Firstly I'm not doing this as a 'I think it should be this way' thing.
It's purley to illustrate a point.
All I've done to the bottom pic is increase the contrast.
My point is that all of the CoD screenshots have felt slightly 'lightweight'. The reason for this is that they contain very little true black, and the eye sees a lot of black in shadows in RL.
The effect you end up with is a slightly super-real look where you can see details in shadows that you wouldn't be able to in RL.