So here are my thoughts on the multiplayer. I managed 13 TDM matches last night in total, so I feel like I got a pretty good feel for it. With those 13 matches, I managed to reach level 12, so leveling up so far is pretty damn easy.
COD Points
I'm really liking the COD Point system so far. There's so much to buy, from weapons, equipment, perks, addons, decals, etc. I personally enjoy the aspect of having to choose carefully (at least early on) what you purchase, but I wish there was a way to test guns before you purchase them. It's not really that big of a deal since they aren't particularly expensive, so I can get over it.
After my first 10 TDM matches last night, I had racked up around 18k points, which did seem to be quite a bit. That was with a overall k/d ratio of approximately 1:1 by the time I got done, so I wasn't doing anything spectacular. I liked that all the perks are open from the start (or level 4 when you get to create classes) to purchase as well having all of the addons immediately available for a weapon when you buy it.
Control
Personally, I love the slower pace. When I hopped into my first online match, it felt like I was trudging through molasses. It honestly reminded me of back when you'd play some CoD4 and then go back to Halo 3 and Halo felt so insanely slow. Given the slower pace, I'm not seeing some of the things I hated about MW2, which basically favored the great twitch players out there and left the rest of us gasping for air. I almost always now see the person who kills me before they actually kill me, which is great. In MW2, you'd be killed instantly and not know what the hell just happened.
I'm also enjoying the reduced grenade throw distance. It feels more realistic and I think it helps me put the nade exactly where I want it almost every time. I find the explosion damage range is pretty good too, at least for my tastes. It's hard to get a kill straight out with one, but they make a great softener to flush an enemy out of cover at near death or a finisher if they take cover to reload.
Maps
So far, I think the maps are fine. I really liked the small Nuketown, but it can definitely go to shit pretty quickly if one team gets spread out over the entire map. At that point, the spawns are erratic and you never know where you're going to spawn in front of an enemy. But if both teams basically stay on their sides, then you'll always spawn behind "your" house and you can have a pretty damn good battle back and forth. On a side note, in my very first match on this map, I remembered the comments about it being extremely small. As soon as the match started, the first thing I did was run up and hurl a nade over the bus, not knowing where I was throwing it. It landed next to a car, which blew up and killed two enemies to start the match. When I played this map again later on in the night, I did the same blind nade throw and killed another. This will probably become commonplace as people play the map a little more, so keep an eye out.
I think my least favorite map so far that I can remember the name of is Launch. I hate the missile launch mid-match and it shaking your screen for what seems like forever. Plus, half the map seems like it's wasted over on the side where the actual missile is (at least I think that's where the missile is) because it's just out of the way and too wide open.
Other Stuff
The perks look pretty damn balanced to me. In each slot, I'm not seeing a single perk that I feel is basically required to stay competitive, which means the choice that should be there, is. One odd thing I noticed is that when I switched away from the default Lightweight perk 1, I didn't perceive any difference in speed.
Killstreaks have really been toned down and I like it. I feel like when the enemy gets a helicopter, that they earned it. I did buy the SAM based on BD's recommendation although I haven't been able to put it to good use yet. Both times I was able to call for it, the enemy either found me as I was placing it or killed me while I was waiting for the drop and they stole it. I wasn't expecting it to be like a care-package the first time I tried to use it though.
The leaderboards are completely broken for me. After my first 10 matches last night, I went into theater mode, which lists your last few games and gives a few quick stats for each match. These stats show correctly, so I went through all 10 and added up my kills, which was at 93. When I went to the leaderboards though, it showed me with 753 kills. I'm hoping that when I hit level 13 tonight and unlock the Combat Record, it will show everything correctly so I can still get a decent idea of how I'm doing. I don't really prefer how they've segmented the leaderboards via game modes though. I didn't see an "overall" leaderboard for stats like in MW1 or MW2, which I'd rather have just for friendly comparisons to friends.
Through all of my matches, I've stuck with the M16 and I'm finding that I'm at a disadvantage a lot of times since it takes a couple of bursts to make a kill. Many, many times did I get the first couple of hits on a guy, only to lose the battle after he takes one shot. I'm not familiar enough with the guns yet, though, to know what I'm being killed with, but I need to figure it out.
I love that shotguns have been nerfed quite a bit. I had one guy get the drop on me and fired a blast from his shotgun from approximately 30 feet away or so. By the time I swung over to target him, he had fired another shot. Neither shot hit me even though the blast was very much in my direction. I took him down pretty quickly and I'd have to assume that he changed classes pretty quickly after that.
The knife lunge is pretty large and has helped me quite a bit, but I know I'm going to be annoyed when I get hit by it. On one match last night, I managed a 4-kill streak, all with the knife, and each one had a huge lunge that helped me.