Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 picked up two years after the previous entry and pushed the scale and pace to an extreme. The campaign jumps between the elite Task Force 141, American soldiers defending the suburbs of Washington, and mountain operations in the snow, with the scenery changing every few minutes so the game practically never stops. This includes infiltrating a snowbound base in Kazakhstan with a descent down an ice wall, a rooftop chase through a Brazilian favela, an escape from a Russian prison, and a mission at a Moscow airport that can be turned off at the start of the game and became the most talked-about moment in the entire series.

The gameplay stayed true to its predecessor and simply polished it further: fast aiming, health regeneration, tight corridors, and constant pressure from scripted events. Multiplayer expanded the ranking system, added more perks, and above all a much richer range of kill-streak rewards culminating in unleashing an entire airborne arsenal. New was the co-op mode Spec Ops, a set of standalone missions for two players with leaderboards and a star rating, offering carefully measured doses of action outside the story. On the Xbox 360 the game ran smoothly and was one of the most technically solid shooters of its time.

Modern Warfare 2 became an enormous commercial phenomenon and dominated Xbox Live's played-title statistics for a long time. Critics praised the craft, pacing, and multiplayer, while the script drew criticism for being overblown and convoluted in its twists. Still, its influence on the genre was significant: it tightened the format of the short, extremely directed campaign even further and developed the idea that players return to a shooter for progression and rewards, not for the story. Today the campaign feels like a rollercoaster ride that never lets you catch your breath and occasionally strains believability, but its individual missions still rank among the most propulsive that seventh-generation console action offered. And a handful of moments, especially the descent down the glacier or the fight through the snowed-in streets of an American suburb, stick with you even more than a decade later.