The most annoying part of Crytek's original groundbreaking jungle-runner—Far Cry—was the introduction of mutants, who dropped no ammo and were a bitch to kill. They are why I never finished Far Cry. Crytek tried it again in Crysis, dropping aliens into my perfectly happy soup of tearing apart shanty-filled villages in the jungles of southeast Asia, to the detriment of the flow of things. While the story ended up being decent overall and much more manageable than Far Cry, the aliens never stopped being annoying. The same holds true for Warhead, though since Psycho never went inside the alien mothership (a domain known only to Nomad in the original), you thankfully spend less time fighting them. Again, discrepancies in the shielding and overall potency of the aliens in Warhead are being hotly debated, but I'm happy they didn't crop up as much as they did in the the first game.
Length is another concern. Where Crysis took me several days to get through and felt like a more complete product, Warhead can be beaten in well under a day, especially if you don't take the scenic route (get off the train on a second play-through; trust me) or emphasize sneaking over 'splosions. However, for $30, it's hard to complain too much, and there's still a fair bit of replayability. Not as much as in the original, since many areas are cramped and isolated and linear, but the new toys and range of enemies warrant at least one extra play-through. And who doesn't like sitting back in cloak mode, watching the KPA duke it out with the aliens, all oblivious to your presence, while you munch popcorn and wait to collect all the dropped ammo?
If you've not played the original Crysis, despite this being a "standalone" expansion, this is most definitely NOT the place to jump into the storyline. Nothing is explained up front, and you really have no idea what the heck is going on unless you played Crysis, which even then you may not understand a few things here and there. For one, I'm not sure why Psycho was taking orders from an entirely different commanding officer (Emerson) than Nomad did (Strickland). The same goes for the Koreans, who apparently had two commanders on either side of the island, each with their own completely independent agendas. It's not really clear how all this ties together, and the story makes no attempt to do so throughout, even at the end.
Article comments
1 - Mark Buckingham
Speaking of EA and their obsession with DRM, this showed up in a Google ad:
SecuROM Investigation
I can't verify it, and I'm not suggesting you necessarily get involved. Just found it interesting. I'd love to know if this is legit and whether anyone hears more about it down the road.