Great visuals, design elements, but flawed by a very poor story and a confused sense of its shooting mechanics
To start: KZ2's story is bad. It's not that the dialogue was bad or the characters were flat, even though they certainly weren't good. Rather, none of the missions had any real context. I never knew my particular place in the war effort. Never knew if we were winning or losing. Rarely knew the big objective in a given level. Realistic, perhaps, but not enjoyable.
As I said the visuals are great. The AI is very intelligent and fairly enjoyable to play against. The design (level, sound, etc.) is pretty good too. And yet! Despite all of this, I found the whole enchilada just slightly off. Various minor details that just felt wrong. Perhaps this is because I played on the hardest difficulty or perhaps I have a valid reason for complaint. I will list them and let you decide (or join me in commiseration! oh woe is me!):
Annoyance #1: Sometimes I would just die. Full health, behind cover, dead. I suspect that grenades were the usual culprit though sometimes I would dash out and a machine-gun would down me instantly. This game could really have used a grenade indicator.
Annoyance #2: Speaking of grenades, their graphic/explosion was really underwhelming. Except the lightning ones which would still hit you through walls/crates. Annoyance #3: Perhaps the grenades felt underwhelming because the game increases difficulty by increasing enemy health (and AI in some cases). This was extremely annoying and often made it feel like I was shooting a cap-gun. Seriously? If I unload a clip on someone and hit them 20 times, he should be dead. If I shoot a soldier point blank in the chest with a shotgun, he should be dead. At the least the Helghanst wouldn't continue skipping away like a leprechaun, shouting "Come get me lucky charms!"
In general, the game seemed extremely confused about which type of shooter it wanted to be. Did it want to be Halo-esque, with large health pools where shooting from the hip and high movement were encouraged, or did it want to be Call of Duty style, which involved aiming down the sights and firing in quick, controlled bursts? Let me further explain:
Annoyance #4: The aiming on the guns is extremely poor when moving. This is especially noticeable with the machinegun which became so wildly inaccurate when moving that I may as well have not been shooting at all. Definitely had a couple instances where I would shoot an entire clip at a soldier (while moving) and he would still live. Realistic? No. Fun? No.
Annoyance #5: Okay so from above annoyance, it seems that I should stop and aim down my sights. Unfortunately, aiming down the sights doesn't even help that much for some guns (i.e. machinegun). And it's further made useless by the fact that getting hit shakes your aiming reticle so much that you can't hit anything. AND there's a little too much motion blur at the edges. AND it takes a little long to actually aim down the sights. Which I know it seems like I'm **** which is true, but these all combine into a very irritating sort of gunplay.
Annoyance #6: Perhaps this wouldn't be so annoying if your AI teammates actually did something. Don't expect it. I recall at one instance, they said, "You use the det-charges, we'll cover your back!" I laughed at that. No... I would kill everyone first and then use the det-charges. I would constantly get shot in the back, despite having several teammates behind me. This is annoying and frustrating.
Annoyance #7: You are a midget. And not something cool like a Minja. This really irritated me. For some reason they made you quite low to the ground. At first I thought I was hallucinating, which was entirely possible given that my roommate often handles LSD while playing PS3. In fact at one point I think I imagined fighting spiders that exploded into electricity. But when I checked, by keeping my gun level and walking up next to a teammate, sure enough I barely made it above his waist.
And on and on and on until the rage would slowly build and I would SCREAM IN RAGE and kill a lawn gnome. Yes that's right, this game inspired an entire pogrom against gnomes.
To be honest, I wouldn't recommend this game. There are better shooters out there. Better in terms of story/atmosphere (Bioshock), in terms of gunplay (CoD & Halo), in terms of multiplayer (Bad Company). And even though each of those have annoyances of their own, they were able to keep them under control.