Strange. The graphics on C2 are not even close to C1 and C warhead.
Here is an excerpt from a great review @ Amazon.com which i found right on the money. I just posted the review on the gameplay, not the graphics. I fully agree with the COD feel. When i was playing it, it felt like MW2 with a nano suit. Yea it's fun sure, but it's no Crysis.
The gameplay also features huge concessions caused by the console-centric development. Almost immediately, you will notice that game-saves have been removed in favor of a console-style checkpoint system. This is bad because Crytek doesn't do a good job of spacing its checkpoints. There have been times where I have cleared an area of enemies, received a radio transmission and new objective, then moved on to a new area only to die and be put back at the *very* start of all that. Most games would put a checkpoint after you've completed an objective, but Crysis 2 often doesn't, which is quite annoying in a game that has more than its fair share of cheap deaths.
The levels have been vastly decreased in size as well as enemy count, taking away the sandbox feel. Crysis 2 now plays like your typical on-rails, scripted, Call of Duty game. The enemy soldiers you fight are now generic and *ultra-serious*, a far cry from the humor of stalking the hapless and hilarious North Koreans of the original Crysis through the jungle. Vehicles also fall by the wayside and are used much less even though the strategic options they offered were a strength of the original Crysis. Think you're going to hop in an APC and mow enemies down with the turret like you did with Crysis 1 jeeps? Think again, you'll be ripped to shreds by enemies in a matter of seconds because they are extremely accurate even over long distances.
The opening of the game is hugely consolized to the point that it's an embarrassment. You watch video cutscene after video cutscene and then are thrown into an on-rails tutorial level where the nanosuit stops you every 3 seconds to troll for its various features. When I finally got to control my character and saw that SLI wasn't working, exiting out of the game to fix it and then restarting made me rewatch the unskippable cutscenes. By contrast, in Crysis you jump out of a plane and get to start playing, and it is a real level rather than the obligatory "tutorial level" common to console games.
The nanosuit has also seen some huge downgrades to make it easier to use with an Xbox 360 controller. Speed mode and strength mode are no longer selectable. Instead, they automatically kick in when you run or jump. This is a huge design flaw, because there will be many occasions where you want to run without draining your suit power and you can no longer do that. Even worse, the "speed" running in Crysis 2 is barely faster than normal running in Crysis 1. Any time you want to move faster than a walk, you are draining your armor. The armor mode is no longer the default suit mode when you run out of energy and need to replenish. Instead, all suit modes are turned off, and in fact when armor mode is turned on it drains your energy even if you aren't taking damage. This makes the main character of Crysis 2 much weaker than NOMAD and Psycho, and that combined with the tiny environments means even someone who mastered Crysis will get mauled in this game on the harder difficulties. The enemies have solid AI, but they are prone to glitches and can sometimes see you through walls and cover when they should not have line of sight. The only real improvement in Crysis 2 is that you can now pull yourself up on to ledges, which is a welcome addition. Another new feature is that holding the right mouse button when near the edge of a wall or crouched behind a barrier will allow you to peek out and shoot. For some reason it does not work with the vast majority of the environment though, so it can't be relied on and you'll quickly learn to ignore it.
To "compensate" for the many downgrades, Crysis features the timeless console trope of Collectible Dogtags! Because collectable dogtags were what we all wanted and not DX11, tweakable graphics, sandbox gameplay, and a true sequel to Crysis. < LOL!
