I haven't played any of the other Modern Warfare series so far, mostly just confined to the historical ones - World at War, Airborne, Black Ops. So far the campaign has been a ton of fun! The missions have been very exciting with a good mix of things to do - lay mines on a submarine and infiltrate, escape on an inflatable boat, fend off terrorists on a plane as it crashes, pilot a Predator drone, and fight through New York streets!
The only frustration I've had so far has once again been the multiplayer. Don't get me wrong, its very well done and tons of fun - if your not playing against people that are so far ahead of you in levels that they are virtually invincible. Its pretty frustrating to spend multiple games dying repeatedly, especially when you emptied your entire clip into the other guy! I get up, run about and die. Rinse, lather, repeat! All I seem to be doing is levelling up the other guy, acting as cheap cannon fodder! Why don't they match you up with people your own level, until you climb up the ladder a bit.
I also find you don't end up getting much support from your teammates. Often they just bugger off, and its an every man for himself situation. I don't know if there's better ways to encourage teamwork - although the assisted bonus is a nice touch if you help a teammate kill an enemy. I get the assisted bonus a bit, but its mostly just me trailing around behind people - not any real cooperation on their part.
I ended up giving up in disgust with my last batch of multiplayer, because any fun was just sucked out of it! The other guys were shrugging off a crap storm of lead from me, and would put me down with a single shot. Sometimes I wouldn't even see it coming from way across the map, or else they just bombard you with Predator drones over and over. First game out, I got stuck with people that were level 50+ with access to all the goodies!
I had wondered if there was any cheating going on, as I did have problems with this in Black Ops. There was an online douche who had some kind of cheat in effect, that would let him kill all the players in front of him, all across the map with a single press of the trigger - no aiming required! A lot of the players stuck together and kicked him out, but its a shame the game makers can't do something more to stop this kind of douche baggery that goes on.
I'm going to try doing the training levels for a bit and see if that levels my player up so that I can withstand multiplayer a bit better. If not I think i'll just go back to playing the campaign alone. I've just finished the mission with Makarov's shipment in Africa thats gone missing. I'll hopefully get some time to continue on with the shipment arriving in London tonight.
