Intense action at times. Excellent sound. Quality cutscenes. Solid weapons. Some real Black Hawk Down moments.
There's quite a movie-like feel surrounding the game, in that there's plenty of impressive cutscenes and high quality sound in all areas, but the gameplay itself isn't is overblown or unrealistic.
The action is fairly solid and can be pretty intense. The parallels to Black Hawk Down at different points throughout the game are especially good.
There is a good variety of weapons and all of them feel and sound powerful and convincing --- which I think is missing from too many games (I hate weak sounding weapons).
Some of the music throughout the game is very fitting and well done. Normally I tend to get irritated by a lot of the music in games, but not here.
There were a couple of things that I felt could have been better. One is the movement speed of your character . . . I sometimes felt myself wishing I could go just a little bit faster! But that wasn't anything major.
The framerate could also be slow and sluggish at times, but not to the point where it really became a problem.
I also got a little stuck in places . . . and I recall having to restart a level at one point because I simply couldn't get unstuck. Now THAT was annoying. But thankfully these things were very rare.
Overall, I really liked Shadow Ops. There was a good balance to the gameplay. It wasn't a slow, slow simulation where you had to creep everywhere in fear of being incapacitated really easily, but it also wasn't arcade-like where you could just assault mindlessly without too much concern. A direct hit from a grenade or RPG *will* kill you instantly, and although you can assault quite aggressively and sustain moderate injuries, you do still have to fight tactically and take cover a lot of the time --- so it's a good balance between realism and playability. Good for when you aren't in the mood for something really slow and painstaking, but at the same time you don't want the action to be cheap, easy, or unrewarding.
I also think Shadow Ops has replay value. I can definitely see me doing it all over again in the future --- albeit at a higher difficulty setting.