Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was of course a great game, exciting, just about plausible, and simply fantastic fun to play. It was too short in single player, too rigidly scripted and occasionally maddening in its real-time levels. However, for sheer excitement it was hard to beat.
Therefore it seems rather odd that the next CoD, using the same engine, falls some considerable way short of its predecessor. To start with it seems fine, with excellent graphics and frenetic action. But after a while you start noticing that the AI is bonkers, and that enemies in particular frequently spawn in odd places, and very bizarrely sometimes just stand stock still in close quarter combat, presumably waiting for you to turn up and kill them. I've even seen them simply disappear, as if they had given up and faded away!
And whilst you could never accuse any of these types of games of being in good taste, this one seems particularly crass and juvenile.
Overall it's rather flat, and only really gets away with by (a) association with its glorious predecessor and (b) looking very nice. It's generally rather unimaginative. Once you get a flame thrower stuff gets very easy in most cases. And again, it seems very short. Level design is perfunctory.
Still fun to play, but a clear lack of QA suggests a product knocked together in haste, and yet again punters are being used as testers.