Spoilers?? 
That wass the most spoiler-free post I have ever seen.
It’s cloaked.
What the… it was there ten minutes ago.
I meant: spoilers are acceptable, not that I necessarily was going to be talking spoilers, though I will.
For instance:
Boy, Tracer Tong sure turned into a real pussy, hunh?
I’m so disappointed that they took out the experience point system. Sequels are supposed to add features, not remove them.
I’m playing the X-box version. It gets sorta slow in some spots, but its still alot faster than my laptops could managee.
I also miss the skill points. Though I do like how, at least in the Xbox version once you have a code you don’t have to punch it in manually, the game does it for you.
I guess the biggest difference after the missing skill points is the ammo clips: all the guns use the same kind of ammo! And when people drop their weapons you can’t get the ammo out of them, you have to find ammo clips elsewhere.
Storyline wise its pretty interesting so far, though I’m still in Seattle. I’ve heard that when you go to
Cario there is sunlight! Sweet, beautiful sunlight!
So it is very different from the first game.
Forget even skill points: there are no stats anymore. In the first one, you could see how much difference a weapon mod would make in terms of damage and range and so on, exactly how much damage what parts of your body had taken, and so on. All gone.
Cairo has, if I remember, actually has something of a serious problem. When you go from one map to another, you go from a dark night to a mall with windows that overlook either a sunset or a sunrise. That’s a bit silly, if you ask me.
I’ve only played a little way into it at this point: I’m still in Seattle. So this might be premature, but it seems the game is considerably dumbed down. Or, at least, the character you’re playing doesn’t seem to be nearly as smart as ol’ JC Denton. The first game, you’d find yourself debating Kirkegaard with a bartender in Hong Kong. In this game, I’m hired to burn down a rival coffee shop ('cuz I’m in Seattle! Get it?!), and my character’s only response option is, “That’s arson!” Yeah, no shit, sherlock. Maybe your character gets more of a clue, generally speaking, as s/he goes up levels. Hope so, but I’m not hugely inclined to find out at this point.
When I say “goes up levels” I meant “advances through the storyline.” Because, of course, the game doesn’t have levels or experience points anymore.
I also don’t like the way they changed weapon mods. I loved starting out with a standard pistol in the first one, and then gradually tricking it out as I progressed through the game. I kept the same gun through almost the entire game, and it was useful for the entire time, even as I faced tougher and tougher foes. That was way cool.
Well, i sort of like the fact that you have to pick and choose your mods, and indeed, can specialize different guns for for different purposes. Of course, this still doesn’t compensate for the fact that:
-combat sucks, being pretty much worse than DeusEx’s was (which I actually didn’t think was that bad)
-the unified ammo system dumbs down the need to conserve certain types of ammo, and have to fall back on things like the stun prod when you run out of darts and bullets. In this game, it’s possible to run out of ammo entirely and have NO WEAPON AT ALL, not even the stun prod.
Fact is, in this day and age, there is no excuse for enemies that aren’t at least as smart and fun to kill as those in Call of Duty. I think part of this is because the enemies in DX2 take way too many shots to kill (perhaps becuase there are so few of them per level) and feel insentive to weapon fire.
Did they dumb it down to appeal to more people?
How about the controls? I remember binding all the biomods to various keys around WASD in the original game. Can you still do that in the sequel? Is the new HUD good or bad? I really loved the first one and I’ll love to know if the second one is good. Unfortunately, I have to upgrade my computer before I can get this game.
Most people seem to think that they dumbed it down for the Xbox (no mouse, just a joystick pad, and lots of small text doesn’t display well on a TV).
You can allocate the controls just like in any other FPS, I think.
On the hud: I don’t dislike the look of it, like some people, and you can make it pretty unobtrusive. However, not having a drag and drop interface for your inventory is just inexcusable.
Oh, yes, the inventory is a nightmare. Way too small, for one thing, even with the strength mod maxed out, and completly counter-intuitive commands. When I’m trying to look at things in my inventory, I’m constantly dropping them or accidentally using them. Pain in the ass.
And the object physics are a big problem, too. I hate walking through a room and scattering chairs and tables across the room because I’ve accidentally brushed up against them. That just kills the mood for me: instead of a bad-ass cyber-ninja stalking his prey, I’m stumbling around like Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford. Feh.
Well, i sort of like the physics. I think the problem you are talking about comes from the fact that the world scale is too cramped. Inthe real world, you DO need to worry about knocking over a noisy vase when sneaking around, and if you are moving at running speed (which you often are), things SHOULD be going flying.
That said, the enemy AI is not well integrated into this. For a good creep and sneak game, how the enemies react needs to be very intuitive. But in this game, enemies seem to hear me crouch walking from miles away, yet they don’t react when I knock over a huge barrel (or, that matter, if I shoot their buddies in the head!)
Yeah, but in the real world you also have a lot more control over your body: you can choose where to step, twist your torso, suck in your gut, hold your hands over your head, etc. Plus you have much a much wider field of vision than a computer monitor. A person running full speed through a furnished room doesn’t go careening off every object in the room along the way, and if he does, he usually falls on his ass. By making the object physics more realistic, they’ve highlighted all the other ways the game lacks realism.
At what point do you actually have to pick your path? I’m currently in Cairo (almost through it I think) and I am still getting options for WTO and The Order.
Count me as one who misses the skill points. I do like the swapable biomods though, I just can’t ever find enough to keep me fully loaded.
I don’t know that you ever have to pick your path until the very end. Once you get to Trier, you’ll see that your question is actually a little beside the point. 
To clarify: there are points in the game where you can do things that would REALLY piss off one side or the other. However, since I didn’t do most of them, I don’t know that you can’t get back on the good side of a faction you offended. In the last level you do have to pick your poison, but you’ve got lots of options (I’ve only seen two of the five endings (though ending five is a “joke” ending)