Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

A decent campaign with fantastic gunplay, less hand-holding than usual, and genuinely aggressive, well-behaved enemy AI. It runs well and has some excellent combat-heavy missions, but it is undermined by too many sneaky small-scale encounters, heavy padding, an abundance of cutscenes, and a few terrible set-pieces, including one of the worst final missions in the series. A reasonable improvement over Vanguard, but only an all-right campaign overall.

A surprisingly excellent entry with superb gunplay, insane value and a strong feature set, including over 50 guns, a deep gunsmith, 12-plus modes, a fun Ground War and a decent campaign with varied mission types. It is held back by frequent launch-day crashes, a terrible, confusing interface, and a frustrating progression system that locks attachments behind unrelated guns. Despite those issues, it stands out as a standout, content-packed shooter poised to improve over time.

The campaign is an entertaining, slow-burn playable action movie that leans into tactical, stealthy encounters and offers great mission variety across global locations. It looks stunning with strong lighting and a fast frame rate, and standout characters like Alejandro land well. However the stakes feel low for much of it, some set pieces fall flat, and it is notably buggy with hard crashes, while the $70 price is hard to justify for just the campaign.