A more action-movie inspired campaign compared to the first Modern Warfare, making for better, snappier, faster gameplay, with more guns and more freedom. New gameplay segments are great, and there's a lot of replayability to be found. Not to mention that Veteran is, once again, a very fun, balanced challenge. The story however, is slightly worse. It tries to be bigger, better, and in some places it succeeds, but at others it fails very, very miserably.

No Russian, obviously the most important mission culturally, is such a weird choice. It's almost comically grasping for attention from the player, the shock factor wears off fast, leaving a long, boring mission, one that achieved controversy, but is not even the most haunting, disturbing or shocking moment in the same game.

The first game had this way of showing destruction and pain with these short, quiet and poignant vignettes during certain missions. Modern Warfare 2 achieves this during the invasion of America, and especially when you hear the soldiers ask "When are we doing the same to Moscow?" They don't understand how engineered those emotions are, they can't, they're looking at their capital burning, their civilians being murdered, their history and culture crumbling from bullets and explosions. And there are others in the latter half that are equally as good. Much, much, much better than No Russian. Makes me wonder if you couldn't have played the mission from someone else's perspective, a sniper on the roof, a security guard, I don't know.

The scenario of Russia, oops sorry, ultranationalist-controlled Russia invading the US over the events of the mission is not plausible, but it makes for some of the best moments in all of CoD. I'm not American, so perhaps I wasn't as invested in the initial stages of the invasion, but the moment the emergency message appeared instead of a mission briefing and I stepped out to see these key locations burning, covered in gunfire and trenches, that's when that terror became universal.

Then, Shepherd. I understand that, in the end, he turns out to just be someone who went rogue, a deluded maniac, somewhat invalidating the message, but even then, showing the US military insert a secret agent who would shoot up civilians, having a top US military official stage a World War, murder British operatives, and try to alter how their military actions will be perceived, making the player wonder whether something like this could have already occured, all in such an INSANELY MAINSTREAM, COMMERCIAL TITLE is impressive, at least for me. Maybe they haven't exactly succeeded in getting these ideas through to their playerbase, but I found it to be quite an interesting story in the, uh, modern CoD discourse, I guess. If the first game was about the terrifying advancement in warfare technology, the second is about information warfare, and the ways in which those who can control the narrative can manipulate those affected by its flow.

MW2 has a more polished campaign when it comes to the mission structure and formula, though none reach the level of All Gillied Up. This, combined with an uneven plot, make the game less engaging, and perhaps even a bit disappointing given the expectations I had going in. However, I'd like to end this on a positive note, as all that does not detract from the fact that it is still one of the best campaigns in the series, and continues to raise the bar in many ways, just like its predecessor.

For some reason, some people think this game is critical of the U.S. military because the twist at the end reveals a guy from the U.S. military orchestrated all the bad stuff. I think this is a bad read because it very much frames this as "there is a bad apple and now you, the good U.S. military guy, must stop him and restore the U.S. military to the force for good it is clearly meant to be."

Also, it is very telling that the first Modern Warfare game had scenes that were supposedly about the horrors of both the AC-130 and the nuclear bomb, and in this game they are both available as multiplayer killstreak bonuses.

Anyways, as is tradition, +2 stars for having very well designed adrenaline pumping gameplay, -3 stars for being a jingoistic propaganda piece.