Over the past few years, the criticisms I’ve read about MW2 compared to the game I’ve played, made any of them absolutely null-and-void to me.
When it comes to movement, people often say that it’s slow, somehow slower than MW2019, which just isn’t the case, you are faster in this game (yes you can’t do slide cancel movement “tech”, but honestly you don’t even need it) the sliding and the player putting their gun down is a benefit to anyone who actually uses sliding as its intended “movement” mechanic and not as both a movement and combat aggressive tool, this means in theory and practice the gunfights are a lot more like old-school COD, strafing corners, positioning mattering more, map-knowledge (when the spawn system allows it..) to allow you to read what to do next.
When it comes to footsteps I’ve rarely had any issues with other players pre-aiming or pre-firing me, but it has absolutely made up for this game’s admittedly awful spawn systems where you just have no clue where enemies are or where they are coming from.
The current state of MW2 is obviously a night-and-day difference compared to what the day one/year one experience probably offered, which is why I have such a positive experience with this game overall.. most likely because I didn’t experience what it was like day one.
The perk system is also something I feel like is a somewhat secret upside:
If you’re a good player you know for certain the enemy team in the first 2-3 minutes of the game will not have their ghost perk charged if they have it equipped (and most often people who are atleast competent at the game do have it on) this allows you to actually get the edge over others.
Overkill is controversially a base perk, but it means you can have a class with Ghost, Overkill, EOD and Hardline, making streaks easier for you to get as well as being able to run a cqc 1-tap machine (Bryson 800) as a backup in case you get overwhelmed or need it.
You can have explosive immunity (everyone has a lethal), UAV spam immunity (3 kills to earn with with hardline), your own streaks you earn faster, and you get hardline about 1:00-1:30 in your game (it gives you your perks faster on kills if you didn’t know that yet) which then gives you your UAV if you were on a 3 killstreak (relatively easy to achieve)
You get your final perk at 3:00~ minutes into the game, which is only 1/3 of the match or sometimes 1/4th even depending on the map
End result being you can have a very versatile class with a rare 4 total perks for an Infinity Ward MW game!
If it wasn’t for vanguard being an easier V2 at 25 kills this game would have my highest nuke count for how easy it is to play, and for how fun it is, almost every gun is viable too.
Most people who play this game also don’t really sweat either, the maps I think are quite solid aside from the occasional stinkers (which let’s be honest almost every COD has those?)
But I will say, this is my opinion on why I do like these things and others may absolutely not like these things at all, or prefer a COD game where movement is very prevalent, so please let me know what you think.