5 stars may seem crazy on approach, but considering this is potentially the most iconic call of duty of all time with the most fond memories from a lot of the player base even with it's jank and lack of balance, it seems fitting.

This is 100% the game that I spent my teenage years playing after call of duty 4 and this was a remarkable upgrade in every way.

The 5 star rating is purely based on multiplayer in the context of it's release. Single player is passable, spec ops and other aspects of the release were nice additions but that really isn't the reason that people played call of duty and they weren't bad enough to bring the rating down.

I would really want to remove half a star for the balance, one man army was so problematic, commando pro was a joke with the netcode among other things but I played this game for over 25 days, it clearly wasn't that bad of an issue for me and these were more cheese strats than the meta. No harm no foul.

I admit, playing the game in the present day it may not stand up to newer and more refined titles, but looking back at it from the time of it's release, it was possibly the best multiplayer shooter ever made and fought for it's place there amongst Halo, Gears of War and other fantastic games of the time.