The narrative around Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is competing at this point for attention with the game's content itself. This is the title that Infinity Ward was working on when the famous split between Activision and studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West went down. The game was subsequently developed by not one but three different studios from then on (and according to the game's credits, Neversoft and Treyarch helped out as well, which makes this practically an all-hands-on-deck effort for Activision).

And then there's Call of Duty Elite, and all of the questions about which of its online features would be placed behind the paywall. There are the comparisons to Battlefield 3, EA's similarly lauded shooter-blockbuster. This will undoubtedly be the biggest game release of 2011, following up two of the best-selling games of all-time, produced by some of the biggest traditional console developers around. All of that attention is distracting -- there's a lot going on with this game that has nothing to do with the game itself.

When you take away all of the sturm und drang of the franchise and its developers, what you've got left is just a video game. Just an experience, with a six-hour (or so) campaign, a deep and compelling multiplayer match system, and a set of co-op missions paired with a survival mode. The bombast which surrounds Modern Warfare 3 distracts from what's important about the game: It is, put simply, one of the best shooters around.