I just finished the game on hard and must say that I'm very impressed. I think they've nailed the combat; every weapon has a real punch and the reaction when you hit or kill an enemy is so satisfying. It reminded me a lot of FEAR, both with the smart ai and how important it is to use the "bullet time" to get through tough encounters. The breaching adds even more options to the combat and I really like how quick and easy it is to use them on enemies even while shooting. I got through hard on 360 without too much trouble but it certainly made the larger encounters very tense. As a shooter I think it's great, but as others have said it is very linear and it would have been nice to be able to explore the levels a bit more freely.
Some more plus and minuses:
+The guns! I mostly used the ACR-10 and it feels so good to pop heads with the semi-auto mode. The power weapons like the minigun and flamethrower are also a ton of fun and it's nice to see a game where these weapons are actually really powerful.
+Graphics, it ran smoothly on the 360 and there's some very good looking environments. Lighting is for the most part really impressive, but there are times when the bloom gets excessive. Why am I blinded by certain walls?!
+Good variety both in environments and combat scenarios. They keep introducing new enemy types and weapons, so it never got boring even though I played through it pretty much in one go.
-The story is decent and there's some fairly interesting characters, but I was hoping for something a bit more original. Way too predictable after the first missions.
-A couple of the boss fights dragged on a bit. I don't want to sit and shoot thousands of bullets into a dropship!
-As far as I can tell there were no hidden upgrade chips that you could find in the levels, you simply get them when you're suppossed to in the story.
Overall I really enjoyed it and it was nice to play a fps where the combat is actually fun and also very challenging without feeling cheap. Looking forward to try out the co-op tomorrow!
