Maclintok

As the holy trinity of CoD/Halo/Battlefield continue to suck the oxygen out of the multiplayer FPS space, I can only hope that Crysis 2 picks up a following that sticks around for at least a few months, because I've found the demo very enjoyable. 
 
I would balk at all the limitations placed on the suit powers and still question how heavily they should tie power drain to the standard sprint function.  In the end, I realize that these kind of limitations are necessary to maintain balance.  The demos have hopefully served as a giant tuning exercise for Crytek's designers and I hope they continue to massage the numbers a bit more and focus on the best gameplay features. 
 
Personally, the real stand-out in the game is Cloaking.  Everything else seems... very optional or even unnecessary to the point of being a luxury, such as the running slide or the air stomp.  Granted, I'm not the best online player out there and all it takes is one guy to start using these seemingly ineffective powers in cool ways.  Only time will tell. 
 
I like toggling on the grenades:  cuts down on the grenade spamming a lot...  to the point of curbing grenade use altogether! 
 
The latest iteration of melee attacks is fine.  A melee hit should never be instant-kill although there's plenty of arguments for it since it's a high-risk maneuver.  Well, that's the thing, it's not as high-risk if you're always stealthing around with the cloak.  Use it to finish off a wounded soldier after he's been softened up.  And if you're on the receiving end, there's a small window for you to recover.

It seems like I run hot and cold on this game.  I am compelled to keep playing and I generally want to like it a lot, however, when I do hit a sticking point no matter how minor it is, I instinctively turn away in disgust and do not come back to the game for a day or two. 
 
I don't feel like blathering about all the things that annoy me in DA2 because I still enjoy playing.  But it all boils down to the shorter development cycle.  I don't remember how many years Origins was in development for but it was around 5-6 years including pre-production time.  DA2 was pumped out in 2 years.  Even with the larger budgets and team sizes that is a really short development cycle for a AAA-grade RPG.  Given those constraints, I think BioWare still pushed out a pretty solid game. 
 
Frustrations rear heads now and again.  In those cases, I sometimes just dial things down to Normal. I just don't have the patience to replay an epic battle or boss fight for the Nth time.  I've cheesed my way through a few boss encounters already thanks to strange glitches or shoddy AI so all fair's in love and gaming. 
 
Visually, DA2 is a lot tighter and polished but they really hamstrung themselves by creating such a bland, humourless city like Kirkwall.  The recycled dungeon/quest levels wouldn't so obnoxious if they were at least spaced apart better (i.e. repeating between Acts instead of within).

I've got high hopes for Crysis 2 (pre-ordered for 360).  I think expecting a Far Cry 1 level of open-ness to my console shooters is expecting a bit much these days, although It would've been sweet to roam around NYC picking up missions in a non-linear fashion while progressing through the larger game in a hub-to-hub manner. Certainly, the dev team probably wanted to do a lot of epic scripted moments too and that is rather difficult to balance against open world antics. 
 
I recall an early developer video explaining how they were trying to achieve "mini sandboxes" within the framework of a linear, highly scripted campaign, but essentially all they're saying is that they've given you a bunch of tools (weapons, power suit abilities) and don't force you to just use one tool to overcome any single encounter or obstacle.  In developer-speak, it's:  "hey, our game is a bit more than just shooting!". 
 
But it really is all about shooting with some cloaking and ground-smashing thrown into the mix.  I'm perfectly fine with that.

I generally liked the improvements made to the combat and skill advancement system.  The "one-attack per button press" makes the combat feel more immediate and it's nice that I don't feel completely helpless as a Mage while waiting for my powers to cool down. 
 
The art style may take some getting used. I'm not fully sold on it yet. 
 
The most surprising thing about the demo was how unimpressed I was with the writing quality.  This comes down mostly to the dialog.  It just didn't hit the mark for me like it usually does with other BioWare games.  I wonder if the studio went and switched up a lot of the original writing staff.  Having a couple of character die within minutes of introducing them - then dragging out melodramatic death scenes - was not a direction I'd go for in a demo either.  The Flemeth cameo was cool... and leave it to BioWare to stick an 80-year old woman's head on a 25-year old's body, haha.

Aaaah.  Thanks all.  I will try rushing in to kill the guard after Reznov does his hand signal.

Hi folks, 
This mission is pretty messed up.  This is the one where you are on a docked ship and start it off by slamming a sickle or pickaxe thing into a guy's neck.  You're supposed to follow Reznov and stay in the shadows.  The problem is that I get to about the 3rd waypoint where Reznov is flat-out standing beneath a blazing bright lamp and no matter what I do we're spotted and the mission fails.  I keep standing in a different area, making sure to stay in the darkness but the scripting in this mission keeps making the enemies detect us. 
 
I must be missing something obvious.  Kind of embarrassed to be stuck on this "stealth for dummies" mission but that's the way it is.  Any help would be great :) 
 
thanks

You've probably already gone and bought your game already but I'll put in my vote for Singularity.  The guys at Raven do good work and this game was a travesty of poor marketing. 
 
Conviction is OK but it is a travesty of what a Splinter Cell game should be about.  Not a bad game but definitely should have been a Splinter Cell spin-off instead of a core game in the Sam Fisher-centered series.

" I use the third-person view only because there isn't a cockpit view. More racing games need a cockpit view, even if it's a featureless box with a wheel in the middle I'd take it over any of the other views any day. "

I know what you mean.  I caved and picked up Black Ops last night and felt a little bit dirty.  Things have definitely changed.  It's not like in the '90s when Quake and UT ruled the roost but shooters back then were still very much in the niche gaming sub-culture.  There were no splashy TV ads featuring basketball stars and most people back then could barely get their dial-up Internet connection running.

" PUBLISHERS:"Wow COD is getting released in fall 2010, let's push our game to Q1 for some breading space". Sure, everyone let's all release our game in Feb/March, we have to since then ends fiscal year, so we all have to do it, all because of that damn COD." Feb/March comes, and we get "Dead Space 2,  Portal 2, Killzone 3, Bulletstorm, Homefront , then Dragon age 3, Fear 3, Crysis 2,GR:future soldier, Test Drive2, Socom 4". More games then in November/december, makes no freaking sense. So many games will flop, who can afford all those games in such a short time period. "