A game not designed for black ops or modern warfare fans. You have been warned.
Yes, i'll admit that the graphics aren't world class but not every game can be like crysis. Not every game company out there is sponsered by EA games or Bethesda.
The graphics aren't terrible, they're just not super fantastic, so what! If you ever stopped for 5 minutes in games like black ops and took a look at your surroundings you'd notice that the graphics are pretty weak too, you're just too busy running flat out and running through thousands of bulletts all rambo style to notice.
For the scale of the maps and the huge backdrops in nearly every mission is pretty remarkable i believe.
The vehicles look okay and the guns look pretty nice as well. blood splatter effects are nice and not over the top, although i would like to see a little more spillage on the ground for realism but that would probably upset a few people and then have the game banned.
Second, yes the AI is pretty much mentally retarded. You would probably expect that if you ever played Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Here's a tip so you don't shoot your pals in the back of the head, tell them to spread out using the combat commands, it's not hard and it also saves you running infront of their scopes and getting shot too (i used to do this alot in dragon rising).
The overall gameplay is still the age old tradition of the Flashpoint series. find a weakness in the enemy lines and exploit it. This generally means flanking the enemy, deal with it now, it's what marines are supposed to do. If you try taking on a large force head on with you and 3 squad mates, you're probably gonna have a really long gun fight, make very little ground and drag out the game a hell of alot longer, probably have a little more fun in saying that, or just get your arse handed to you every time.
Guns feel solid and have realistic recoil and still have the realistic trajectories, aka. bulletts drop over distance. If you put an enemy in the middle of your crosshairs 200m away, you're probably going to blow off his foot but not kill him. Then he lets all of his buddies know that you're there and then you're going to have a whole lot more hostiles to deal with. When you do get the shooting down right and start making head shots and taking out the enemy silently it feels oh so rewarding. There's nothing more intense or exciting than playing a special ops mission and getting through the entire level undetected (there's also nothing more frustrating than dying five thousand times to acvhieve this).
Final part. Thankyou so much Codemasters for putting in a co-op campaign. Ever since i played Dragon Rising I've always wanted to play it with friends on my team instead of the A.I where you have to hold its hand. This is the best part of the game. You and three other friends on the same fire team, setting up your plan of attack over skype or teamspeak or whatever you use, using your class and abilities to your advantage and taking the enemy to pieces is brilliant and rewarding and makes this game just stand out. Playing for an objective that can take you 30-40 minutes with your friends is the most satisfying feeling that you could probably ever get from a game and actually makes it feel worth while. It's a nice change from the tedium of capture the flag or team death match that's in nearly every FPS game these days.
In conclusion, if you're after a game that feels a little more real, takes you a while to figure out how you're going to approach an objective and achieve that objective than this is probably for you.
However, if you're a fanboy of the Call of Duty or Medal of Honor franchise's, than this probably isn't the game for you but don't knock it until you've tried it, you just might find that you prefer these games to the others.
Nathan