Review: Call of Duty Elite DLC Drop 6

Last week Xbox 360 Elite subscribers got their hands on June’s set of DLC for Modern Warfare 3.

There are three brand new Face Off maps titled Vortex, U-Turn and Intersection, along with another Spec Ops mission titled Arctic Recon.

I’m a big fan of Special Ops so getting new missions is always a good thing, and thankfully Arctic Recon is another mission that lives up to the quality of all its predecessors. You are in the Siberian Wilderness and your objective is to take down Kuvalda, a Russian Warship.

You’ll either be manning a recon drone and a targeting system to assist your partner who’ll be getting down and dirty on foot. If you choose to be where the action is your partner will mark four locations that require you to plant beacons at. As ever tackling this on Veteran will require a lot of skill and patience, plus some decent teamwork.

Once each of the locations have been marked you’ll need to get to the extraction point, but you don’t have long and it’s not a simple task. You’ll face an onslaught of enemies and if you are successful you’ll be greeted with the sight of a reaper destroying the warship thanks to your help. This was one of my favourite missions for a while and I’m hoping they continue to improve over the next few months.

The rest of the DLC consists of the three Face Off maps starting with U-Turn, it’s fair to say that this a pretty poor map that even I could have designed.

You are basically on highway with loads of abandoned vehicles, you are also able to flank your opponents on the banks either side of the road. If you are a fan of long-range action this isn’t the map for you, you will need to get in people’s faces with a sub-machine gun or a shotgun if you want any chance of doing well. I found this map was much more suited to 1v1 more than anything else.

Intersection whisks you off to New York City, spanned across two city blocks. You can fight on the first and second floors of destroyed shops and apartments. This map looks really good and plays quite well, fighting inside the buildings will require some quick thinking as there will be plenty of close quarters combat. This map is bigger than u-turn so is most suited for 2v2 or 3v3 matches.

The final map, Vortex is also pretty awesome, this time you are in what looks like a farm in mid-west America battling against enemy forces with a raging tornado in the background. If you can remember Overgrown from MW2 then this will feel familiar to you.

This map looks quite simple but is great fun to play on, there is plenty of foliage to help you surprise your opponents at close range and if you are feeling brave you can venture away from the ranch into a nearby field which tends to get some great firefights going.

This months set of DLC was fairly average and I would say it was saved by the excellent Special Ops mission. Hopefully we will see some more Ops to take on in the next set of DLC and maybe we’ll get surprise with a new mode for us to play with.

Review: Call of Duty Elite DLC Drop 6 Results