Willem sometime ago about WOT; he's the man behind that game. Level design is pretty sick. The most inspiring i've seen to any game 

yeah the first time I played Shadar Logoth (that's the blue town right) in the demo was awesome. fantastic for it's time and something i'll probably always remember.

it was a few years later I got to play the full game, must have been around 2000/2001, but the levels in the game got a bit blander as it went on. a bit hard too, i had to cheat i think. 

Probably best to wait until the game is out for a while - SimCity Day 1 

So, got this as a gift from someone with a duplicate.

A lot of fun. Possibly the first game where I preferred using the controller to the keyboard/mouse.

The levels look nice and have good level design, with some nice logic puzzles to solve midst the shooting stuff.

The enemies aren't so great - their AI is pretty weak and they're a bit samey so far, will see if this picks up. The good point here is that (playing on hard) it feels challenging and yet fair. Doing something stupid kills me pretty quickly, but doesn't leave me feeling cheated. So the overall gameplay is pretty good.

The nice thing about the game is that its not trying to be ten different games at once. It's just a straight forward top down shooter/puzzler. There are upgrades and extras, but I haven't bothered with those and don't feel like I need to yet.

The secondary weapons are kind of tacked on as well - I kill almost everything with the spear.

Will have to try the coop mode. 

It's not exactly groundbreaking, but it's refreshingly unpretentious. You were right, it's just a big dumb shooty shoot knife knife game, and that's fine. 

I wish this was true, I have been waiting for a very long time. 

Looking forward to that, hope they stay true to the Thief gameplay.
It must have been rough for them when the Dishonored marketing started up, and then when it came out, definitely seems like they were going in a similar direction in some aspects of design etc. 

When is always online crap going to die? :\ 

i.e; never! :D 

Maybe when they realize everyone pirates the game just so they don't have to deal with the stupid DRM. 

ha. if anything, that'll just make them squeeze tighter until they've alienated everyone. 

Well, there's your awnser :P Unfortunately there will always an influx of younger customers who don't know any better. It's kind of depressing really... soon it'll all be old hags complaining about this kind of stuff while the younger generation unknowingly embraces it. Digital distribution is only accelerating the process. 

When companies realise that in this day and age, internet use is a rarity and very few people are connected to it, let alone with permanent cable/broadband/DSL. 

Yup that's "2", I'm behind the times.

Pros:
+ Graphics are good.
+ Cityscape well done, if empty.
+ Gameplay works well as usual in CryX series.
+ Fog / hazy effects particularly good, and enhance atmosphere.

Cons:
- Extremely consolised as follows:
- Linear levels boring.
- Too few options to explore around
- City setting is less interesting than island stuff, less involvment too.
- Suit voice is very annoying.
- Tactical options on HUD are silly handing-it-on-a-plate nonsense.
- Too broken up with cutscenes, intermissions, transmissions, etc.
- Lots of things to pick up and fuck all you can do with them.
- Otherwise limited and haphazard interactions i.e. can only shoot half the lights, can't shoot infected, etc etc.

Hmmm. 

in Crysis 1? 

Crysis 2 was like being trapped in a Michael Bay film. Let's never do that again! 

The suit specialization mechanic is like the worst gameplay idea ever. I don't get why they build an entire game around such a dull gimmick. 

because you could do whatever you wanted in whichever mode you preferred. 

Definitely a great gameplay mechanic. Even if it becomes a bit easy to rely on cloak.

The suit works almost as well in Crysis2. Power (Speed/Jump) is used automatically by default, Cloak and Armour are toggleable. Armour is a nice effect. Heat-vision also uses suit energy. Doesn't feel quite a slick switching between the 3 main ones but it's still good. 

Crysis 2+3 were streamlined for consoles. Easier controls (controller), combined suit powers, smaller levels (memory footprint), less AI (slower processor)

The Metacritic ratings for 2 and 3 are lower, but I think that is partly to do with franchise fatigue. Crytek are quoted as saying they think 3 is their best version. Personally I preferred the raw level design of the first game. One thing that is always consistent with Crysis is that it looks really beautiful. 

I enjoyed Crysis 2 quite a bit, a solid shooter and had some nice flow during the firefights. And the aliens weren't frustrating to fight against unlike the first Crysis. Sure it's not nearly as open ended as once was, but they still offered a number of choices in the large arenas. Until you find out the cloak makes things way too easy of course! Crysis 2 felt less like a corridor shooter than other titles and the aliens made combat refreshing, since I'm not just shooting humans 99% of the game.

Then again, I don't expect much from the FPS genre anymore these days. 

*other titles outside Crysis 

I really enjoyed 2 & 3.

If you go in expecting more Crysis 1 (Which of course is reasonable!) then it's probably disappointing. But as a stand alone game I think it is just fine.

Of course there is stuff in there I dislike (most of which Shambler covered) but the moment to moment shooter combat and the way the levels are laid out are quite excellent. There is always a different approach you can try and it's very simple to completely change up your play style in the middle of a firefight.

I personally never really understood all the remarks about the "freedom" the first game allowed you. Sure you could come at a base from any direction, but if you decided to pick a direction and start walking, you very quickly find yourself in an un-authored wilderness with absolutely nothing to do. I agree that some (if not most) areas in C2 funnel you into them from a specific direction at the start but you always have the option to cloak and essentially pick where you want to engage.

I also truly prefer the implementation of the suit in C2, it's effortless to get into the mode that you need and making strength/speed modes automatic is a great idea. While I do miss the super-speed from C1 I think everything else was handled much better. 

The Seth 'soldiers' are really cool, IMO they look smarter and scarier than the robotic enemies from Crysis (which looked like the sentinels from the Matrix). And Crysis isn't really less linear than Crysis 2. 

No offense but you need to think more before offering opinions.

Crysis is a LOT less linear than C2, that's a simple fact. C1 had more open levels with more directions you could play through them and approach targets and objectives. Whether that's a problem or not is a different matter but that's how it is.

More:

+ Aliens are pretty cool and a good challenge.

- Chopping between different locations with no sense of continuity really sucks.