As far as the actual gameplay goes? The story is 800 times better than the generic space-marine garbage we got with crysis. I was genuinely afraid to face my alien antagonists and for the first time instead of being mildly annoyed by them. The sounds they made when communicating with eachother genuinely made my skin crawl. However this was stymied by the fact that their AI was mindblowingly retarded when compared to the original North Korean and Lingshan Ceph in the first game. At times i felt like i was outnumbered and out gunned. Nano-suit or not, trying to evade 2 ceph devestators, three commanders and a plethora of scouts and soldiers was quite the hassle.
It was great to be able to play outside of the Jungle and to step foot into a real city, however i was dissapointed by the less than stellar sandbox capabilities. Crytek made it sound like we were going to get a FPS version of Prototype, wherein we are ridiculously overpowered soldiers who can turn invisible and kick cars clear across a map and we now have the ability to "think vertically". Crysis' options for approaching a combat area felt limited despite the massive sprawling jungle they had given us. Crysis 2 felt like an oversized corridor shooter. Sure i could jump into the designated ledge grab areas and turn invisible or hide underneath my enemies in a sewer. This actually worked out well in some of the levels. however if i wanted to Say, scale a fence and make a parkour style jump from awning to awning or rooftop to rooftop i was plain old **** out of luck. Sure i could kick a freaking 3,000 pound family sedan clear across times-square but i will be damned if i can get over that ivy covered chain link fence. That was a problem i had in the first crysis as well but then again the nanosuit wasn't as powerful.
The guns. Dear god the freaking guns. Why in the hell was it impossible to find decent ammo for the Gauss rifle or the Mike? The freaking MIKE had a goddamned picatinny rail on it, but god-forbid they include basic iron sights or an assault scope. Which brings me to my next point. Why can't i customize my weapons with pre-gathered mod-parts? i absolutely LOVED that i could put a sniper scope and silencer on damn near any gun in game on Crysis. Sniping with the FY7 with incendiary ammo was oodles of fun. Sure i had the added ability to upgrade my nanosuit with scientifically-magical alien goop, however the upgrades did little to make me feel like i had an added advantage. I didn't even notice that i had nano-recharge off until i purchased another upgrade. And then there was the most basic inconvenience of all. WHY IN THE HELL CAN I NOT ASSIGN THE GRENADE TOSS TO MY MOUSE BUTTONS? I have 4 extra buttons on my mouse that i can assign damn near anything to and i can not assign grenade toss to it? I HAVE TO HIT G AND THEN LEFT CLICK? having C4 and grenades available on the scroll wheel screwed me over more times than i can count.
As far as multiplayer goes? I haven't bothered to play it yet. I don't have any particular urge at the moment given how bored i am with online gaming in general. I am mainly an RPG guy ( god i hope they do not screw up Skyrim). The only FPS multiplayer that i enjoy in Bad Company 2's mainly because it was beautifully executed but has now grown stale.
My final thoughts/TL;DR?
A visually decent game with very fun gameplay mechanics. That aside it is nowhere near the groundbreaking revolutionary game we were expecting it to be and it is painfully clear that it was slightly polished port from the console versions. Crysis 1 was not much of an innovator either, however it took an interesting twist on the FPS genre. Crysis 2 has continued this tradition. However i feel the game could have been much better.