IW was going to be a bunch of niggers and kill off the American team again because they're jerkbags (You can't kill off Keith David!), but then Price was all NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED and my face was all ='DDDDD because that was pretty cool.

Also snowmobiles lolololol

Running across a rooftop at full speed and leaping ten feet to the rope ladder hanging from a chopper. That was awesome. And the whole assault on the enemy base in the blizzard sequence was great, especially the snowmobile finish. And knife in the face.

But what the hell, you blow up this dude's chopper with him in it, then he somehow survives and proceeds to beat the hell out of the two baddest dudes on the planet. I don't buy that at all. I know they were probably pretty tired from handling the baddest military on the planet, but still, dude got blown up.

All of that said, the campaign didn't seem as awesome as the last one. Maybe because they went through so much effort to try to shock the player, with warzones on American soil, with DC being all but burned to the ground, I just didn't really buy it. Then hey, we have to launch a nuke at America to get the politicians to give us the latitude we need to stop the evil dude...all of this after America is already burning. If America were invaded, it would not require anything further to make our leaders give the military what they needed to handle business.

And no resolution with the evil dude who is apparently also mad about 50,000 people used to live here, and also his leaders prostituting him to the West. I will have to play it again from the start to see if I am just completely missing some huge plot points that would completely invalidate my complaints.

No russ, you're right, a lot of the campaign's plot made little to no sense. As you say Makarov seems to be entirely forgotten about in the end, as we just go after the General dude who betrayed you for seemingly no reason what-so-ever (seriously, what was that all about?). And the whole nuke thing was a massive WTF. The campaign was fun and as you say a good number of "holy shit awesome" moments (I loved the raid on the gulag as well as those bits you mentioned), but it seems that MW2 lost the original game's slim grasp on reality and went completely over the top.

Also, the more I think about it the more the airport scene, which really didn't bother me a great deal, seems entirely unnecessary. They could have just made some sort of cut-scene showing how that all ended up and Makarov framing the US in order to start a conflict. Though I don't entirely buy that the Russian government would be that quick to just accept that a bunch of American dudes would rock up into an airport, shoot the place to shit and start a war. I mean, what? Surely a cleverer plan would have been something more like what Price did at the sub-base and launch a nuke over Russia leaving some sort of trail to hint it was America's doing.

I think the big problem IW has here is that with the airport scene it implies that actually want people to take their story and the reality of war/terrorism vaguely seriously, but they've thrown one semi-serious/controversial/attention-seeking scene in amongst a lot of "Hoorah" over the top spectacle that wouldn't be out of place in a big summer blockbuster. Fun game, but not anything to be taken at all seriously.

I think that within context (the laughably bad context, that is), General Shephard's betrayal makes sense. The reason the Secretary of Defense gave him a blank check, as they put it, was because of the nuke being launched at America, from the sub. Which Shephard, with the help of the British SAS guys, allowed to happen. That is assuming that Shephard and Price didn't orchestrate it, or outright take over the sub and launch the nuke themselves, which is certainly implied. Shephard's team then makes a brave and heroic attempt to stop the nuke from being launched, sadly (read: conveniently) coming up just short. Within that context, the British SAS knows the truth behind the act that Shephard leveraged in order to gain massive amounts of power, and were therefore a threat, thus the betrayal. It makes sense within a context that is itself absurd.

they threw Makarov to the side when they had Shepard betray you because they couldn't think up a proper ending fast enough. To make up for this they played the whole "enemy of my enemy" card to have Makarov help you kill Shepard while he gets away so you can chase after him in Modern Grenades 3.

That and they wanted to kill off a protagonist for real this time (Roach and Gaz and that guy with the mask who sounded like Gaz) since they brought back Price.

Also those lines from the intro are still funny to this day. A++ would laugh again.

I think they must have called that dude Ghost because he essentially was Gaz, what with the same voice actor doing the same voice in the same way. In MW3, there will be a dude named Zombie, played by the same guy, and we will all immediately know that at some point during the game, he will be killed.

first half of the game was a bit underwhelming? It was spectacular and all but dunno the first games first half seemed better. but the last half and really the last third was so awesome. Price and Soap, best tag team ever. Like butter on toast.
Loved the scripted events in the end too, dramatikkk.
Killing americans was also fun, the space level caught me a bit off guard, wish they would have made it a bit longer, played with it for a while.

The plottwist wasnt too bad imo (how did they make the nuke explode in space btw?)..
Cant shake the feeling that they pulled a small Halo 2 though.

What is there to "play" in the space level? You look at the space station and then you explode

Also it blew up in the upper atmosphere, not space?

I'd have to go back and watch again though, I was only kinda halfway paying attention there, thought it was a straight up cutscene.

e: yup

Well to be fair Ramirez, Keith David Foley and crew all take back Washington at the end of the game. You could see a bunch of green flares on roofs all over to indicate that they've pushed back the Russians. So they do get some kind of victory.

But yeah, they never get to do all the cool shit like Price and Soap do. And you know what? That's cool with me because Price is the baddest CoD dude of forever.

Random astronaut guys getting blown away was pretty damn funny, looking back at the whole thing.