I just beat the campaign. I do like the emotional beats in the story, it gets quite sad in places and those worked for me. The jet fighter and tank missions are also fun (though your tank seems to be invulnerable). But all the infinite spawning and lousy checkpoints and super-aware AI drag it down.

Oh, and terribly, terribly dull QTE sequences. Holy shit, I don't know if I've ever felt less connected to a QTE scene as I've been in this game. The button presses seem to have almost no relationship to what's happening onscreen. It feels random and arbitrary.

The other problem is that QTEs show up when they don't even need to. For example, in one mission you're sitting in a car and there's a guard outside on the left hand side. Instead of just letting you turn left, aim, and shoot him, the game makes it a QTE. It shows you the button prompt, and you just watch as your character shoots the guy. Why didn't they just let you actually aim and shoot the guy? Is less interactivity good?

There's another mission where you have to sneak up behind a guy and shank him stealthily. Pretty standard knife kill that's been in all kinds of FPSs. But you get the button prompt when you're about five or six feet away from the guy. This makes absolutely no sense, because it's way out of range of a normal melee attack. Thinking this was strange, I went closer, right up behind the guy. Guess what happened? The game suddenly showed a Mission Failed screen. Apparently, the game wants you to press the QTE when you're really far away from him. Getting in closer for a normal melee kill just fails you. Unbelievably dumb.

Well, I finished it, and now I'm eager to try out some of this multiplayer on the 360. Let's jump right in...

"Failed to connect to EA Online. Please try again."

...what the fuck?