Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the Citizen Kane of repeatedly shooting people in the face. The storyline makes less sense than a gas ladder, but in terms of technical achievement, this is an undoubted masterpiece. The visuals, the soundtrack, the level design, the game mechanics … they're all second to none, and they work together to create something that's not so much a videogame as a borderline nightmare experience. The phrase "an assault on the senses" doesn't come close: it's thrilling, immersive, sometimes scary, always exciting, and occasionally downright overwhelming.

A true marvel of construction, then. But that's all it is: a brilliant machine. It behaves like a Hollywood movie, piling one almighty setpiece on top of another until the audience is beaten into submission. It's a descendent of the original Call of Duty series, a set of period-drama WW2 shooters clearly modelled on Saving Private Ryan; they successfully harnessed the terrifying mayhem of that film's famous Omaha beach landing scene and turned it into a 6-10 hour gameplay experience.

Modern Warfare 2, set five years in the future, doesn't seem sure which film it's trying to replicate, and hovers somewhere between Red Dawn, Black Hawk Down, and all seven seasons of 24. There's a plot, but it's incomprehensible.Ignorant non-gamers may scoff at the very notion of a videogame having a plot, but the medium has recently undergone an immense creative explosion. Last week, for instance, I finally got round to playing Flower, a stunningly beautiful PS3 game in which you "play" a breeze blowing petals around an impressionistic landscape. It's abstract, powerfully touching, yet impossible to describe; it simply could not exist in any other medium.

With one notable exception, Modern Warfare 2 made me feel nothing but surges of adrenaline. Nothing wrong with that; that's what most games do. But this one has delusions of significance beyond its popcorn origins. When you die, instead of being greeted by "Game Over", you're presented with a bitter quotation on the filthy business of war from the likes of Goethe or Milton.

The previous Modern Warfare title featured a chilling level set in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion during which the player could do nothing but crawl agonizingly through the flaming carnage for a few moments before expiring with a gasp. Modern Warfare 2's big attention-grabbing setpiece is a terrorist atrocity in an airport in which the player (taking the role of an undercover agent) reluctantly takes part. It's upsetting, chilling and horrifying.

You're supposed to be upset and chilled and horrified, of course – so on that level it succeeds. But if you must directly evoke the Mumbai massacre, it's probably best to do so with good reason. Since the rest of the game is effectively a dumb Tom Clancy romp (full of characters who say things like "I'll see you in hell"), it feels jarringly misplaced, like a cartoonish Bond movie containing a 20-minute scene in which Blofeld tortures his cat to death. Ultimately it's only there to make the game's main villain seem more "villainy". Not good enough.

Don't worry. It won't turn anyone a killer. But it is a strange and misjudged lapse into tastelessness that would actually be less offensive if played for laughs – and an easy target for reactionary kneejerk critics of videogames. Called Keith Vaz MP.