I hate when this question comes up because I just can't give an unbiased opinion. MW2 was my first COD, so I didn't really care about any of the crap that happened in that game. MW2 ties Black Ops for the most fun I've had in a COD game, and I have a suspicion that I would have had even more fun in MW2 if I had played with friends. Many of the issues that apparently affected MW2 never made it to me. I never saw a single Care Package glitch or a Javelin glitcher. I only ran into one or two Fuel rock glitchers and I can only recall one lobby that was all-out hacked. I did randomly receive God-mode one time though. I gave the controller to my friend so he could feel good about himself. Also, I have never played a game on COD 4 and I'm level 40ish on a broken World at War game. So I don't want to really judge those either. Here's the best I can answer the question:

The following are legitimate, and I believe irrefutable complaints about MW2:

-Commando, especially when combined with Marathon and Lightweight
-Danger Close Explosives, specifically Grenade Launchers
-Boosters in FFA
-Terrible FFA Spawns
-Various Glitching (again, I rarely saw this)
-Unfair Spawn Traps (Highrise, Karachi C, Favela Demo, to name a few)

When I look at this list, the only game-breaking issue is the Danger Close Explosives. But the combination of all of these things together made for an all-around bad gaming experience at times. Yes, I still enjoyed myself while playing that game, but I'm not going to say that I didn't notice my unfair deaths. I know Woody says it a lot, but I really do agree with it. This biggest problem COD has is giving you deaths that aren't your fault. We can classify many of the problems in MW2 into that category. That's why it's my least favorite Call of Duty to this point. Too many times in that game, I died when it wasn't my fault. When I think to Black Ops, rare were the deaths that weren't my fault. The frame rate would drop at times, but that's really about it for me. For the most part, my deaths could be attributed to some flaw in my methods.

MW3 is bad about giving me deaths I don't deserve too, but it's different to me. As ourDougisAwhite said, many of the problems in MW2 were avoidable. I'm not sure if MW3's problems are quite as avoidable as MW2. The main issues I have with MW3 is hit registration/lag comp, map design, and spawns. I don't think IF ever knew how to make a spawn system, so that's not really any worse than MW2 for me. Map Design is hard to fault them for too because it's pretty much what we asked for. Smaller maps for more action-packed gameplay. I just don't think it turned out how we expected. I dock MW3 major points for hit detection though because they got it right in MW2. I don't know what changed in MW3, but it made things worse. The big thing that plays to MW3's advantage though is the support. While not on the level of Black Ops, the people at IF/Sledgehammer/whoever works on MW3 are listening to our complaints and trying to fix them. They aren't tackling the big problems, which is frustrating, but it's completely superior to MW2 support. That also makes this game better for me than MW2.

In short, MW2's problems were avoidable and that's what makes it frustrating for me. There was no support and many of my deaths couldn't be attributed to my own faults. As Glory said, I would play a patched MW2 over any COD game that I've played. But the game that I played for 9+ months is, in my opinion, the worst of the 3 CODs I've played.

@bburg MW2 was also my first CoD and I don't think you could have summed it up any better . . .

MW2 was my first COD too but it still sucked monkey crap to me. When I was dropping nukes it was great but when I was getting OMA/noobtubed/commandoed it was crap which was 1/3 of my games.

Why I think Blops is the best COD is because of the consistency you can have in it. In MW2 you might go 42-1 one match then 19-15 the very same match with almost the exact same people in it.

In Blops Id would have 30+ games of nothing below 25 kills with between 2-4 deaths.

I enjoyed MW2 because of the maps and how much color they put into it. When you look at it MW2 maps stand out.
But other than that it isn't so bad.

sologamer69 wrote:

Woah, you must have picked up CoD very quickly, if you were dropping nukes in your 1st CoD.
In MW2 at the start, I had a 0.5 K/D and could barely get a predator missile . . .

kellster96 wrote:

Just because it was his first CoD doesn't mean he couldn't have been skilled. Maybe he played it a lot.

Also, CoD is pretty easy to pick up on - that and nukes were as easy as getting a harrier, in many cases.

Keenano wrote:

Well I say that I was that bad, at the start of MW2. By the end of it, I had a 1 K/D and my highest KS was like 28 or so. So I'd guess I agree that it is easier to pick up than most games . . .

NO MW2.2 is the worst CoD game.

I managed to get 1.2k hours on PC MW2 until it stopped searching for servers. I thought it was a decent game with a few flaws in it, but then again it was my first CoD game so I didn't have anything to compare it against. I found it fun for a long time so I thought it wasn't the worst.

kellster96 wrote:

When I got it I was like I'd never get a nuke, but around my 3rd month I got my first nuke and a couple of months after that I was dropping a nuke every 3-4 games. Getting nukes was very easy in that game.

Mw2 was the best cod until noob tube oma came along

kellster96 wrote:

The barebones game played very well. It was the community and lack of support that made it the worst game of the series.

It had potential to be the best.

DVS27t wrote:

Honestly. Prior to OMA/DC

I could deal with the commando lunge and being destroyed at range by shotties(but I used them as well too so I was ok with it)

I'd say it was a fantastic sequel for the first 5-6 months(PS3 it seemd to hold its playability for a bit longer)

imo it was the best cod. but the worst when it came to support i would still play mw2 over black ops 2 if they would of ever patched the damn noobs

Otter wrote:

you seem to forget about being cross mapped (literally) by akimbo 1887s

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AJgElC2DF8[/video]

Something they had to patch twice.

vG_ExTacy wrote:

Black Ops 2 plays really well for me. I don't know what to tell you.