The human AI is pathetic, which sucks cos it makes the whole predator 'distraction' thing feel so contrived since they do EXACTLY what you tell them to every time. :\ There's also a distinct lack of terror when a huge cloaked or uncloaked predator lands in front of them. In those ways Crysis felt much more like a fun predator kind of game, because it was much more satisfying to 'outsmart' the AI.
Beyond that, the multiplayer demo is probably the absolute worst experience of gameplay I've had in any game and brought me from desperately wanting to get it to seriously not wanting to go near it. Fortunately I was able to 'borrow' the steam account of a friend who had it to give the single player a try, and decided it was going to be worth buying after the first predator level. :D
Overall despite the frustrations of varying degrees often due to developer laziness or poor planning I thought the game was brilliant fun! The finishing moves are absolutely BRUTAL and the hand to hand combat works well enough for me to not care when there were infinitely respawning aliens in one part, because I was having so much fun ending them in all kinds of horrible ways. :p
Story-wise it's basically all in the marine campaign and a lot was left unanswered more in the annoying kind of 'not fully fleshed out' kind of way rather than the 'deep mystery here' kind of way BUT I have yet to listen to any of the audio diaries. Even if more story is in there though you just don't get enough from the game to make it remotely worth getting for the story. You get it so you can BE an alien or predator - because both are handled quite well. For example seeing 5 aliens coming towards you at once as a marine is an 'oh snap' kind of moment. Seeing 10 aliens at once as a predator is very much a '....bring it ON!' kind of moment, even if you die horribly repeatedly. :p
There was a great bit as the alien when fighting....myself i think from the predator campaign, where I was seriously injured and using a column to run around to keep the predator out of sight for a moment while I healed. After 2 or 3 revolutions in different directions apparently he decided he'd had enough of that rubbish and sprint-lunge-STAB killed me around the column. I was totally and utterly pwned. :D
In addition to my first post, now more of you have played the full game. I finished marine and alien on insane on sunday. I bought it on saturday. The only bits that gave me trouble were the club, the dropship and the first combat cyborg encounter.
As the Alien the predators were a bit of a git.
Not had time to progress on predator past the second level.
Motion tracker's not scary enough althoug I love alien AI wall movement. The club was excellent fun. The first time I played my tracker was going mental and I was stuck in standard FPS mode wondering where they were til I lobbed a flare out and illuminated a ceiling FULL of Xenos.
Good stuff. Need more grenade capacity.
Looking forward to the sequel as hinted at by Bishop clone number 426(probably)