The house part is annoying, but you don't need to go through the house. It's possible to go on the street, just stick to cover. I had trouble when I tried to cut through the house. As soon as I decided to stay on the street I was able to make it passed.
I didn't have that problem with the restaurant area though. It tells you where to go and stuff, but you could avoid guys if you cut wide. If you didn't, it would be tougher. Again, it's completely up to you how you wanted to move forward. The game lets you do either way. There's cover throughout most of the area anyway.
The house part I'm talking about is the end. I don't think you can get through on the street, you have to cut around through the last house and then take out some vehicles. I tried it again today and had no trouble at all, heh. Just ran through, shot a few dudes, and was done. The squad of three that kept spawning and coming down from upstairs making things miserable must have gotten taken out by the AI or something.
As for the restaurants... yeah, if you cut wide you were fine, but for some reason I was feeling like I was supposed to go through the other part so I just kept throwing myself at it and dying, I guess maybe because that's where the rest of the squad was sitting. Generally they don't have you break from the squad to go running off alone. There was cover, but on veteran or whatever you get cut down really quick, and there wasn't enough AI to keep guys from coming in around the sides and shooting you behind your cover anyway.
Regardless, you're right, it doesn't seem as bad as the first game. I haven't experienced any more of that kind of thing since that part with the house, which may have been a fluke. In any case, I'm still having fun, and I think I do like this game better than the first by a fair margin. It seems to fix some of the problems, even if not all of them, and the sets have only gotten more impressive. There weren't as many "wow" moments that sort of took your breath away and made you just stare, but the intensity of the campaign has definitely been ratcheted up. I thought from some descriptions I'd read that it might feel a bit artificial and ridiculous, but I haven't really felt that too much. The story is a bit insane, but at the same time, they sort of don't really get into it much. They just briefly state plot points in that very matter-of-fact, military way, and once you get into combat you aren't really thinking about it, you're just trying to get the objective done. So despite the fact that it all seems rather implausible, it seems pretty reasonable when you're mucking your way through the consequences of each step in the game itself.
I think I'm more impressed with the overall
Modern Warfare... thing, now that I've played both, and had both games been in the same package, I think they would definitely be worth the price of a full game. I still think $60 was far too much for either one individually just for what you're getting, especially since I don't really find the multiplayer all that hot, but I can certainly concede that these are super cinematic and pretty unique to themselves in the shooter spectrum. Once they're a reasonable price they're definitely worth getting, and I may try to pick them up if they release them on PC in some kind of pack or something.
They do make me crave something a little more tactical and realistic, though. It's a shame the latest
OpFlash is supposed to be pretty lousy.
