Maybe marginally better than MW2 by having more gameplay variety, but MW2 had more memorable moments and prettier visuals, and also came out five years prior. Advanced Warfare is essentially the same game as Ghosts, which is the same game as MW2, except they sprinkled a few superpowers that have little to no impact on the overall gameplay.

The jetpack is by far the best new mechanic here, but it's severely underutilized and limited by the linear level design, not to mention they don't let you use it in every mission. The other superpowers are variations on things we've seen before, primarily in BO2, except BO2 had level design that accommodated its features, while AW doesn't. The infamous "press F to pay respect" is an accurate representation of the entire game in a nutshell. Every time they let you do something cool, it's "go there, press F and see what happens" or at best a shooting gallery, with the same amount of depth as Duck Hunt.

The new novelty guns, such as the laser gun or the soundwave shotgun, are all underpowered and just not convenient to use. In fact this is a symptom of a larger problem. The game gives you an exoskeleton and these theoretically cool guns, which sounds like a power-trip, but it's too afraid to go crazy. It plays it safe and ends up feeling like just another Call of Duty game. Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem in late 2000s, but after BO2 this is just an embarrassment. And really it's hard not to compare it to BO2, since they both utilize practically the same setting, but, while BO2 brings much needed innovations to the stale formula, AW just doesn't. And it was somewhat forgivable in the case of Ghosts, since Infinity Ward was a shattered mess and had no direction, but by 2014 Sledgehammer games should've learned from the lessons of the previous two titles and made more substantial changes to the formula.

Regarding the story, which, I guess, is the only aspect you can still expect to be decent in a game that actively chokes its own gameplay mechanics in favor of the narrative, it is actually also one of the worst in the series. It's probably worse than MW and MW2 in terms of the sheer stupidity on display, and no amount of Kevin Spacey is gonna save it. North Koreans are invading South Korea? Okay, pretty dumb, but not something we haven't seen before. But an international "anti-Western" terrorist organization founded by "former Chechen separatists"?

I mean, excuse me, first of all, not separatists, but freedom fighters. Calling them separatists implies that Chechnya is an integral part of Russia and not a territory they unlawfully occupied and colonized, which btw had a brief period of independence after the first Chechen war, so even technically these people can't be called separatists. Secondly, do you really expect anyone with half a brain to believe that Chechens, a group of only 2 million people, would be in charge of an international organization? Let alone one that is anti-Western, not anti-Russian? Thirdly, why is the leader's surname Chkheidze? You do realize it's a Gerogian surname, right? Georgians are not Chechens. I'm getting kind of sick of the misrepresentation of Caucasians and the Caucasus in popular Western media. It's always something connected to terrorism or political instability, and it's always a vague and inaccurate depiction. Even when Khabib Nurmagomedov was added to that UFC game, they managed to fuck it up and made him do a Christian gesture. Are we doomed to always be perceived through the prism of our relation to Russia, either through a manufactured cultural identity or as a breakaway region?

Anyway, so this villain turns out to be fake, and immediately it becomes obvious that Kevin Spacey is exploiting political instability to profit from war economy. This could've been a cool topic to explore, if he wasn't a one-dimensional cartoony villain that later declares war on the UN, which is probably the stupidest thing that ever happened in Call of Duty, a series known for its abundance of stupid things.

On a good note, I was impressed by the quality of the pre-rendered cutscenes. The level of detail is insane, close to the creepy CGI Disney uses in its movies to violate the memories of beloved dead actors. Kevin Spacey looks so lifelike, almost like he's about to jump out of the screen and sexually assault you. But this is probably the only good thing I can say about this game. This, and the fact that you can ride a mechanical crab in the first mission by jumping on top of it with your jetpack. Idk, maybe later in the game you can do that again, but I'm simply not enjoying playing it in the slightest.