Dont listen to gamespots review, this is a great game!
First off, the story in this game is simple and easy to understand. You work for a private military contracting company in which they believe that battles should be fought with few extremely well trained men, instead of a whole army. As the story progresses, people are debating whether the entire military should be privitized, due to the success of private contractors. I dont want to give much more away, but basically the company you work for turns against you and you have to the eliminate the leader of the company that hired you in the first place.
The gameplay is really great, to me it plays really similiar to gears of war. It has a similiar cover system that enables you to blind fire, but the cover system feels much looser than the one in gears of war does. Theres also a lot of cool features in this game too, such as the aggro system and back to back. Aggro works like this, if you shoot at the enemy while your partner is not, you will obtain the aggro. If you have the agrro, then your partner can walk around and be somewhat invisible. Aggro makes the gameplay really dynamic and makes teamwork really crucial. Back to back is another cool feature. When you are surrounded you and your partner will go into back-to-back mode, which is when you and your partner go back to back, and eliminate all the enemies that are rushing at you. On top of all this, everything goes into slow motion.(Its really satisfying to see tons of enemies fall backwords in slow motion after you shoot them). The combat is also really intense in this game. You will find yourself juggling around the aggro with your partner so that you can flank the enemy, or distract them while your partner hits them from behind. You will come across a bunch of different enemies, over the course of this game, some can be taken out fairly easlily but other enemies, known as "heavy" enemies require one person to draw all the aggro towards him, while the other shoots at him from behind.
The best feature in this game is the unique weapon customization system. At the beginning and inbetween each mission you are give the option to purchase or upgrade weapons. All in all there are about 30 different weapons, each in a different category. The categories include primary, secondary, and special weapons. The guns range from weak pistols and SMGS, to the enormous mini gun and a heat seeking missle launcher. You can also upgrage each guns barrel, stock, clip size, and add attachments such as a grenade launcher. You can even "Pimp" your weapon by making it gold, or adding diamonds. Pimping it makes you obtain more aggro .
The environments in this game are preety well designed, I mean its no COD4, but the graphics are still good. It has good shadows and lighting effects, but the textures could have still used some work. Some of the environments you will be fighting in include China, Somalia, Irag, and a huge aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier is my favorite, it ends with you sprinting to the top of the sinking ship,trying to reach your helicopter while huge jets are falling downs at you.
The only place that this game suffers is online. They recked the online by adding NPCs into the game. You will be in a full on firefight with another player, but a random NPC will spawn and finish you off. It really makes the game unfair and i think that the NPCs should just be taken off the game. Another thing that i dont like about the multiplayer is that all the game modes are objective based which doesnt make for very diverse gameplay.
All in all, this was a very great game that offers a great coop experience. i just whish they could have made the online better.
Graphics-8
Gameplay-9
Sound-8
OVERALL:9/10