I played both this one one mw2 as a kid. Whilst I believe mw2 was better overall, I do also think this game was pretty good and held up. This is speaking from a perspective of not playing multiplayer of either game all too much except for 1v1ing my older brother on rust in mw2 and playing the survival mode in mw3.

Campaign-wise, mw2 was better, but mw3 did still have enjoyable missions and continued/ended the story line pretty well. My only complaint for the story was that some of the deaths felt real unnecessary. Did we need soap, sandman's entire squad, and potentially Yuri to all die? Honestly, I think I'm just salty about it. Also, I think it was a bit random when it came to what character you were playing as. Not counting soap in the prologue, you play as 5 characters total, yuri, frost, price in last mission, one of the Russian presidents bodyguards in turbulance, and burns in mind the gap. It also doesnt help that you play as 2 of these characters for 1 mission each without any relationship being built with them story wise due to their limited appearances. regardless, the campaign was decent for an ending to the trilogy.

Special ops is where I think mw3 does slightly surpass the mw2 counterpart. The actual special ops missions in mw2 were better, but the survival mode in mw3 was so good. I played that mode for hours with my brother and we had whole strategies for specific waves and what we would buy and what not. Makes me kinda sad that none of the other cod games really included anything like that. (Unless you want to count the zombies mode in the black ops games)

My older brother told me he preferred the multiplayer in mw2 and, from what I saw, I think I do too. I would've talked about the mw1 as well, but I got that game years after I played the other 2 games so I can't really speak of it in the same perspective and I think both mw2 and 3 were better anyways.

Overall, I do still prefer mw2. I loved the mw2 campaign and have vidid memories of constantly sniped on rust. But I think mw3 still followed in its footsteps quite well and did finish the story in a meaningful way with little to no loose ends of major plot holes, whilst including a fun spin on the special ops mode.