On the surface the game is good, under the hood there are many problems.
The single player is every bit exciting as the other MW games. It takes off right after MW2 and continues the story. It is a wild ride, with several more moments of disturbing content. While it raps the story up, it does tend introduce lots more characters and then kills them as the story goes on way too often. The ending is obvious and is dragged on too long.
Spec ops was pretty much summed in the introduction. Survival is just an escalating match with changing enemies and leveling up weaponry and skill, you earn killstreaks, new weapons and support as you level up similar to the main multiplayer game. The other game involves missions similar to the single player game, and are varied and interesting though some are way to advanced for some casual gamers with out lots of practice. However, the spec ops missions I like from MW2 are gone, namely the sniper based games. MW2 had multiple varied games for everything including sniper missions. My favorite was the chernobyl mission where you move through radioactive locations elimating enemies and entrenched snipers to make it to the extraction point. Those are obivously lacking here or they are unlockable later on Im not sure.
Multiplayer is a flawed and lopsided event. Everything appearance wise looks good. Weapons, though unrealistic, sound deep, feel real when they fire but hit like duds. I can recount a number of games where I've unloaded on opponents and have had only hit markers. Now it wouldn't be so bad if the same went for them but they seem to kill with in a couple hits. This leads to another issue. The game seems to work better for a select few, its odd but they seem to kill with less than I do. Its like their computer's dont respond to my system telling them Im killing them but mine immediately responds and Im dead they walk free. Now this wouldn't be a problem if this was brand spanking new but its a game based off of the MW2 engine that had already went through multiple patch updates. So Im wondering where are those patches at now? Shotguns are useless, they sporadically kill even at close range, AA12 blast some nub 5 times and they survival and kill me. I've since switched to the server hosting. I play normal non lag crap games here. You dont level up anything so there is no fun to unlocking equipment, guns and streaks but you already have access to all of them. Maps in this game are not very great. They now, more than ever, resemble arenas than actual maps. A bombed out bridge location is a measure in frustration because you have more opportunities to corner camp. Several resemble COD maps with plenty of locations to use the full benefits of all the weapons. Others cater to certain weapon types. Certain perks that were in MW2 should have stayed, like marathon and a version of stopping power. Marathon should have stayed because it allowed players to traverse maps faster, extreme conditioning is useful but you will spend most of your time trying to find people to shoot. Stopping power should have stayed or at the least implemented as a attachment like a different bullet type or something to give players the opportunity to get easier kills.
The game at times is good but it does not improve on the formula nor does Activision even attempt to make this anything other than a supped up MW2 expansion. I bet that Activision spent very little on this had Sledgehammer just do some minor surface work. This will be my last FPS I buy for a long time. Im pretty much done with this genre. There are hackers on this game too, I just met my first one earlier today. Sheesh both MW2&3 have hackers and probably BLOPS too.
Update
Its funny how a player can kill faster by firing from the hip than someone who aims? I mean there are supposed to be reductions in hit placement by this, MW2 did it superbly as well as COD4, yet here its like the only way to hit is to shoot from hip and the lag is horrible. Mine would say I have full bars yet im dieing in like 2 hits or none and its taking full clips on people. seriously this is ridiculous.