Not kidding, best shooter I ever played.

You might 'think' that the 4-5 hour offline campaign is a little short, but stop being a wuss and stick it on Veteran, then beat it.

Then play it again and again and again in Arcade trying to beat your previous best score.

Basically you take the role of an SAS newbie called Soap, and you see most of the game through his eyes, but as part of the storyline you also get to play as US Spec Ops as well as a fantastically graphically amazing level where you play a flashback level as your SAS commander.  The storyline revolves around hunting down and disposing of a terrorist whos got his mitts on some of Russia's nukes and is quite happy to launch them at the west, and along the way you'll be taking out hordes of his minions as well as a few trained attack dogs which will rip your throat out if you're not quick on the melee button.

They've got everything nailed - Graphics are the best you'll see on the 360 running in 60 frames per second throughout, offline and online, Gameplay is wonderfully paced and you won't want the offline to end but you're in for a treat when it does, Sound effects can't be faulted and overall it's a definite Game of the Year contender.  Storyline... nothing really new, in fact there are little nods to lots of other games, movies and real-life events along the way which keep it interesting but you can pretty much guess the ending before you start.

But what is most totally, utterly, absolutely and compellingly addictive is the online mode.  Your first online game you'll get trounced as you only have the option of Free-For-All or Deathmatch and you haven't earned any 'upgrades' yet.  You gain experience points for kills as well as just turning up for the game, and these unlock Ranks.

With each Rank, you get to tweak your player just a little bit more.  Silencer for your pistol?  Red dot sight for your M16?  Desert or Town camoflague?  Suit you sir?

Then there's the 'Challenges' - Get 25 kills with your M16 and you get extra camo options.  Get a 75 kills with it and you unlock a silencer for it, which makes you very deadly indeed.  100 kills?  Dunno, haven't got that far yet as I'm having fun with all the other weapons I've unlocked with my rank, including the wonderfully nasty yet woefully inaccurate RPG (at least when I use it).

That's just kills, you also get extras if you do the same with each weapon but instead of just kills it's also tracking Headshots, so if you're in it for the long haul there's plenty here to unlock and you won't be doing it overnight.

Also with Rank you get Perks to tweak your player a little more - extra damage? Sure thing.  Extra health?  Sure thing, but you'll have to lose the extra damage and pick something else instead, like better aiming.

With 5 customisable player slots you can set up your different types of player for all the different modes which you unlock as you gain rank including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Sabotage, King of the Hill etc, there are loads of them and loads of levels too.

Probably the most fun thing in online is the scenery, you can shoot through sheet metal, sofas, boxes, wooden crates - pretty much anything a bullet can go through in real life will penetrate in this game too - and nothing beats watching your enemy dive behind a plasterboard wall for cover as you just let rip at the wall with your heavy machine gun and take him out, except maybe using the 'Last Stand' perk to shoot the guy who just shot you with your pistol before you die.

SOCOM can take a back seat and Rainbow Six can take a hike as far as I'm concerned, CoD4: Modern Warfare is the new daddy on the block.  It's the first game in ages that isn't an RPG made me lose my RPG addiction.

If you're thinking of saving the pennies for another game coming out soon, don't bother, just get this one.