The most addicting shooter to date.
MW2 is, as you most likely have guessed, is a first-person shooter set in the modern world. Once again, Russian ultranationalists are up to no good and they have evil intentions for the U.S. You play as a variety of different characters, but the main character is Roach. Your commander is "Soap" Mactavish, the one you played as in COD4. Together, you must fight the Russians who have made war on American soil. Its a very intense campaign as you will fight waves of infantry and helicopters. Weapons that never made an appearance in COD4 make their debut here, including the TAR-21 and UMP-5. Also, the Predator drone makes its appearance. You can use the predator to fire a missile at infantry or vehicles for devastating effect. There are many locations to go to throughout the campaign, including Russia, Brazil and the U.S. To see war brought over to the U.S. and to fight for Americas survival is pretty epic. You can even ride snow mobiles early in the game and its pretty fun. However, in my opinion, MW2s campaign isnt as good as the first one. COD4 had many unique moments like the AC-130 gunner and the sniper moment in Pripyat. Here, its mostly shoot, shoot, shoot and uses of the predator drone here and there. Its still very fun and intense though.
The multiplayer is the most fun of the game though. Modes such as Free-for-all, team deathmatch and capture the flag are available. Its fun to battle real people online with a custom weapons set-up. Just like the first game, you can choose your weapon loadout and perks. But for the first time, killstreaks are customizable. In the first game, you only got the UAV, airstrike and attack helicopter. In MW2, you have more than these things, including the Sentry gun which you set at whatever location you want and automatically fires at enemy units. You also have Chopper Gunner which puts you in the cockpit of a chopper machine gun. A new feature called Death Steaks is also available. If your having a bad day and your constantly getting killed, a Deathstreak may come in handy. For example, one can give you extra health for a short time. New perks are available but at the expense of leaving some old ones out.
Another mode thats available is Special Ops. Honestly, I find this to be the less thrilling of the three modes but its still interesting to play. Some missions will make you take on waves of enemies similar to an arcade game, others are stealth missions which require you to sneak past enemies and some are racing missions as well. Some of these missions require a second player to complete though. This mode is OK but I would have preferred that they have left this out in exchange for a longer single-player campaign.
The good: Addicting multiplayer, good graphics and sound.
The bad: Short 5 hour long campaign with a story that can be tough to follow with its sudden plot twists. Airport massacre mission may offend some but it can be skipped. Excessive cussing by children players on the multiplayer mode who should not be playing this M rated game. Fortunatly, a mute option is available. Non-Russian weapons being used by the Russian army bring the realism down, but the game is meant to be more fun than realistic.
Overall, it should satisfy Call of Duty fans and fans of the genre.