategy and you felt like you really accomplished something after escaping on the chopper.
There really aren't any moments like that in MW3. It feels like the developers took all of the "epic" (scripted) moments in the previous games and dumped them into the new storyline. This is okay, but it doesn't really offer any variety.
Otherwise, the campaign is fine. It offers over-the-top action that reminds you of a Die Hard movie and borrows some typical war movie memes like out of ammo last stands and one-liners that you're sure were in Black Hawk Down.
Multiplayer is great, as usual. I won't go into gameplay differences, but if you liked the previous COD multiplayer offerings, this will be right up there. There's probably a little complaining to do on the maps, but that's more of a personal thing. Maybe we'll see some map packs with the older maps that people loved.
I gave this an 8/10 because honestly, it's just not as great as the hype led it to seem. It's still a good game, but much like BF3...the amount of anticipation just leads to a let down. It will be interesting to see how long this trend continues.