In terms of the actual game:
1. I found out why people are bitching about weapon power – they’re still using the silencer from the tutorial. My brother’s comment upon reaching the first beach fight with a boat: ‘WTB assault rifle that works.’ When we got around to taking the silencer off it was a revelation. In retrospect this is actually kind of impressive, at least if Testosterone Force’s rifles are using the M16 round; that derives its killing power from unusually high velocity, so its subsonic rounds are pretty bad. I once read an autobiography of a Vietnam SEAL who used early ones and told about repeatedly shooting a guy who didn’t even realise he was being shot – just kept swatting at the impact points and looking around quizzically. Of course, we’re also supposed to believe that the rifle changes normal rounds to subLALALALA… and would it have hurt to mention this disparity somehow?

2. Holy cow, these guys are smart. Well, not smart enough to steal a HMMWV and flee when they see an invisible monster tearing their friends apart, but plenty smart all the same. That same first big beach fight was a wonderful shock for my brother, who’s a sniping CSS twitch god. From the horse’s mouth, while tagging guys with the binocs: ‘Wow, I’m going to be such a running little bitch in this game – normally I can’t stand that, and normally I just move faster. These guys are going to turn me stealthy!’ The pressure just never lets up – they’re constantly finding new angles, so you only have a few seconds to think after any violence. Pity they don’t seem to think about their cover at all, but I guess they’d be less aggressive and you can’t have everything. Glorious. Nine years later, we have successors for the Half-Life Marines. I can’t wait to see the nano guys in action.

From what I can tell not all the DX10 effects are enabled with the XP Mod, but who cares about graphics when you can master your parking a jeep in a shack skills.

I think people just aren’t realising when they’re missing. You fire four times, the guy doesn’t die, you get hit four times, you do. That doesn’t mean you hit four times or that they only shot four times.

I’m pretty sure the game even does you the favour of treating all incoming hits as bodyshots, whereas your enemies have no such luxury. If you’re actually aiming and you’re within the effective range of your weapon, no-one takes more than two shots with any weapon on any difficulty. I’m pretty sure that if you hit the head and not the helmet on the most heavily armoured opponents, they go down in one too.

But the spirit of the complaint is obviously that the Koreans take too many bullets and you take too few, whatever the respective figures. Crytek had the audacity to discourage you from taking more than ten or twenty guys on at a time in a straight firefight with no cover. You’re challenged to win on the strength of your strategy and versatility rather than the inherent invulnerability of the character you play. Imagine!

The difficulty thing is amazing, though. Full marks, gentlemen.

No seriously, bloody brilliant. I actually lolled. Hard.

Sold, will be buying this as soon as it is released.

I had absolutely no interest in this game before the demo. Now I’m a complete convert. It’s fantastic, and that’s entirely ignoring the graphical shinies. This is stealth combat done better than anything else I’ve ever played.

I also agree with you about the ‘delta’ difficulty. I rolled my eyes at the suggestion that everyone should play on hardest, at first. Then I tried it and understood. It doesn’t really make it harder, it just stops you from playing it like a typical shooter and missing the unique fun this game offers.