Having just finished Crysis 2, Yeah, 1 and Warhead were better games. C2 is by no means bad, it's just generic compared to the first one. It was linear, the Suits options were slightly less varied, few Vehicle segments and so much smaller in terms of scale. In fact, while the AI was roughly the same IMO, save for a few things like CELL not using Suppressive fire and all, I believe the enemies in C1 were more dangerous simply because there were more of them in a given place. Fights in C1 got big especially around midgame. I cant think of a segment in C2 where I fought more than eight or so enemies at once, barring constant respawn, and you never have more than four or five squadmates. It was kinda disappointing, after the awesome scale of the first one.
Needless to say, I also miss the C1 Ceph. The new ones don't suck, compared to many videogame alien races, but the C1 Ceph were actually unique, and they were awesome. Now we have generic biotech-obsessed gribblies. Woo.
Like I said before, C2 certainly wasn't bad, and its miles better than the recent CoD iterations, but I think I'm going to join the "C1 was best" crowd. Still gonna buy the inevitable Third Game though.