I have particular tastes when it comes to my Call Of Duty, and what makes Modern Warfare III so great is that it has a little bit of something that I enjoy no matter the size of my squad.
If I hop on with just one friend, we can hop into some Duos Resurgence matches or play a few Gunfight matches. Or we can hop in with some randoms on Multiplayer and grind camos or challenges.
If I have a group of three, we can play Trios Resurgence or—even better—some Cutthroat, a new mode introduced in this Call Of Duty that I find myself enjoying more than Gunfight and even more than Search & Destroy, my favorite MP mode. Cutthroat is the perfect FPS mode, and I am begging Activision and Treyarch to bring it back in this year’s Black Ops 6.
In Cutthroat, three teams of three face off on normal MP maps. When a teammate is downed, you have a set amount of time in which you can revive them. If you die, you won’t respawn until the next mode. The goal is to kill the other teams or capture the objective flag at the end of the match, similar to Gunfight.
The difference is that you pick your own loadouts in Cutthroat, rather than the forced Loadouts in Gunfight, though I think with some extra TLC, Call Of Duty could easily add a forced loadout variant, or even a Tournament or Ranked version of Cutthroat.
What makes this mode work so well is the asymmetrical tactical combat. With three teams, you have so many different ways to approach every engagement. Do you push hard and try to wipe a team so that you can face the next one—or let the other two teams duke it out, winnowing their numbers before mopping them up at the end? Often you have to think fast, as it’s really easy to get pincered between two teams. Each map presents a new challenge based on your spawn location.
It’s absolutely the most fun I’ve had with Call Of Duty in ages. I used to champion Gunfight mode, which is excellent, but Cutthroat is even better. It would also be relatively easy to add to Black Ops 6, since it can use all the standard maps unlike Gunfight which requires smaller maps to really work (though Cutthroat can work on some of these smaller maps also, it is better on medium or larger maps given there are 9 players instead of 4).
In any case, this is my plea to the powers that be over at Call Of Duty HQ—Activision, Treyarch and now Microsoft: Cutthroat is an awesome game mode. I’d buy a game that was just variations of Cutthroat. I enjoy other modes. I enjoyed the sweet Ranked Resurgence win my trio got last night. But I enjoy Cutthroat more and I hope they find a way to bring it to Black Ops 6 and not let it die after just one outing.
If you haven’t tried Cutthroat yet and you play MWIII, please do.