Finally beat the game today. Since the trophy for beating the game for the first time is for any difficulty, I said screw it and played the last section (or two) of the final level on normal which made me feel bad because I had played till that point on veteran.
Clocked in at just under eight hours. The campaign was pretty intense though it could have used some more story and even bigger environments to house intense battles (I guess I have a thing for chaotic events). Playing on veteran made things even more intense and it felt pretty cool in the crazier levels (like the bridge one) to have the firefights feel slower due to how much damage enemies took and how cover becomes a must if you want to keep going.
Probably the biggest fun killer though was your squad's AI and ability (or lack thereof) to keep their bodies from being riddled with bullets. Sometimes it felt like every couple of seconds one of them would go down and you'd have to hear them whine and complain at you until you risked your own safety to revive them.... Only to see them take a couple of steps before going down yet again.
The graphics are really nice with lots of cool effects and the animations are superb. You do get some weird glitches every now and then like when you shoot and kill an enemy, his body suddenly slides off across the floor. The mid-level loading hitches didn't bother me at all. The worst ones can last around three seconds, but they're usually real quick and painless. It's nice that it all happens without bringing up a loading screen like the ones between levels. Not only that, it's great that they could accomplish all this without any installations.
The controls WILL take some getting used to. I wont get into the arguments going on about them, but just know that aiming isn't going to feel the same as COD4. Though this is mainly with singleplayer, the aiming feels more natural in multiplayer. As a whole, I didn't find singleplayer or multiplayer aiming that difficult to adjust to.
So in the end, I'd say it's a good game, but not the end all be all of shooters. Though that's rather obvious.
I fucking hate Rico.....
*edit* - The last level is so freaken hard.........
