Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a better game than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Yup, I went there. I’m not taking refuge in nuances. Unlike many critics, I’m not weaseling out of making a tough call by saying that they are both great games.

Of course they are both great games, but no one can honestly reply, “I don’t care” when asked if you should pull into Burger King or McDonald’s. (Other suitable analogies: Toscanini versus von Karajan, Red Sox versus Yankees, Ginger versus Mary Ann.)

When it comes to these global mass-market products, everyone has a favorite. And when it comes to the latest generation of hard-core first-person combat shooters, I find Bad Company 2, released recently by Electronic Arts for Windows PCs, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, more sophisticated, more immersive, a boatload funnier and simply more interesting than Modern Warfare 2.

I think that phone ringing is Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, publisher of the Call of Duty series, calling to tell me that he’s going to eat my heart for breakfast tomorrow while he enjoys his world-class art collection. O.K., I’m just joking about the threatened ventricle roasting. But those are the sorts of passions involved in the fight between E.A. and Activision for the loyalty (and money) of the serious shooter fans who collectively spend millions of hours every day playing these games.