The game gets A LOT more intense later on. I also thought the human fighting was rather dull...things change once the aliens start bouncing off the walls
I agree with this, and the human enemies become more fun to fight against once you get past the first couple hours and you have many more fun weapons and add ons available.
I just beat the game a few minutes ago infact.
What the game did right:
The story, despite leaving out some things I wanted to know, I thought was good, but the way it was told I think was better. I liked Prophet in the first Crysis, and I absolutely love him in Crysis 2 as well as his sheer importance to the story.
Weapons all felt really good to shoot, and there was a nice variety. Personally I loved the two .50 cal pistols in the game, forfeiting assault rifles for them.
I did not miss the very open level design of the first game while playing. Yes, it can add variety, but the focused combat was alot of fun, though thinking about it I did miss the exploration aspects of the first Crysis as well as the natural settings. The levels were very well laid out combat set pieces, with enough freedom to keep you from feeling closed in.
Crysis 2 felt like an amalgamation of Halo plus the original Crysis.
The soundtrack was excellent, and the sound design was pretty good too.
As for what I did not like:
Human AI was pretty dumb and at times very cheap as well as glitchy. There were "seams" in the AI where they would stand for a second before they went to the next action (like taking cover after I shot their buddy). At least they kept the pressure on, but then again I played the game on very hard.
Animations in many ways were very "off" or too quick among NPCs.
I experienced a fair number of glitches through the game, including getting slammed into a water laden area by a Ceph, only to be stuck underneath the level itself wondering how to get out.
Graphics while by no means bad, at many times were weaker than the first game, notably textures and and some of the modeling. Obviously, Crytek was pining for better AA and motion blur as well as colour grading. I was disappointed to not be able to run the Extreme settings @1080p, but the Very High settings ran just about perfect. When I first started playing the LOD got on my nerves, with so much pop-in, though I eventually got over it. I was pleasantly surprised at all the special effects and particles in the game. Mostly I miss the parallax occlusion mapping and sub-surface effects for the human characters though, as I didn't see either in C2.
So all in all, it's less ambitious in most regards compared to the first game, and lack of DX11 out of the box is disappointing but not a deal breaker. It's mostly of how Crytek wants to pander to the console crowd and isn't pushing the PC version as much as they could to look head over heels better due to the extra assets they would need to create (I think the lack of parallax occlusion mapping ties directly towards this). As a game though, it is very entertaining and fun to play. I played the game in three very long sittings over the past three days and I was consistently engaged the whole way through.
I would rate it in the 85/100 area for being a very good game in terms of consistency and fun, but won't go further due to it's lack of real innovation.
