Heart pounding, I look around at my surroundings. Everything is covered in snow. I am wearing camouflage and my partner is wearing camouflage. We are each toting silenced snipers, a pistol, grenades and flash-bangs. We spot a group of two soldiers in front of us and we recognize them to be the enemy. My partner tells me to take the one on the right, so I do, and he takes the one on the left. We move on.

There are many heart-stopping scenes like the one described above in Modern Warfare 2, but there are also high caliber shooting scenes and intense mission tasks. In what has to be the greatest game since Fallout 3, Modern Warfare 2 provides enough action to give the average teenager an excuse to not do that one essay that's due tomorrow.

The graphic are absolutely stunning in this game. Everything looks real, and for the first time playing a Call of Duty video game, I actually felt like I was in the mission. It provided subtle things that I've never noticed in a game before, such as: blood leaking out of the bodies, or the eyes of your enemy expressing fear. There were so many plot twists that left my jaw dropped it was unbelievable. Plus, for the first time in the Call of Duty series, a big portion of this game is played on American soil.

The plot in the campaign starts out with an undercover agent who is planted into a Russian terrorist group in order to get information. After a mass killing of citizens of Russia, the terrorist frames an undercover American, setting the stage for a mega war. Russia immediately invades America, and the hunt is on for the U.S. army to find this terrorist and end the war.

Just like in all Call of Duty games, this one is split between the viewpoints of several different characters. This setup makes the game fell much more like a movie than a video game, and provides another dimension of cool. This also provides two different styles of play, as some of the characters are set up to be in the task force, and others in the army rangers, allowing the opportunity to have a variety of scenarios, as well as a diverse arsenal of weapons.

Lots of different missions in many different areas permit plenty of boundaries that have never been tested before by any other video game, such as riding snow mobiles, scuba diving and controlling a predator ship in order to blow up enemy gun ships. After beating the campaign mode there is a special ops campaign that you can choose to complete, as well as a co-op multiplayer.

This game is a complete adventure filled with adrenaline-pumping action and something that can be pretty rare for video games: exceptional writing. From top to bottom, Modern Warfare 2 is one of the best of all time and should be considered a possible gift for the holidays, as it is a must-buy!