For about a week now I haven't been feeling 100% well, but not really that sick either...Yesterday though I was so stuffed up my head hurt and my whole body ached. Coincidentally, Modern Warfare 2 came out the day before. I got to spend the whole morning playing the game, and even though I was feeling like poop, managed to beat it on hardened difficulty. Below is my kinda-sorta review of the game as a whole.

Campaign

I keep hearing complaints about how short the campaign is and stuff, but I don't agree with that. It took me a little more than 8 hours to play through on an elevated difficulty, but there weren't any parts that I spent more than a few retries on. I would think that even on easy the game would clock 5-6 hours if someone took their time. That said, I tend to explore in games for collectibles, so my time may have been inflated from that. Either way, it's on the short side, but nothing out of the ordinary for most modern FPSes.

The campaign itself is broken up much like the first, the missions aren't short but not long. There are plenty of checkpoints and they are all at the right times. Unlike all other previous Call of Duty games, there were no checkpoints where I was stuck getting shot and had to start the level over or just try until I got super lucky. However, I thought the campaign itself wasn't as thrilling as MW1's. There are some amazing levels, but I didn't have any 'OMG AWESOME!!' moments like I did with the first.

Hardened was just the right difficulty too, there were only a handful of portions that were frustrating but doable. Most of the frustration came from grenade spam or an enemy unexpectedly flanking me. I have to try on veteran, and I'm in no rush to.

Score: 8/10

Spec Ops

These mini-missions are a blast. I have to play that many of them, or play any of them in co-op...But it's a real treat. My only complaint so far is lack of checkpoints (which makes sense) and the fact that the campaign wasn't co-op. I hope to play some more of these soon, I just blew through a few of them on casual to get a star and see what they were like.

One thing to note is that I never played World at War, so I cannot compare this to the Nazi Zombies mode...

Score: 10/10

Multiplayer

While I played a lot of MW1's multiplayer, I was no where near as invested in it as many people. I never prestiged, I think I only logged less than 20 hours into it total. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, it's just that my playing habits don't really allow me to play lots of multiplayer for one game. I like to dabble, and I move from one game to another. I took too much time off from playing, and just got rusty.

From everything I've seen so far, there are nothing but improvements here. The leveling system is better, but arguably more inaccessible to new players. The maps are bigger, but feel familiar. However, I'm still no good at it. I'd like to blame most of my deficiencies on being sick, but I was getting massacred. Time will tell if I will get better as I unlock weapons I like, or if I will continue being in last place in team deathmatches...

Score: 10/10

Overall score: 9.5/10

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