So I haven't played too much, only a few hours in. I must say it's a little underwhelming, though it isn't all this graphics or AI bru ha ha, I feel it actually looks pretty good, and sine some of my views on that have been reposted so many times there's no point in me adding my own.
What has let me down most about this game is the complete inability to save when I want to. Who's stroke of genius was it to remove that? For a game that sold itself on the way it gives the player freedom in combat to engage in a umber of ways with the suit powers, the ability to save is surely one of the most important tools for experimentation. I know some people think the whole saving every 5 seconds thing is cheap, but in Crysis 1 some of the most fun I had was getting myself into an awesome position of tactical advantage, saving, and then repeatedly trying new ways of engaging the enemy from this place. Attacking with different weapons, different directions using the suit powers in different combinations, I had a blast doing this. In Crysis 2 my play style has been given a huge middle finger and it almost made me quit the game out of frustration the first time I started it up. I have become so sick of setting up something risky, though fun in theory, only for my ambush to fail me and to die, then I find myself right back at the start of this arena with all 20 marines to take out again. I had killed everyone at one point and was just trying to enjoy my surroundings, check out some of the environment art, when a whole extra squad appeared from nowhere and I found myself dead and right back at the start again. That time I just stealthed and sprinted through skipping any combat and any detail in the environment...
Needless to say, I've finally stopped myself playing how I wanted too (isn't that great?), and have instead been forced to take the approach I can only imagine the designers wanted. Stealth, travel to enemy, un-stealth, shoot in face, stealth and then rinse and repeat until everyone in the particular arena is dead. I wanted to be a badass, not some pussy who has to hide from enemies in the fear of one killing them and resetting their progress to the beginning of each combat encounter. I've tried setting the difficulty down, but that makes the combat itself less fun. This feels more like playing Predator 2 the game than a sequel to Crysis. On-top of this I have of course also encountered auto saves made by the game right before I died (wooo, what is this the 90's?) and the second time I booted the game up I had to replay the last 30minutes of my session before, as I stupidly thought the game saved on level load, but no I needed to walk 2 feet forwards to actually cross a checkpoint.
Anyway, that's my biggest disappointment with this sequel, and unfortunately it's taken my enjoyment of the game way down. The art is great, the levels are interesting and the game play was fun, until I realised I couldn't play like I wanted.
. Hoping it arrives tomorrow now, this is torture.
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