Speeding your way through every MW3 weapon camo or prestige rank can get repetitive, and that’s where fun and weird playlists keep the latest Call of Duty interesting. MW3 Vortex mode is one such mode and is injecting some chaos into proceedings, as it merges the world of COD Zombies with traditional MW3 multiplayer. What you won’t expect is how this fresh playlist actually feels a lot like an excellent mode that Treyarch perfected back in 2008 – not in a Call of Duty game, but in a James Bond game.
If you’re a fan of MW3 Zombies but fancy a break from entering those pesky Aether Rifts, then MW3 Vortex mode is ideal for you. That’s because you’ll be fighting other players for possession of the slickest MW3 gun out there, and the most iconic weapon in Call of Duty history: the Ray Gun. You’ll need to sweat it out as other players try to acquire it from your corpse, as you run and gun your way around new zombified spins on multiple MW3 maps.
Those locales include the likes of Sporeyard (Scrapyard), Tetanus (Rust), and Satan’s Quarry (Quarry). Each map is adorned with a hellish aesthetic, with Satan’s Quarry reminding us of TranZit from Black Ops 2. Funnily enough, the comparisons to the works of Treyarch don’t end there. Way before we relished the joys of the PS5, you may have picked up the Activision-published and Treyarch-developed Quantum of Solace tie-in game as one of your first PS3 games.
Some of us at The Loadout certainly did, and spent hours blasting away rivals in the superb Golden Gun mode. James Bond fans could battle it out in what is essentially the same premise as Vortex mode, except you’ll be using a golden revolver with explosive rounds instead of the Ray Gun. Whether it was maps like Embassy or Concourse, giddily shouting at the top of our lungs to defend the Golden Gun was so much fun. Now, it is hardly one of the best FPS games ever made, but it is an excellent spin-off of the otherwise divisive Bond movie.
Eagle-eyed Bond fans will know that the Golden Gun itself, or variants of it, are featured in many Bond games of the past. Agent Under Fire and 007 Nightfire both bring back powerful Golden weaponry, including Bond’s signature Walther PPK, to the battlefield. However, Pierce Brosnan’s last videogame outing in Everything or Nothing doesn’t feature multiplayer modes that Bond fans had come to love. Instead, it features a separate co-op campaign.
Sadly, you won’t be able to revisit Golden Gun mode if you happen to have a copy of Quantum of Solace still, as the PlayStation and Xbox servers are understandably inactive. Oh, and you can’t purchase any prior James Bond titles before the upcoming Project 007 digitally due to licensing obstacles within Activision.
While Treyarch is behind the latest iteration of Zombies in Modern Warfare 3, it is unclear whether the studio was directly involved in the creation of MW3 Vortex mode. It seems likely given it’s not only Zombies-adjacent, but because of the similarities to its old-school Golden Gun mode. But even if it wasn’t, we’ll pretend it was in our hearts.
You can see what Vortex mode is all about courtesy of ‘M3RKMUS1C’ above. Before you do head into it, though, don’t forget, there are free MW3 goodies to get your hands on. The latest MW3 Prime Gaming drop is available now for PS5 and Xbox players, giving you access to a pretty gnarly operator skin.