Modern Warfare 3 Bug is Making Bridges 'Eat' Players' Cars

Highlights

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players have discovered a bug where vehicles get swallowed by bridges, affecting vehicle handling in the game.
This bug hampers missions that require driving in a time limit, especially in Zombies mode where vehicles are important.
The bug can be fixed by installing the game on an SSD or getting a current-gen console, but developer Sledgehammer Games hasn’t addressed it yet.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players have discovered yet another bug in the game. While this issue looks amusing to watch and may appear less annoying than other Modern Warfare 3 bugs, it does also seem to affect vehicle handling in the game, which is essential in a few modes.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is only about to turn a month old, having been released early last November, but players still keep finding a number of bugs and issues while playing. However, that hasn’t stopped the latest entry in one of the world’s most popular video game franchises from going on and becoming a bestseller.

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This particular Modern Warfare 3 bug, caught on video by Redditor HexStrider, sees the vehicle they were driving apparently get swallowed by the bridge they were traveling on. Although it just looks like an ordinary clipping issue, the vehicle’s handling seems to be affected by it as it keeps swerving back and forth along the bridge. This continues until the vehicle eventually skids off the bridge, going straight through the railings and into the void below. After the fall, it respawns back on the bridge in time to get hit by a missile and sustain critical damage.

This poses a problem in missions that require driving and reaching a destination within a time limit, specifically the Deliver Cargo contracts in Modern Warfare 3‘s Zombies mode, from which HexStrider’s footage seems to be taken. Some players have claimed that this bug has not only slowed their mission performance, but also downright stopped them from successfully accomplishing it. This is especially a big deal as Modern Warfare 3 makes vehicles an important gameplay element in Zombies mode.

Thankfully, this is a bug that can be fixed by the player, although it will cost some more money. While it’s easy to call it one more thing that’s broken in Modern Warfare 3, other players had an explanation for the bug, and it’s unfortunately a hardware obsolescence issue. Comments on the Reddit post attest that this happens all the time on older consoles running on hard drives (as opposed to current-gen machines running on SSDs), as bridges and other terrain elements don’t fully load as fast on older HDDs. The fix is to install the game on an SSD (if the player is on PC) or get a current-gen console, which is the more expensive option.

There’s no word yet on whether developer Sledgehammer Games has acknowledged this problem or is working on a fix. The team is still busy squashing other bugs that have been spotted and adding requested features to Modern Warfare 3, with the last update having just arrived a few days ago.