Modern Warfare 2 now truly feels like it was just a beta for Modern Warfare 3

“Call of Duty is the same game every year,” the franchise’s detractors say annually. But this time, they may be right.

If Modern Warfare 3 looks and plays familiar to you as a Modern Warfare 2 player, you are most likely not alone. CoD games tend to have their own identity year-to-year as they are released by different studios, but this one feels a bit more similar than usual.

After extended hands-on time with the beta, MW3 genuinely feels like it could have been a massive update for MW2. Thankfully, MW3 feels incredible to play, so this is a net positive. But those looking for an all-new experience compared to last year may come away wanting more.

MW3 kind of just feels like Sledgehammer Games took MW2 and turned up the movement speed, allowed players to slide cancel, removed some muzzle smoke and added visibility while shooting, and made the time-to-kill higher.

And MW3’s beta, and eventually the full game, will all be technically considered as “add-on content” for the base file that included MW2. That won’t do any favors with the CoD-hating crowd out there, especially considering the game’s menus and UI are practically identical.

Again, this is a good thing in general for the future, but it certainly makes MW2 look even worse in hindsight. MW3 feels like what MW2 could have and should have been, if not for some truly head-scratching design decisions by Infinity Ward.

MW3 feels really good. It’s obviously not perfect, but there’s plenty of time between now and launch for Sledgehammer to iterate on beta feedback. But the game also truly feels like it’s more of an extension of MW2 than its own game, especially considering that it reportedly began as DLC for MW2, according to reports.

“It’s called a full premium release because they’re probably going to market and sell it as a $70 game with new single- and multiplayer content,” Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier said in November 2022. “But it’s more MW2.” He ended up being correct in his reporting.

According to reports, the original plan was to have MW2 be a two-year game, but plans changed along the way to change MW3 as we know it from a large-scale expansion into its own, independent title in the series.

MW2 was a mess at launch, there’s no other way to put it. It was full of bugs like being unable to invite friends, a myriad of crashing issues, bugs that ruined pro CDL scrimmages, and a user interface that basically everyone agreed was awful.

Mercifully, the game got better over time, but it seems like all of 2023 was spent fixing MW2’s bumpy launch and Sledgehammer rolling back a number of changes that Infinity Ward made for MW2 that had players up in arms all year.

Faster movement speed, higher health, less muzzle flash, and making slide-canceling an official mechanic are all direct responses to player complaints from MW2. Sprinkle in some nostalgia with classic maps from MW2 2009 and, for better or worse, you’ve got MW3.

The vibes around MW3’s beta are generally high right now, according to social media sentiment. We’ll have to wait a bit, though, to see where the game ends up on the list of best and worst CoD titles, especially after numerous seasonal content drops, new maps, weapons, and balance changes are added over the course of 2024.

But for now, it seems like its predecessor may end up near the bottom of “top CoD” lists for many, even more so now that players have tried MW3 for themselves.