Best FPS to date
1) Environments: engaging, expansive, they feel real but also have an exciting sci-fi "Bond" secret agent thing going on too, just real enough to draw you in, but just fantastic enough to keep you interested
2) Gameplay: the controls are intuitive and responsive, the gun battles are intense, the stealth is great but not mind-numbing.
3) Weaponry (and Gadgets): The weapons are also a great combination of real and sci-fi, they are realistic sounding and looking, but the addition of "gadgety" secondary functions (like the Laptop gun's sentry mode) make the weapons more distinctive than all the other FPS games out there today (yes, even Halo). Pistols not only look and sound different, they fire different; you pick up different SMG's and you are actually picking up different guns, not just the same gun with different looks and sounds. The gadgets are also great, and planting bombs or picking locks is neat because you actually have a GUI in which you actively engage in these tasks, which makes them less mundane than, say, the "countdown timer" which Republic Commando utilizes.
4) Waypoints: No more compass!!! Now the waypoints are intelligent! When a waypoint is plotted for you no matter where you are a route is plotted for you and appears as slightly translucent arrows on the ground. The awesome thing is that the route is updated for you wherever you go, thatway if you get off course it automatically replots the course for you and you can keep going. This is such an advance, I can't even explain it; the amount of time spent on levels is minimized, and action maximized, because you no longer have to wander around saying to yourself, "now what am I supposed to be doing?" or trying to follow some 2-D map that really doesn't help much when you are in a 3D enviornment.
5) Overall presentation: I could go on further, but to summarize, the overall presentation, from the graphics to sound to character models to level design, are all ingenious. More than any other game that I have played on the 360, this is the most balanced and well designed of the lot.
-The only negative is the the models, at times, don't completely take advantage of the huge processing power of the 360. At times the rendering is not as flawless as it possibly could be, but this is so minor I only deducted a single point from my graphic score, it is so inconsequential I considered not even mentioning it.
If you own one game on the 360 so far, this is the one to get. The price has lowered due to its huge popularity, so it is easier to get ahold of too than, say, ghost recon, and its much more user friendly.