Do You Need MW2 to Play MW3 Campaign? Answered

The Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 campaign has received a lot of negativity recently, but it’s still a must-play if you’re curious about how the story is currently developing. But do you need to own the previous game to play the new title’s story mode?

Do You Need to Own MW2 to Play MW3 Campaign?

Although it was initially rumored as DLC for the second Modern Warfare game, this is no longer the case for the MW3 campaign as it can be played individually. Modern Warfare 3 is a game on its own and includes both the Campaign and Multiplayer modes available to play as soon as you obtain it.

So even if you’re not an older fan who already owns the two previous Modern Warfares, you can safely enjoy the new title’s campaign and get your own conclusions about the decisions they took here. You might still think it sucks at the end, but at least you did it after experiencing it by yourself and not because you’re blindingly following the review-bombing horde.

Should You Play MW2 Campaign Before MW3?

Yes, you should. This goes without saying, but the new campaign is a direct sequel to the previous one, so you’ll probably be missing out on many of the important resolutions and impact of some occurrences if you haven’t given yourself some time to meet these characters and know why they’re fighting that war.

If you’re a new player starting on MW3 and can’t afford to buy the previous titles, YouTube’s your best friend to go through the previous campaigns, or at least its most important moments. Brief summaries of the whole story might be easily found on other websites as well, so it’s not that hard to find the important stuff.

But if you don’t care about the story and just want to get on some solo shooter action as soon as you can, just go ahead and have fun with the brief campaign. It’s quite brief lasting for about 6 hours, and you’ll be ready to jump on actual CoD MW3 multiplayer once you’re done with it.