Great post Phil (
) and one that I've been dwelling over myself.
I love Crysis! But... the week that I got it, I stated to dislike it, to the point of never completing the SP side of it. Problem was I jumped online, and yeah, I think "bland" is about right. I'll give it another shot soon, but overall that word sums it up perfectly. It put me off the rest of the game.
Sometime last year, there was a thread here about how potentially awesome this game would be, and people used the comparison to Far Cry. But to me, Far Cry was never "Best Game of the Year" material. It was a great concept, and a brilliant engine of its day, but the game itself was more like evolution rather than revolution. It was good, but not legendary.
I feel similarly with Crysis. Great game (SP) and groundbreaking engine... but I'm more interested in what comes next, than what we've got now. Not only because no computer can run this at max yet, but I feel that during the creation of this game, there's been a massive portion of effort gone into the engine itself. Hand it over to another developer, and they can now spend that time and effort on JUST the game.
Either way, I still love the game, and have but it on my new (updated) system and will play through the whole thing.