The reason it works well at all is that this is a side story to the campaign seen in Modern Warfare 3 proper, giving the developer a tone and setting to work with while at the same time excusing it from the high intensity action of the console versions.
Not so, as Defiance manages to capture the spirit of its inspiration and provides a solid FPS that captures the spirit of its big brother, albeit with some tweaks to the formula that may turn off veterans of the series. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a bombastic, technically accomplished first-person shooter for home consoles, so you may imagine that a translation of that experience to a seven-year-old piece of hardware with basic 3D processing and no analogue sticks, would be a rough one.
