I ended up getting it for Christmas. My observations so far: Maps:
I like Drone, Hijacked, and Carrier, the rest are meh... Meltdown looks like they took Launch from BO1, cut the top off the silo, and filled it in with concrete. Weapons:
I like how the assault rifles are king again. the SWAT-556 is as close to MW1's M16 as you can get, the FAL is awesome too... the SMGs aren't that great outside of the Skorpion EVO. I like the LSAT LMG... sniper rifles are insanely overpowered, and I hate that quick scoping is back. Luckily, Kill Confirmed tends to weed out those type of players. Scorestreaks: Meh... I'm mixed on this. I like how they are watered down, and its really hard to get into the higher streaks... the score thing was a good idea but It gets kinda silly when most things are based in 100s and 50s, and you have perks like hardline that reduces it to odd numbers in between that, and score streaks that also meet in between. I can't complain too much, I like how kill streaks aren't insanely overpowered and gun play is more vital. Perks: Thank god no pro-perks. Camping with ghost still making you pop up on UVA is the best idea in COD history. Hardline leaves much to be desired even though I never really used it in previous games. The main thing I like is that normal abilities haven't been hampered to make you rely on perks for basic functionality like MW3 tried to do. You ADS and reload at respectable rates, but sprinting has been handicapped pretty badly to where extreme conditioning isn't much of an improvement. Create A Class I respect the attempt at something new. I like it, but i still think it has its shortcomings. I hate having to give up a pistol for an attachment on my primary. They've took a lot of cues from BF3 in this aspect, but added their own twist to it. While you can have up to any 3 attachments you want (as opposed to 3 attachments limited between 3 categories in BF3), it will cost you in other areas. Its neat that you don't even have to use perks, but I tend to take the cheap way out and remove my non-lethal grenades. Unlock Tokens: This is a disappointment. This is a step back from the money system IMO. Unlock tokens give you a choice to unlock what you want, but unlike in Black Ops 1, you still have to rank up to unlock weapons... to unlock. I liked the freedom to buy what ever I liked from the start in the previous game. It doesn't bother me that you have to rank up to unlock weapons traditionally, it just seems silly to rank up to unlock locked weapons. Permanent unlock tokens are the only neat thing about this system. Wildcards: Now this is pretty cool. I do like using more than 1 perk in a tier. The greed cards are what ill end up using mostly, the others are sorta recycled perks that didn't belong as perks in previous games, but fit nicely at wildcards.
All in all, its not a terrible game. Its definitely not as inexcusably horrid as MW3 was, but not as great as MW1 was. I like that Treyarch tried something new, maybe they is hope for the COD series in the future.