I'm getting the feeling they got a lot of inspiration for the space segment from Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, especially the "lock-on follow" mechanic where you lock onto a craft and you'll fly on autopilot along a set "cinematic" path after that craft.
That is more or less the dogfight mechanic from AC:AH.
Circle and everything.
AW the bar in terms of story and characters?
Did BO1 and BO2 not exist or what?.
AW and MW1 to be precise.
BO1 was too much "THE NUMBERS!!!!!!!!" and I felt not really pulled in by it and BO2 had at least a interesting antagonist but once again, never got into the overall story.
I've just never liked the Treyarch games. All of them have been very violence porn happy and are the reason in my opinion why people looked down on the CoD series as "braindead shooty shooty bang bang". I liked earlier games that, while all about that shooting, at least had constant reminders to you that war was not so fantastic and awesome but quite horrific, often having a underlying message to tell.
The reason why I think AW set the bar was the great antagonist that made it personal, characters that felt quite fleshed out and also the theme and story about PMC's and potential abuse of power. In all honesty I am looking much more forward to the next game by Sledgehammer because of this cause I think they got back to what made earlier CoD campaigns so good for once. IW hasn't been that good at making these since MW1.5 (the 0.5 being half of MW2 which, overall was kinda "eh" but had those really fun missions that were set in the US.).